The Forest of Dean

We all had our first camping trip of the year over three nights at Whitemead in the Forest of Dean. Great weather meant that avoiding sunburn was a nice problem to have. We also find that now that the children are bigger means that there are more hands to help out with the jobs, which makes for a much easier trip all round. Although I am sure that I washed up more times than anybody else!
The children all get to sleep without any problems as well, which is a big improvement on trips when they were all much younger.

The campsite has a big tree in it, one of the branches of which makes for a good swing that the children use. I wasn't too happy with this at first as it looks a bit harsh on the poor tree, but the branch is worn smooth by the number of bottoms that have sat on it. So I thought that a few more wouldn't do much more harm. Here is a video clip of Hannah on the branch....



We had a good walk at a place called Symonds Yat. I am not sure about the linguistic history that the name comes from, but the place itself is a very deep ravine with the river Wye at the bottom of it. It looks very spectacular from the top.





























We walked down and got the passenger ferry across the river.




















The walk was about 3.5 miles, but this didn't take into account the steep climb down and subsequently back up again. This was quite long drag, but again everybody seemed to cope without too much complaint.

All in all a great trip.