10 Favourites From a Month of Visitors

My best friend from home and her two kids came to visit for a month during the UK’s summer holidays. That made it winter here, the best time for getting out and about in the tropical north of Queensland. Apart from a week in New South Wales to see Sydney and the Blue Mountains, the rest of our time was spent up in this beautiful part of the world.

Here’s a summary of our more adventurous bits:

1 Swimming in waterholes (QLD)

Crystal Creek, Paluma

Babinda Boulders

2 Hiking in the Blue Mountains (NSW)

The Three Sisters

Two reluctant hikers and their mum

3 Camping our way up through north Queensland

Cairns

Flying the Welsh Flag in Cape Tribulation

4 Finding wildlife on the beaches (QLD)

Peppermint Stick Insect, Cape Tribulation

Sea star, Kurrimine Beach

Pelican, Kurrimine Beach

5 Snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef (QLD)

6 Spotting humpback whales! (QLD)

7 Croc Spotting on the Daintree River (QLD)

8 Ziplining through the jungle (QLD)

9 A sunset kayaking tour (QLD)

10 Stand Up Paddleboarding (SUPing)  (QLD)

 

Horseshoe Bay, Magnetic Island

Beautiful Pembrokeshire: Some Active Bits ...

I made a trip with my husband back to Pembrokeshire to spend a few days visiting family and friends. We were blessed with incredible weather while we were back, which lasted for most of the time we were there, and so we were able to really enjoy ourselves. My best friend Sarah, who I have known well since we were about 13, still lives in our home town, and she has 2 lovely boys. They were off school for the summer when we arrived and so it was great to spend plenty of time with them when we were visiting. They will be visiting us next year in Australia, but still every moment counts!

Our first day therefore was spent at the beach! Pembrokeshire has so many wonderful beaches, and on this day we headed to Manorbier in the hope that there would be surf. There wasn’t… We spent several happy hours soaking up the great weather, catching up with each other, reading, and then I braved the sea, going out with the boys to try and catch the tiny waves on the surfboard and later taking the youngest one out with a snorkel as he wanted to swim a bit. Great fun!

A bit blurry - I guess that's what happens when a little boy has the camera!

The next day has its own post, as we headed off on the boat to Skomer Island for some puffin spotting!

The following day and we hit the water for the third time in three days – this time with wind power. I learned to sail little dinghies when I was about 10 or 11 years old, and when Sarah had got in touch before we travelled down to ask if I would take her littlest one out sailing I was really excited. I haven’t sailed in years, but I had sailed for so long that I felt confident I could still sail competently, and teach the little lad too.

We hired a couple of dinghies so that everyone could go out at once. I took littlest one out in a Topper dinghy. It’s designed for one person to sail, and as such it only has one sail – the main sail – to worry about, so it seemed a great way to teach him. I began by showing him how to look after the main sail. As we went along I also taught him a few bits and pieces about the theory of sailing to help him understand what he was doing. Once he was ready, I moved on to teaching him about helming (steering) the boat. At first he struggled to concentrate enough to steer properly – he was so excited and so interested in every that was happening all around us! After a short while though he calmed down and then – with a bit of guidance – he was sailing by himself! He seemed to be having a great time, and I found it so rewarding to see how far he had come in just an hour. I’m not always good at teaching as I can lack patience, but I tried really hard to stay calm and relaxed while trying to teach an excitable 10-year-old, and I felt really good about our time out on the water together! 

We had hired the boats for 2 hours, and after that first hour I swapped over into the bigger boat (a Wayfarer – or ‘Wafer’ as the littlest one kept calling it!), while another sailor swapped into the Topper. I was then sailing with my husband, my friend, and her eldest son. They had obviously been learning about sailing already, so I just let people have a go a whatever they fancied – managing one of the sails, or taking a turn at the helm – while I supervised, until it was time to go in. There wasn’t much wind, so it was very relaxing sailing. I was chuffed at the end that after so much time I was still able to take over control of the dinghy when we had to head back in, and tack it (sailing and making a series turns so that you can get to an upwind destination) back to the jetty, judging it right to glide in to the jetty without bumping the boat. I was very happy with the day!

The fourth day and we were not waterbabies this time. A friend of Sarah's used to work at a quadbiking centre near Tenby, Ritec Valley Quads, and was keen to take everyone there. The rest of us grown-ups had each been quad biking once before, although it was the first time for the eldest son, while littlest son had to go on the children’s circuit which he had done before. We were all looking forward to it, and the course was really interesting – lots of different terrain and tricky paths to follow - even a couple of obstacles to overcome.

The quads had gears which you click through up and down, and it’s really tricky to remember which gear you’re in sometimes! We whizzed around the place, with only the occasional detour off the track when a bend was too tight…

The time seemed to go by fairly quickly - I just felt like I was getting the hang of things and feeling braver when it was all over! Adam found this his favourite activity of everything we did while in Pembrokeshire, Sarah and I had a great time, and her eldest son did really well considering it was his first time.

Still to come: Puffins!

Camping Near the White Horse

I had met up in Newbury with my best friend from school, as we had an appointment for friendship tattoos before my move to Australia. After our appointment, she drove straight to the campsite we were staying at with her  two boys, while I first shopped for a few extra supplies (mainly marshmallows for toasting!)  We were camping at Britchcombe Farm, a basic campsite at Uffington, near the famous White Horse - but we ended up only staying under canvas for one night. We had wanted to camp for longer, but it rained really really hard on that first day, and it turned out that the tent leaked really badly!! With a swimming pool for in our tent, and with the kids to think of, we decamped to a hotel for the first night, returning to camping for the following day which had better weather. Returning to camp included having to bail out the tent, and towel down the ground sheet!! A good job we didn’t try sleeping there with the kids!

Littlest lad was very upset to stay in a hotel, he wanted so badly to camp! The only thing that cheered him up on that first night was taking him out for Italian food – he is a little fussy with food flavours, so he chose a margarita pizza. He’s only 9 so he doesn’t eat lots, but he really tucked in to the pizza with gusto! Then, when dessert was offered, we all led each other astray and each chose a naughty dessert… Littlest lad chose the profiteroles, and made very short work of them!

The next day, littlest lad was very excited when we finally headed back towards the campsite, and all of the possibilities for lighting fires and playing football. My husband, Adam, had joined us by this point, so we had another tent to put up while the boys played ball. 

Then we all headed off to the lovely tea rooms associated with the camp site. They served teas and coffees and delicious homemade cakes and scones.

While looking around outside, we spotted this pretty moth on a wall, a white ermine moth. Littlest lad wanted to see it closer and in his enthusiasm he knocked it off the wall onto the floor. It wasn’t hurt, but I decided to pick it up and out it somewhere safe – and I took the opportunity for a closer look and some more photos. It was so fluffy and cute!

We enjoyed our tea break in the lovely garden area, then dragged the kids on a bit of a walk, under much protesting that they wanted to go back to the campsite to play football…  Our first attempt to find a long path to follow failed, and we ended up having to turn back at this field of lambs.

Finding a longer path, we walked up a hill to a bit of a ridge, up through lovely meadows full of buttercups. We got great views of the campsite as we walked up. Our tents are those blue specks next to the 2 red cars.

We carried on towards the White Horse. The walk became more fun for the boys as we turned it into races to different points. I’m sure this would have been easier for me without my bag and camera!

Finally we got to the White Horse. We had hoped to be getting to a view point, but we actually got to the White Horse itself. 

We took in the views from the hill

Watched with amusement as the sheep ran in to gather behind this vehicle – feeding time!

Then we decided to walk down the hill to find a view of the White Horse. Some of us did a bit of rolling down the hill too :)

Unfortunately, this was the best view we could get from where we were. I was up for walking further to find a better view (I had seen a good view while driving to the campsite, so I knew it was possible) but I was the only one interested, so instead we headed back to the camp site for football.

Back at the campsite, we decided to have a proper camp dinner as the weather had become so nice, so while the boys played ball, husband and I headed off on a search for a shop that was open on a Sunday evening, and selling supplies for a BBQ… Between a couple of different shops we managed to get pretty much everything we needed. The marshmallows, biscuits and chocolate had come with my friend and the kids – eldest lad had a plan for s'mores (created by toasting a marsh mallow, then sandwiching it with chocolate in between 2 biscuits. My friend thought putting a toasted marsh mallow between 2 chocolate biscuits would have been much simpler!))

I prepared the disposable BBQs by propping them up on metal tent pegs to keep them off the grass. I checked them to make sure they were sturdy and level before we lit them, and then my husband manned the BBQs to cook our burgers and sausages.

While the food was cooking, littlest lad was itching to get a proper fire going. While we had been off getting food, they had bought a bag of logs for a camp fire – in the evening a guy in a landrover came around selling the logs – so when most of the food was finished I put littlest lad to work creating a spot for the fire. He did a good job, and once it was ready I showed him how to build up the fire and get it ready to light. We cheated a little – the heavy rain meant that there was no dry kindling around, so I had bought something to help get it going, and soon we had a lovely little fire.

We used some of the logs to build a wind break to help the fire get going, and once it was nice and hot we began toasting the marshmallows.

Eldest lad showed me how to make the s'mores.

But I think that I preferred just a plain toasted marsh mallow

We had a lovely evening, all sitting around the campfire. Littlest lad was having a whale of a time just being outside, camping and having a fire and marshmallows. He even came up with some great ideas for games we could all play together around the camp fire – my favourite was playing a game where you each take it in turns to say 1 word to make up a story, although we had to adapt this a little (1 sentence each instead for a bit, followed by 2 words each, which worked best for us) as he was getting too excitable to follow the story properly, and it didn’t seem to be working too well to begin with! We really had some giggles, it was such a lovely way to all spend precious time together :)  In fact, we all lost track of time and the littlest one was very happy with that as he got to stay up late and enjoy more camping!