Ending Up Anywhere

Cleopatra has never been so full when she set off from home with three additional passengers and their luggage. We set of at 8am, stopping once for comfort breaks and once to do a food (and alcohol) shop. We arrived at Caerfai Farm campsite near St David's in Wales just before 3pm. Luggage for our passengers, my mum, dad and auntie, was taken to their yurt while Cleopatra was transformed into our week's accommodation and a tent pitched for my brother, sister-in-law and niece. We were pitched right on the cliff top with a stunning view of the beach below and out across St Brides bay. A fabulous barbecue and chillout evening rounded off a hard day's travelling. The next day we installed ourselves on the small sandy beach, leaving exploring any further for later in the week. Caerfai Farm is a superb, spacious site accepting tents and small motorhomes. Spread across three gently sloping fields, all pitches have a sea view. The facilities are good and the site shop

We should have spent the last week in France. We'd booked two chalets and a camping pitch for ourselves and my family at Domaine Les Gandins and we'd all been looking forward to our big French holiday for months. So it was of huge concern when we started reading reports of strikes causing fuel shortages throughout France a few days beforehand. For the whole week prior to departure the situation seemed to be getting worse and worse and then midweek the protests appeared to spread to blocking motorways. Our holiday was in jeopardy. We thought up numerous ways in which to still go ahead with the trip, buying jerry cans so we could take enough fuel with us and looking at lengthy routes through Germany and Switzerland. An emergency family meeting was called two days before departure when we all agreed that we'd have to cancel. When the idea to find somewhere on our side of the English channel was mooted we were sceptical that we'd manage to find something the day befo