After having gone away camping a few weeks ago, we decided we'd try get another weekend in before the winter sets in, and on Thursday last week the prediction looked good for Saturday and Sunday so Uns and myself booked ourselves into Forgewood Campsite, a simple "back to nature" campsite on the edge of an ancient woodland on the Eridge Park Estate. They keep it very simple there - no electric plug points, no caravans, just tents, the woodlands and the campers. But before we went camping, there were more important matters to attend to, the London Oktoberfest in Kennington...

Friday after work I headed down to Oval after work and met up with Will a bit later. We grabbed ourselves a table (and stein each) inside and soon they others all arrived - Mark, Stacey, Si, Loz, Duncan, Laurie and a few others I didn't know too well. I only stayed for a couple before leaving, which was probably a wise choice - steins of Carlsberg London Oktoberfest beer was never going to end well.

Then on Saturday morning we left the house fairly early and headed down to Tunbridge Wells, grabbed a coffee at Carluccio's then took a taxi over to Forgewood Campsite, about 5 miles from the station. After "checking in" we set up camp amongst the forest, something we couldn't do in the New Forest. After camp was ready, we grabbed a bite to eat for lunch then decided to take a walk and try to find the caves which were listed on the map. It was more a hallowed out mound rather than caves, but still decent enough to get a mark on the map. From the caves we made our way back to the camp, bought some wood blocks and made ourselves a fire just in front of camp. For dinner is was burgers done on the grill above the fire, which always tastes better outdoors. And then the rest of the night we sat around the fire just staring into the flames watching the fire slowly burn. Definitely makes a difference having a fire and right in front of our campsite.

Saturday night was rather cold and could probably have done with a few more items of warmth, but we managed sketch alright and were up fairly early yesterday morning for breakfast, coffee and re-lit the fire with the bits of wood we still had leftover from Saturday night. After a few hours around the fire, we headed down to the fields which were in full view of the sun and had our lunch there, soaking up a bit of the warmth.

After a bite to eat we decided to take a walk to the lake and back before pulling down the camp and packing up camp. I'm sure I said it last time but even though it's only the one night away, it certainly feels a lot longer. Nice and relaxing. Well, until we got the taxi to the train station and had our train cancelled, meaning we had over an hour to wait. Luckily The Huntsman Pub was next door so called in there for some refreshment and then caught the later train.