Roughing it in the English country side

For the last long weekend in May, a bunch of us went with the cheap and cheerful option of camping and we headed to the Folly Farm camp site (the name was not lost on any of us) in the Cotswolds for the weekend. Adele, Laura and I arrived and selected our prime location for the weekend in the pitch black and proceeded to erect two tents on the very windy Friday night. Stuart, Damian, Ange & Aleck set up an hour or so later and we celebrated with some red into the wee hours of the morning.

On Saturday we headed to Cirencester for the farmers markets, and checked out the local cathedral. We managed to stumble across a great restaurant called Jesse's Bistro down a back street and settled in there for lunch for a cosy couple of hours - it was raining outside so there was no rush to get back to the campsite - but we did eventually get back in time to go to dinner at a pub at Bourton on the Water after a bit of a drive around the 'area of natural beauty' that is the Cotswolds.

Sunday saw another visit to a farmers market at Bourton on the Water, a lie in the sun, another of Laura's romantic drives (just for the 7 of us) this time to the Upper & Lower Slaughters, a spot of rambling and cricket spectating, before going out to dinner at the Fox Inn at Oddington for a beautiful dinner. In case you are noticing a theme here, we didn't actually use the bbq to cook but rather to keep us warm and toasty over post-dinner drinks...and to toast marshmallows.

On Monday we packed up, collected Dave who arrived for the day, and headed to Gloucester for the annual cheese rolling festival. Far more interesting than the cricket of the previous day, this sport involves locals running down / throwing themselves down a very very steep hill after a wheel of cheese. On what turned out to be a typical Melbourne day of weather - sunshine one moment, pouring with rain the next - it was a great demonstration of slip and slide in the mud! We left town behind a string of ambulances, and headed home.

It was a great weekend away - much fun had by all. And besides the tent flooding one day, I think I coped superbly without Jeremy the chef, and his trusty camping toaster. If you're heading this way, don't forget your 50p coins for the shower.