Oslo in the summertime

Andrew and I went to Oslo for the August bank holiday weekend. It turned out to be my favorite place I have ever been. It was beautiful and clean and efficient. The people were friendly. The buildings and public spaces were filled with art. There is water everywhere. There are about a million museums. There are tiny islands. There are more trees than you can imagine, plus lakes and mountains. The public transportation system is extensive and even includes water buses between the islands. And, even though we were there at the very end of summer, it still stayed light until late at night. I’m sure I wouldn’t want to spend a whole winter there, but Oslo in the summertime is like some sort of Scandinavian paradise.

We caught an early morning flight with all our camping stuff in our trusty backpacks and had beautiful views of the North Sea and the Norwegian coastline as we flew in. The Oslo airport is as beautiful as every other aspect of the city, and we had a tasty hot dog (apparently the Norwegians can’t get enough hot dogs; they were everywhere) in a café there while we figured out our next steps. We had a little bit of a language barrier to deal with, but most people spoke a little bit of English. It was kind of fun not knowing the language because it was like a game, trying to figure out what the signs and advertisements said. We found a bus into town and wandered around a little bit while we got our bearings, then eventually figured out how to get to our campground, which was a little ways out of town but easy to get to on another bus. Downtown Oslo is not very big, and we saw a lot of the city in our early wanderings. On our bus ride, we got to see more of it, plus some of the more residential areas and a few brief peeks at the waterfront.

The campground was pretty nice, but it started to rain as we were in the middle of setting up our tent, and the wind picked up, too, so we were forced to take shelter under a tree. The rain was off and on during our trip, but that, thankfully, was the worst of it, and after we got all set up we walked into the village to find some provisions. We had a couple grocery stores to choose from: the one at the campground and a nicer one in the little village. We were shocked by both of them, though. We knew that Oslo was supposed to be very expensive, but we weren’t quite prepared for the prices we came across, especially for food. Luckily, we were just after a bit of bread and cheese, so we got by, but the prices for regular food were shockingly high. The restaurants were really expensive, too. We saw a chain pizza restaurant and did the math. One medium cheese pizza worked out to about 30 dollars! But the loveliest aspects of our trip were free, especially walking. We dropped off our supplies and walked up to a nearby lake, where we breathed the pristine air, dipped our toes in the frigid water, and watched the sun starting to set. It was so peaceful.

The next morning we hopped back on the bus and went down to one of the marinas, then walked over to a peninsula where a lot of museums are clustered together. We walked past a royal farm (they have a royal family still) with fancy uniformed guards and through a gorgeous neighborhood of houses that we guessed were mostly built in the early twentieth century. Other than a few buildings downtown, most of Oslo seems to be very new. I don’t know if the houses just don’t last long in the extreme weather, or if Norway has been rebuilding due to its recent increase in wealth, but most of the houses we saw were only a few decades old, at the most. This meant that there were some traditional styles repeated often but also that there was a great deal of diversity in the architecture. It was all very tasteful, though; there were no McMansions or Italian stucco houses or anything else that seemed out of place. It was all very simple and clean and beautiful.

Our initial destination that morning was a museum dedicated to three enormous Viking ships that had been discovered by archaeologists. It was kind of expensive, so we didn’t tour the museum, but we did get a peek at one of the ships. From there, we walked down to the waterfront, where we caught a water bus downtown. It wasn’t a special tourist boat or anything, just the regular public service, but they could have charged a lot more for the ride; it was one of my favorite things. We got off the boat near the City Hall, where they award the Nobel Prizes, then walked up to the National Gallery, which was all Norwegian art, including Munch’s famous Scream and some really pretty, dark, atmospheric nineteenth-century paintings of snow-covered meadows and cozy fireside scenes. Then we found some lunch at a little sidewalk café. We felt cold, considering it was August, but we were warm enough with our jackets on to sit outside. I had some shrimp salad with lovely, dark Norwegian bread. We knew we couldn’t afford many restaurant meals, so we tried to eat local foods when we had the chance and make the most of the experience.

After lunch we walked to the Opera House, which is right on – and actually in – the water. It was just opened a couple years ago, so it is still pristine and perfect. I think it is the coolest building I have ever seen. The roof slopes up at several different angles in such a way that you can walk up the sides of the buildings and all over the roof, then down the walls again into the water. There were hundreds of people milling about, enjoying the sunshine and the beautiful space. There were even some Japanese teenagers having an impromptu dance party in one spot. We took a bunch of pictures, then continued along the waterfront to another water bus terminal, where we hopped on a ferry out to some of the little islands. We jumped off on one island to walk around and see what we could see. It turned out to be full of teeny-tiny summer cottages that had been built in the 1920s. There were hundreds of them, all painted in the same shades of red, yellow, green, and blue, all with white trim. There were lace curtains and picnic tables and bright red geraniums planted everywhere. It was an ideal summer setup. There was hardly anyone around, so we just walked around for an hour or so, gazing at the water and trying to figure out how we could summer here in the future. It was quiet except for the low hum of the hundreds of boats out in the water, and it was even more peaceful than the lake the evening before. I was sad to leave on the next ferry, but I loved being on the boat with the wind in my face watching all the islands pass by. We walked back into town along the water, past a hillside fort and past all the cruise ships. We were getting pretty cold by that point, so we found a place where we could have a cup of coffee and watch the beautiful people walk by, then we walked to the National Theatre, where all of Ibsen’s plays were performed, then caught a subway back out to the village and walked to our campsite for another picnic dinner.

The next morning we woke up and decided to explore the mountain in whose shadow we had been sleeping. There were roads and footpaths winding up the side of the mountain, and after an hour of walking past beautiful houses, some with traditional grass roofs, we were at the top of the peak, but we weren’t yet where we wanted to be, which was the world-famous ski jump. We got lost a few times, but eventually we found it, and it was spectacular to see. They were in the middle of building the latest version of the ski jump; I think it was the fifth or sixth version built on the same spot since the early twentieth century. It was absolutely massive, and I would love to see someone jump from it. One of the things that I loved about Norway was that everyone seemed so fit and sporty; no couch potatoes in that culture. I could imagine the whole society gathered out in the snow just as easily as the sunshine. Very impressive. Once we reached our destination, we had to figure out how to get back to the campsite, which was much more difficult than we expected, but we made it back and packed up our gear, then headed back into town to explore a bit more before we had to leave to catch our flight that evening.

First we went to the main shopping area along the water and had a lovely lunch of seafood soup and Norwegian salmon with potatoes and dill sauce while we watched the cruise ships come into the harbor. Then we made our way over to a sculpture garden in the middle of an enormous city park (did I mention there were parks and gardens absolutely everywhere?). It was filled with thousands of human figures sculpted by a Norwegian artist, Gustav Vigeland, in the 1930s. The figures are in poses representing every possible human emotion, and many of them were sad, some even disturbing. Others, though, were so tender they almost brought me to tears. At the very center of the garden is an enormous column made up of hundreds of figures, and lining a bridge over a little lake are dozens of funny bronze statues. It was an amazing place unlike anything else I have ever seen. But then, Oslo was unlike any other place I have ever been. After our drizzly walk through the sculpture garden, we found a coffee shop where we could warm up, then we bought some Norwegian candy for Andrew’s work mates and sadly made our way back to the bus station to go back to the airport for our trip home. Even the flight was lovely, with nice flight attendants and good snacks, and we felt nurtured and reinvigorated after our fantastic trip. I absolutely cannot wait to go back to Norway.

Photos are here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2413684&id=6231137&l=4b638e5571

A visit from Matt and Missy

Missy was heading to Edinburgh to study art history for a year starting in September, so she and Matt stopped in London for a few days, left their stuff with us while they went to Paris for a few days, then came back briefly before heading up to Scotland. We had great times with them. We did lots of walking around, including up to Primrose Hill, which has a great view of the city. We also took them to cider pub, the Green Man, which by that time had become a great favorite of ours. It was great having them around, because we just felt so comfortable. They seemed like they belonged there with us. If only we could have had all our friends transplanted to London!

Andrew’s 29th birthday

I knew that Andrew’s 28th birthday was going to be hard to top, so I pulled out all the stops for his 29th. He took the day off, and I had him meet me in Mayfair for a surprise lunch at Corrigan’s Mayfair, which is a newish restaurant run by the same chef as the place I took him for his birthday lunch the previous year. It’s a beautiful place with plush banquettes and lots of pretty mirrors and lovely place settings, and as at Corrigan’s other place, the service was amazing. We each started with a glass of prosecco and ordered our food, then I revealed Andrew’s birthday present, which was a trip to Nice for the two of us that weekend. He was so surprised, and I was pleased that I was able to hold onto the secret for so long. The lunch was excellent, too, although I’m fuzzy on the details. It’s a quintessentially British restaurant with lots of local and seasonal flavors, and everything was absolutely delicious. I do remember there being an amuse-bouche of little cheesy croquettes and delicate fried olives and there were beautiful little nougats and geleed fruit and other bonbons with the coffee. What fell in between was a substantial but fleeting pleasure.

We left for Nice on Friday after work. It was a pretty quick flight, and we caught a cab from the airport to the hotel, feeling very fancy. Unfortunately, fanciness comes with a price, especially in Nice, and we had to get the cab driver to help us find an ATM to pull out extra cash for the ride. Note to self: find a bus to get back to the airport. But no worries. We got to the hotel, right on the Promenade, and checked in. We stayed at the Le Meridien, which was very exciting because we had stayed at one in New York several years back and it was the best hotel experience ever. I wanted Andrew to have a luxurious birthday, so it was an obvious choice. The Nice version, however, was not quite as nice. I mean it was a perfectly fine hotel, but it wasn’t what I expected for the price. But it was fine. So we settled in and went out to find some dinner. Even in the middle of the holiday season, there wasn’t much open late at night, but we found a place to split a pizza and a bottle of rose, and the waiter was very nice to us. It was neat to be in a city I had been to a couple of times before because I already knew my way around pretty well. We walked around for a bit, then back to the hotel, because we were pretty tired after a full day’s work plus a flight.

The next morning we found a little café that was still serving breakfast (I always forget how early you have to get up to get a decent breakfast in France; after about 10:00 you are just out of luck), then suited up for the beach. One of the special features of the hotel was that it had its own private beach with chairs and umbrellas and towels and everything else. Nice is weird, because there are several public beaches, but there are tiny strips of private beaches in between, that charge for access. We had been to the crowded public beaches, so we were excited to have access to a private beach this time. Much to my chagrin, however, it turned out that the astronomical price for staying at the hotel somehow did not include beach access, which was a further 20 euros. Per day. Per person. That’s like 70 dollars for two people to sit on a beach for a few hours. Instead, we took the bath towels from our room (strictly forbidden) and sat on the rocks on the public beach just across the little rope barrier separating us from our hotel’s private beach. I grumbled a lot, but Andrew reminded me to look around and remember that I was swimming in the Mediterranean Sea, and that things were probably not as bad as all that. After a bit of swimming we went back inside and found out that the rooftop pool did not charge any extra fees, so we went up there and took full advantage. And they had chairs and umbrellas and towels and everything. And there were no rocks. Sweet. We spent a lot of time at the pool over the next few days, and it was just as luxurious as I hoped it would be.

But we didn’t fly all the way to Nice to hang out at a pool, so we went out and explored the city some more. Nice is very walkable, and even though we had explored it before, there are always new things to discover. For instance, this time we walked up the big hill separating the old city from the newer port area. On top, there was a massive cemetery filled with stone and shell monuments with extravagant sculptures. My favorite one was of a coffin with the lid being lifted from inside by a skeletal arm. Charming. Lots of the tombs also had colorful enameled plaques with paintings and photographs of the deceased. It was the craziest cemetery we had ever seen. It was right up on top of the hill, and the sun was beating down on us. The only plants were cactuses. The tombs were literally piled on top of each other. It was not at all peaceful, but it was certainly interesting! There was also a big park on top of the hill, with a petanque court and some fountains. We walked all the way up and over, and then down the other side (just as Bryan had done when we lost him briefly on our previous visit!). On the other side, we found the candy factory we had toured the first time, and bought some candied citrus peel. Yum. Then we wandered around by the port a bit, and found a restaurant I had heard of that sounded like a good birthday weekend dinner spot. We made reservations for that night, then headed back to the hotel for some more pool time.

The rooftop pool was a bit like the sanatorium in The Magic Mountain, filled as it was with rich and pretentious people from all over Europe. There seemed to be about a billion Russians in Nice, and they did not disappoint with their impressively bad taste. I have never seen so much sunburned skin and so many gold chains. We had a good time watching people and reading under the umbrellas in between dips in the pool. We also had a fabulous view from the rooftop, out over the city on one side and the sea on the other. It was hazy while we were there because of forest fires nearby, but it was still beautiful.

That night we had a drink at the hotel bar, then made our way over to the restaurant by public transportation; no more cabs for us. Nice has a great public transportation system, though, with lots of buses and fun little trams. We took a tram most of the way, then almost got lost in the narrow, winding streets, but eventually we got there. The restaurant was called La Zucca Magica, or the magic squash, and it’s an Italian-ish vegetarian restaurant with a set menu that changes every day. So we sat down and the waiter asked if we wanted red, white, or rose, and that was the only decision we had to make. We chose rose, of course. The restaurant was very dark and homey; it didn’t seem to fit in Nice at all. There were exposed wooden rafters and tables stuffed into every corner of the uneven room, and every spare space on the walls and shelves was covered with squash paraphernalia. There were paintings of squashes, sculptures of squashes, actual squashes, squash-shaped salt and pepper shakers. It was ridiculous and hilarious. But let me see what I can remember of the meal. It was indeed magical. We started with a simple vegetable soup with lots of fresh zucchini and tomatoes and pesto and parmesan on top. Then they brought out some roasted peppers that had been stuffed with a salad of tomatoes, olives, capers, and bread crumbs. It was cold and silky and delicious. We started looking at other tables to see what we could expect to come out of the kitchen next, which was fun. Next was a cheesy, herby focaccia, then some free-form lasagna with butternut squash and lots of cheese. And for dessert, tiramisu and cappuccino. All served to us by the warmest, heartiest, kindest waiters in all of France. It was just lovely, and we were very happy as we walked off our meal on our way back to the hotel.

The next day our flight wasn’t until the late evening, so we had most of the day to wander. We went to the old city and hunted down some socca, which is a local fried bread made with chick pea flour. It was a delicious little snack, and it tided us over nicely until lunch, which consisted of expertly grilled, lemony sardines at a restaurant overlooking the water. We had some gelato later in a plaza in the old town and cookies at my favorite little bakery, which I discovered with Laura long, long ago. After we checked out of the hotel we wandered a bit more and sat in a square for a while to just soak in the atmosphere, then gathered ingredients for a picnic dinner and caught a bus to the airport for an easy trip home, full of good food and sunshine.

Photos are here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=100829&id=509253462&l=f4b24ead33

Other summery bits and bobs

The summer of 2009 brought not only country camping but also in-town cultural excursions. We saw a riotous performance of The Importance of Being Earnest at the open-air theatre in Regents Park, with a picnic on the lawn beforehand and a bottle of wine during the play. We also saw Romeo and Juliet at the Globe Theatre. We bought groundling tickets and stood, packed in with all the other spectators. We also attended an event perhaps slightly lower on the cultural scale but no less exciting for that: a Lord of the Rings movie marathon at the IMAX theatre, starting at midnight and finishing at 10:00 the next morning. We brought yummy snacks and managed to stay awake through the whole thing, helped by free tea and coffee and the exciting jolt of Ian McKellen showing up as a surprise to address the crowd. Those events, plus numerous walks and picnics made the summer relaxing and enjoyable, despite the rubbish weather!

A gourmet camping excursion

Living in England, we heard a lot about Heston Blumenthal, who is supposed to be one of the best chefs in the world. His restaurant The Fat Duck is always mentioned in the same breath as El Bulli and The French Laundry, and places like that. We knew we could never afford to eat at The Fat Duck, but I heard that Heston also ran a country pub in the same town, Bray. We decided to check it out, and to turn it into a camping weekend.

Bray is only an hour or so by train from London, so we left right after work one day and got there in time to set up our tent with plenty of light to spare. It was a nice enough camp site, apart from being only about 100 meters from the M4, which is one of the busiest roads in the UK. But we set up without a problem and even used our new little camping stove to cook dinner for ourselves. Later on we wandered over to Heston’s pub for a drink, then found our way back in the pitch black, walking alongside the M4 for a bit longer than I was totally comfortable with.

The next morning we got up and started walking north. Using our handy-dandy Ordnance Survey map, we plotted out a journey to Cliveden, which is a spectacular estate high up on a bluff overlooking the Thames. We had a lovely walk along the river, marveling at the houses, which were enormous by English standards. Apparently Bray is quite the posh village, which we couldn’t tell from our walk in the dark the night before. We eventually made our way up to Cliveden and stopped for a bit of refreshment at a pub across from the entrance. It was a nice warm day, and we sat outside in the pub’s garden and shared a pitcher of Pimm’s before carrying on to Cliveden.

We must have gone in sort of a back way, because we wandered through a lot of anonymous greenery before we finally got to the long avenue leading up to the house. It was all very impressive, statues and fountains and sculpted gardens and topiaries, and the sky was so blue we were almost beside ourselves. We couldn’t eat in the restaurant or look around the house because someone had rented it out for a wedding (there was a beautiful old Rolls-Royce in the courtyard for the happy couple), but we had a snack and some tea in the orangery before heading out to enjoy more of the gardens.

The gardens were beautiful and full of happy families enjoying the nice weather. It would have been very peaceful if it wasn’t for the planes landing nearby at Heathrow, flying directly over us every couple minutes. Oh well. We enjoyed all the greenery, then walked down to the river to try to walk back to the camp site a different way. We had our map, and we were all ready, but then things started to go wrong. The map was not as precise as we could have wished for, and we ended up walking a long way only to have to retrace our steps because the path was blocked. By this point my poor feet were starting to hurt, and all we could find were British sticking plasters, which stuck to my skin for about 30 seconds at a time. By the time we got back to the camp site I was bleeding all over my new sandals. Talk about breaking them in. But on our way back we made a few stops, partly to give my feet a rest. The first was another impressive-looking home that turned out to be an Elizabethan-era estate that has since been converted to a Buddhist conference center. We wandered around a bit and someone offered us tea, but we ploughed on, feeling the need for something a bit stronger. We found a little pub where we could get drinks, but lunch was nowhere to be found, and we ended up having to get by with just a little snack from a petrol station. Our spirits were low by the time we made it back, but a quick nap lightened our mood considerably, and then we got to go to dinner at The Hind’s Head, which was just lovely.

The Hind’s Head is a proper country pub, but a rather fancy one at that. We started out with some bar snacks, including the most exquisite little Scotch eggs and devils on horseback. For dinner, I had a chicken and leek pie and Andrew had steak and Heston’s famous triple-cooked chips. For dessert, I had a strawberry trifle that had a few secret ingredients: black olive paste and balsamic vinegar tucked between the layers and freeze-dried powdered green peas sprinkled on top. It sounds weird, but it was spectacular, and I made strawberry and olive salads for the rest of the summer. Very refreshing! It had started to rain while we were at dinner, and we couldn’t face another long walk, so we had a quick cab ride back to the campsite for a well-earned sleep and an easy trip home the next day.

Photos are here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=100815&id=509253462&l=a4ac360b86

May 2009 weddings

May was a busy month for us, as we had two weddings to attend in Florida over the course of eight days. We flew to Tampa first for Bryan’s wedding and had a lot of quality time with the Rickes. We also got to see Andrew’s friend Doug, and my friend Laia, both of who lived in the area where we were staying, and we got to see Uncle Fred, who happened to be traveling through. And we got to see Robert and Tiffany, who flew down for the wedding. It was the first time we met Tiffany, and we were absolutely enchanted. After the wedding, we drove up to Tallahassee with R and T, stopping in Gainesville ever so briefly to show Tiffany some of our old haunts.

Monica’s wedding was next, and we were both in the wedding party so we were very busy. There was a lovely bridal luncheon for all the bridesmaids, a fun bachelorette party, an impressive rehearsal dinner catered by a friend of the groom, and then the wedding itself, which was absolutely beautiful. Other than my own wedding, which I will obviously prefer to any other wedding, ever, this was the loveliest I think I have ever seen. Monica was a perfect bride, and the whole occasion was filled with love from family and friends, great food and music, and good humor – although the best man’s speech was a bit, um, questionable. Just like a movie!

After another whirlwind visit, it came as a shock to have to get back on a plane to London, but we were relieved to get away from the Florida heat – we had grown used to the constant gray drizzle of jolly old England.

Getting our camp on

At the end of April, Andrew and I got out the camping equipment again, this time for a quick trip to Oxford. The site is just outside of Oxford, about a 45-minute walk, and it was very clean and friendly. We set up our tent and wandered into town for some dinner. I remembered a place we had been for lunch on our first trip to Oxford, and we headed there. I don’t remember everything we had, but I do remember a nice glass of prosecco and some gorgeous local asparagus with hollandaise sauce. I love camping!

The next day we wandered around town and along the Thames Path. There were lots of houseboats bobbing about, and we saw at least one boating party go by, with a canopy and a table laden with picnic food, just like a Renoir painting. We eventually crossed the river north of town and walked back through some fields where there were horses that wandered up to us and let us pet them. We got to see a lot more of the town than we had seen before, but by the afternoon we were back on familiar turf and decided to take a tour of one of the colleges, because you can’t get inside them otherwise. We picked Christ Church, because it looked most impressive from the outside, and it was quite impressive on the inside, as well. Christ Church was where Lewis Carroll wrote Alice in Wonderland, and several movies have been filmed in its courtyards and halls. The Great Hall was particularly nice, although it was funny to see it being set up for what looked to be a pretty standard institutional dinner with misspelled menus.

After our college tour, we walked back to the camp site along the Thames Path, which turned out to be very exciting because there was a boat race on. As we walked along, looking at the ducks and swans and college boat houses, every few minutes a scruffy college kid would ride by on a bicycle with a megaphone, and then we would see a few crew boats skimming the surface of the water.

That evening we went back to The Fishes, one of our favorite places from our first trip, for dinner. We had our map, and we had a plan, and that plan was to cut across some fields and hope we ended up at the restaurant. We did end up there, but only after some weedy wandering and cheeky fence hopping. We even spied a gypsy encampment in the woods. It was all worth it for drinks and a lovely dinner, followed by a nice, safe cab ride back to the tent. The following morning we packed up and walked back into town for breakfast at Jamie Oliver’s new Italian restaurant, then hopped on the train home.

For the first May bank holiday the next weekend, the Kiwis wanted to do a three-day camping trip, so we all left after work on Friday and caught a packed-as-sardines train from Paddington to Swindon, Andrew and I with our light-ish packs and the Kiwis laden down with what turned out to be a whole household’s worth of supplies (and thank goodness for that!) We picked up a few more things in Swindon, which was impressively nondescript, then caught a cab out to the campsite. Amy and Don had picked out the campsite, and Andrew and I were just following along, so we were very surprised when, after 30 minutes, we were still in the cab, out in the middle of nowhere. But we eventually found the place and started to set up camp in the cold drizzle. How English. We were on a farm with three giant fields devoted to camping, and although we stayed away from the family field, we were swarmed by devilish little British children running everywhere, tripping on our tent poles at all hours while their parents simply ignored them. How English.

Amy was intent on proving herself to be a domestic goddess in the wild, and she did not disappoint. She had a little salad and some bread for us to snack on while she made a really tasty tomato risotto on her camping stove. We had never used a camping stove and were so impressed we went out and bought one for ourselves soon after. We built a small campfire – a real rarity at English campgrounds – but called it an early night due to the cold and hoped for better weather the next day.

And we did have better weather, mostly. The next day we walked up a massive hill on the farm and over to an ancient hill fort where we could see the White Horse of Uffington, which is a chalk drawing that has been maintained by the village for something like 3,000 years. Local legend has it that St. George slew the dragon on the same hill. As we were walking back around the hill to find some lunch in Uffington, we passed a field full of Wiccans celebrating May Day in several giant yurts. They were really nice, if a little creepy, and now we could see where all the previous night’s mystery drumming sounds had come from.

We found a pub and a tiny grocery store in Uffington, which was good because these were our only food options within about 15 miles. Thank goodness Amy and Don had come prepared. Andrew and I didn’t even have much cash; we had never been camping at such a primitive site in our previous British travels and we didn’t realize what we were getting into. We managed to feed ourselves all right, though, over the weekend, supplemented with a few pub lunches and a lovely cream tea back at the camp site.

Our other big day of walking took us along the top of a long ridge on an ancient road called, appropriately, the Ridgeway. We saw lots of fields full of yellow flowers, some lovely views out over the downs, and a hill barrow – a Stone Age burial mound in a quiet, shady grove of trees. It was very solemn and atmospheric, but I kept an eye out for barrow wights.

We had a lovely time, but I don’t know if I’ve ever been more happy to get back to civilization, a hot shower, a clean kitchen, and a soft bed. But that’s what camping does for you; helps you appreciate not only nature, but also normality.