I love summer. It’s my favourite day of the year (boom boom!). This summer (as featured over the weekend we’ve just had) was a peach. Blue skies and hot. We were so happy that we’d arranged to go camping.

Our destination was How Stean Gorge near the top of Nidderdale. A gorgeous place with a beautiful gorge and cave system running alongside and underneath it. On Friday night I headed down into the gorge and cave with my super ace headtorch (an Alpkit Gamma LED for the record). Elsie (a dog) enjoyed but got a bit scared.

The following words sum up Saturday: Sun, Cricket, Pastis, Pies, Pub, Pint, Campfire. And Cake. And Dog. And “The favourite cake of the matriarch of a large family gathering cerebrating her 80th birthday that got eaten by a medium brown dog called Elsie.” Naughty pup. I thought I’d trust her to be off the line for a bit. She thought she’d go and eat someone’s specially bought on the grounds of it being said matriarch’s favourite, cake.  I did the right thing, and ate humble pie and offered to make amends and replace it.  It’s kind of like when one of your children do something really embarrassing. Still – it did prompt me to go into Patley Bridge and get more cake for them – got us some whilst I was there along with some top class pork pies.

Sunday was a leisurely pack up interjected with a trip down the cave that joins the campsite to the gorge. We’d been tent dwellers for this trip. Clover (a van) is off road and a bit poorly at the mo.  We got to try our our new £25 brand new tent (Tesco were selling them off last winter) and it’s really good.  Rounded off the day with a bit of a snooze and a lot of a read (Caleb’s Crossing, for the record). So far, so good. Hope we get a few more weekends like that. There’s a fair few human lobsters kicking around today though.