Astwood (camping and socialising)


Looking up the River Arun with Arundel town in the distance


Wow – five days without a blog entry!  It usually means we’ve been on holiday or I’ve forgotten to take pictures.  This time it’s a bit of both.

Wednesday and Thursday were quite uneventful – just the usual walking, cycling and chatting with passers-by.  I did see my first Marbled White butterflies of the year which was a pleasant surprise.  They are very skittish once they wake up and get on the wing during the day, so it’s difficult to get a decent shot as they never land for more than a few seconds.

Best I could do with a Marbled White

One of the walks took us across a wheat field which had a solitary ash tree in the middle.  Usually, solitary trees tend to be oaks so this seemed quite odd.

Solitary ash rather than the usual oak tree

On Friday, we decided to go camping for the weekend so set off down to West Sussex.  My middle son, Steve, has moved into a new flat in Arundel so we planned to see him on the Saturday.  We went to a campsite in a place called Ford.  We have been there before but once we got there we couldn’t think why we came back really.  It’s run by a little Hitler woman with many rules, including ‘No visitors’ which was a bit disappointing. There is one field where only tents are allowed and also no children so we set up in there.  The main field was full of motorhomes, caravans and family tents.

Set up for a couple of days

As our field was nice and quiet it seemed to attract the rabbits so Buddy spent a lot of time, fully alert watching them scampering around.

Buddy on bunny watch

On the Saturday we walked up the River Arun to Arundel (see picture at the top) to meet up with Steve.  Although the campsite was just over two miles from Arundel as the crow flies, it was nearly four miles by river as it is so windy on its way to the sea.  Buddy still cannot get used to sea water; he always tries to drink it and consequently gets even thirstier.

There were quite a few butterflies out and we saw our first Small Skipper of the year too.

I may have mentioned that Steve, Lauren and I are doing the national three peaks next year and Lauren put some more practice in this weekend.  She was in South Wales for the weekend so walked up the two highest peaks in South Wales – Pen y Fan and Corn Du.


My daughter, Lauren (right) and her friend Emily

Coincidentally, our friends Guy and Mirella, have recently bought a house on the beach about three miles from our campsite and as they were down for the weekend, we went over to see them in the evening.  Guy, as usual, cooked a marvellous dinner and we had a great evening catching up with them. 






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