Last weekend, over the bank holiday, myself and Uns headed down to Ashurst for a very lazy relaxing few days camping in the New Forest. On Friday after work I dashed home, packed up the last of the camping goods and headed through to meet Una at Waterloo, where we caught the train down to Ashurst. After some delays on the train getting down, we managed to get the tent up just as it was getting dark and then decided to head over to The Forest Inn for a drink before returning to camp for the night. We landed up having a rather massive thunderstorm with plenty of lightning and thunder pass over - always a bit concerning when you're in a tent under trees, but we survived :)

On Saturday morning we grabbed some breakfast and coffee at camp, then took a walk to the shops to stock up on supplies for the day, and then spent the afternoon chilling out by the tent and soaking up the warm afternoon sun and weather. We lit the fire that night for dinner and spent it sitting around the charcoal campfire (no wood fires allowed there) for a couple of hours. While sitting around the fire, Uns did manage to spot the International Space Station up above as it passed over us which is always cool to see!

On Sunday, after breakfast and some milling about around the campsite, we decided to head up to The Forest Inn for Sunday lunch there. We weren't too sure what the weather was going to do, whether it would pour down with rain or not, so we decided against a braai that evening and had a decent meal in the pub. After eating we walked over to the shops, grabbed a few things and then back to camp and sat around our charcoal campfire again for the evening.

On Monday morning, after a bite to eat for breakfast, we packed up camp and caught the train back to London in decent time to sort out and pack away our camping gear and give the house a bit of a clean before Keithy arrived to spend the night by us. He was over for work this week and decided to crash by ours for the first night. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get any boerewors last week, but still had ourselves a braai for dinner and a good catch up with him.

Last night was Keith's mate Baz's birthday - him and his girlfriend were passing through London on their travels, and they had organised dinner for eight of us at 'SMITHS' Of Smithfield in Farringdon. On my way through to meet them from work, I stopped in at the Dovetail pub for a quick drink with Marty who was there meeting JJ and Matt a bit later. Dinner was good - hadn't seen a couple of the lads for a good few years, so good to catch up and dinner's always good when there's steak involved :)

Not too much planned for the next couple of nights, the weather's really warm and sunny, so most likely get a few things done in the garden if possible, and then Sizi arrives over towards the end of the week, so it'll good to see him again then.