Tent Sniffing for Beginners

Over on Facebook today I saw a post sharing a truly frightening story of a young girl getting her hair caught in a pool filter while on holiday, and subsequently nearly drowning. She lost chunks of hair and had to be treated in hospital, she was lucky to survive this terrifying experience. I have read about pool filters and the dangers of them before, and whether at home or abroad it's easy to forget safety when we are on holiday and having fun. When DD was younger she had waist length hair and because wet waist length hair is a pain when you are trying to swim, we bought her a swimming hat. While she initially hated it and thought it looked a bit silly, she soon realised the benefits, no wet hair all over your face as you surface, no tangles after swimming (or at least a lot fewer than when it's loose) and even slightly better speed when swimming as there is less drag! When we holidayed in Spain there were signs all around the pool telling guests to wear a swimming hat...

At home I'm a fairly strict parent. I'm all about balanced diets, five a day, no fizzy drinks and minimal crisp munching. We make homemade cakes so that they are not over sweet or full of E numbers. Most of our meals are made from scratch. In fact DD is so used to having 'meat and two veg' that she's not that keen on junk food! But when we are on holiday (which for us usually means camping, all of that goes out the window (or the tent flap). I suddenly favour things that will 'keep' without a fridge. Snacks that are prepacked (and thus insect proof) and easy to carry, cartons of juice, bags of crisps, 'breakfast' bars (that we all know are just sugar thrown at some oats), of course nature has given us the banana, the perfect snack food, also the easy peel satsuma, but other than that I'm looking at manmade all the way.

For the first time in years we had a family holiday! Mainly as I agreed not to insist on canvas so that my Dear Husband felt able to come with Dear Daughter and I to the Brecon Beacons in Wales, in October. We rented a cottage from Brecon Beacons Holiday Cottages , we have been using the company since before we were married! So probably about 25 years (is that really possible?) and this made us confident that we'd get what we paid for.We started using them because they have a really good selection of dog friendly places, and Wales is excellent for dog walks! (Bring flexi leads though - there are lots of sheep about) As we hadn't been away as a family for years I splashed out a bit and we rented a lovely 2 bedroom cottage in Talybont on Usk, with wifi, real log fire and all modern conveniences. We were delighted to find the cottage was better equipped than our own home, with sky TV, two televisions bigger than our home one, a dishwasher (another thing we don't have) ...

So, DD and I met up with my brother and his children and we all went camping at Dernwood Farm . It's sort of wild. There are flushing loos, running (cold) water and it's pretty busy but it's just a field, no marked pitches and you can have real fires (which was one of the main reasons we picked this site and was a great addition to camping) There is a long walk from the car park but that's a big plus as there are no cars on the actual site to worry about. No danger for the kids and no car noise. (and safety for the many toads on the site) We visited Hailsham Leisure Centre on the one day it rained and the girls had great fun on the flume and in the pool. We also did a quick bit of charity shop shopping. On  the Sunday we went to Hastings and the girls played on the extremely windy beach. On the Monday wewent to Heathfield for the french market (in full moustache mode), made candles, bought bread and generally had a fab time. And every...