We were up there for the half-term break, and travelled up early on the Sunday. The idea was to avoid making the journey when everyone else was on the roads and that worked OK. The M1 was fairly quiet going up there, although by the time we got past Leicester it was very busy going South – chock full of coaches from Leeds and Doncaster heading for the League One play-off final at Wembley.

We made good time, and found the camp site we were after at about mid-day. It was on the top of a hill on the edge of the moors near Bingley, and it was windy. We had thought we were lucky with the weather: it was dry, which is always a bonus when thinking about pitching a tent. Unfortunately it was more than a little windy generally and blowing up a gale on top of that hill. In fact it was too windy to even get the tent up, and we gave up after two hours of fighting with it and considered ourselves lucky to not end up inadvertantly hang-gliding across the moors.

So we crammed the tent back in the car and headed for our second choice campsite. The sat-nav sent us up a road that you wouldn’t really want to take a 4×4 up and where we were convinced that permanent damage had been done to the car, but eventually we found the right road. The site looked fine but it turned out to be full and we had to revert to plan C – visit the sister in Queensbury, scrounge tea and phone round some other sites. Most of the sites we called were full and the ones that had room admitted that they were in windy locations. One of them said they had a static caravan that had blown off it’s blocks but we were welcome to try putting a tent up if we wanted. We didn’t.

We ended up imposing on familial hospitality and staying the night, and on Monday we headed back to our second-choice campsite. We figured it would be quite sheltered in its valley location, and would have some room with people packing up after a bank holiday weekend, and we were right on both counts.

With only a little trouble from the wind we got the tent up and got ourselves settled in. The site is very peaceful due to a policy of not allowing cars onto the field – you have to park in the car park and carry everything to the site. The website said its a one-minute walk, but didn’t mention that it was down a very steep slope. After several trips up and down we were truly knackered.

To make matters worse, the toilet block is up by the car park so a real trek just to take a leak or have a shower. Chrystal came back from a visit and said she had spoken to Fiona, which confused us. It turns out that she said “the owner”, but his nickname for the week had already been fixed. Actually we found out that he was not the owner anyway as the site is owned by the council and he is part of their forestry department and manages the site for them.

The site – Jerusalem Farm – is in a nature reserve and is on the Calderdale Way so it gets a lot of people using the car park to then go off walking. The field itself is below the car park and has a river running along the edge of it. The site is more of a weekend campsite and so fairly quiet during the week. In fact on Wednesday night ours was the only tent in the whole field.

It really is a peaceful place, with the only drawback being that huge climb up to the toilets. There are picnic tables set into the ground and some paving slabs laid down for barbecues, a couple of sets of bins and a pair of taps and that is it as far as facilities go. With the river running through and lots of woodland walks there is plenty to do and see on the site – great for younger kids and anyone who doesn’t mind the climb up to the car park. A couple of local ducks soon introduced themselves and became regular visitors, calling round to see if we had any bread for them.

The noise of the river was confusing at first. Inside the tent it sounded like there was a gale blowing, but it was just rushing water. The noise was added to by owls at night. Its quite impressive how much noise a river that is only about 3 metres wide can make and I now wonder what it must be like to visit somewhere like Niagara Falls. It looks good in the photos, but I’m now sure nothing can do justice to the noise.

We spent the rest of Monday just settling in and relaxing, but on Tuesday we set off exploring and as it was raining by this time we headed for Leeds and all the indoor attractions there, starting with the Royal Armouries. Its a great museum, and being a national collection its free entry, but it is a bit specialised. There are suits of armour, guns, swords and other weapons and thats it for several floors. A fantastic place if you are really interested in weaponry but for the more casual visitor there is a feeling of “oh look – yet another sword”.

We were all impressed by the punt gun though. These things are huge, and look like they should be used for hunting rhinos or dinosaurs or something but are just for duck hunting – except they can get up to 50 ducks in a single shot. These guns were for people hunting for a living rather than for sport.

After the Armouries we headed across the river in the drizzle and looked around the city centre. Leeds is a very up-and-coming place, but not really our sort of place. New waterfront apartments are going up everywhere. On my single previous visit to Leeds there had been a surface car park and open space outside the Armouries museum – not there is a multi-storey and several apartment blocks on that space. The shopping centre is enormous, but filled with shops like Louis Vuitton that wouldn’t interest us at all even if we could afford them.

Later in the day we went into Halifax, just up the road from where we were staying, and found it much more to our liking. In fact it was a bit of a theme to the holiday that we liked all the H places – Halifax, Hebden Bridge, Haworth, Holmfirth, and I quite liked the look of Huddersfield too.

On Wednesday it was not raining so much but was very misty. We went off to Hebden Bridge where Jayne found more ducks to feed. A nice little town, with its canal and river, and dark satanic mills now converted, like most of them to pleasant apartments or craft workshops. We spent a fair amount of time in Hebden Bridge and had some decent hot sandwiches in a pub there. The pub was the White Swan. When I went off to search for the toilets I found signs for ‘cobs’ and ‘pens’…. not being Bill Oddie I still didn’t know which way to turn until I saw a picture of a bloke on one door.

After Hebden Bridge we headed on to Haworth, but didn’t stop there, and headed off across the moors. The scenery was probably spectacular but our visibility was down to only a few metres by now so we didn’t see much of it although it did make the reservoir we passed particularly atmospheric.

At the top of one hill, at a place called Scar Top, we saw a sign to a tea room and pulled over. It was actually a furniture shop with a tea room in it – but what a furniture shop! It was a lovely old building with fantastic fireplaces and lintels and three or four floors stuffed full of oak furniture and ornaments. The tea rooms were a couple of floors up, with a balcony that would have offered fine views on any other day.

Wednesday night the drizzle and mist were clearing up, and on Thursday everything was sunny and dry. So much so that we decided to go home early. We had intended to return on Friday morning, but figured that if the tent was all dried out on Thursday evening we would pack up and go rather than risk the weather turning and us having to pack a wet tent on Friday – also a drive home at night would be quicker due to the traffic.

For our last day we headed South a bit and fetched up at Sowerby Bridge, another pleasant town with a river and canal. Jayne fancied a canal boat trip and one was about to leave in ten minutes so we hopped on it. It was a one-hour trip but only over a very short distance: the boats mov slowly and there were two locks to go through each way.

After the boat trip we walked along the towpath for a bit and it only took about ten minutes to cover the length of the tour. We timed it so that we reached the first lock just as the next trip was going through so we were able to see it all working from the outside as well as inside. It was a great experience going through the lock – especially as it was only a narrow lock, the width of one boat.

To get back from Sowerby Bridge we took the scenic route across to Holmfirth, where we got out for a walk around. Not being fans of Last of the Summer Wine we didn’t hunt out locations from the TV series and had a snack in the Riverside Cafe instead of Sid’s Cafe.

When we got back to Jerusalem Farm there was the best news of the week. We were starting to pack up when ‘Fiona’ came past and stopped for a chat. In response to various subtle hints about what soft Southerners we are he offered to cart all our stuff up to the car park when he came round in his pickup truck to collect the rubbish bins. That was a real bonus – it would have been quite a few trips up and down to carry it all up there by hand. We think he may have been taking pity on us for the dreadful weather we had all week.

When we left the site on Thursday morning ours was the only tent there. When we returned in the afternoon there were at least half a dozen there and a couple more in the process of going up . Most were probably fairly local people who had been spending the half-term waiting for the weather to change so they could take the kids camping. It made us feel a bit better about going because if we stayed there might have been queues for the shower (singular) that night.

The journey home was smooth, and we got back before midnight after a week that was more relaxing that it should have been under the circumstances. Loads more photos on Flickr.

The rest all came back on Friday so I put political activities on hold a bit to catch up with them. We went into Horsham yesterday, but ended up at a big camping shop looking at tents.  It looks like a return trip to Dorset or the Isle of Wight might be on the cards again this year…

School holidays were very strange this year though.  This is what you would call the Easter holidays, but the Easter weekend itself was a few weeks before.   Its always been a bit awkward basing the length of terms on what is a moving feast.  Every now and then someone comes up with the idea to fix the date of Easter, but surely that is a non-starter.  It would require the agreement of all the Christian churches for a start.

Far better, I think, to divorce the public holidays from the religious days.  The long weekend is nice, so have a fixed public holiday on a Friday and Monday at the end of March or start of April – whatever fits in with school holidays – and make Good Friday and easter Monday normal working days.  Most of us do not do anything remotely religious on Good Friday or Easter Monday anyway and those who do should be allowed to take a day’s holiday for that, just like Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims take days off if they want to take part in their religious days.

The showers and toilets were quite civilised and there was even a bath. We only have a shower at home so I enjoyed the novelty of lounging in a bath one evening. The shop was well-stocked and open all day every day, and a couple of local businesses came along with food vans and parked up near the play area in the evenings.

The fields are right on a cliff edge and there is a path going down to a private (stony) beach. You can cross the chine by a footbridge and go up to the cliffs opposite to join the coastal path and enjoy some excellent views. Not much good when its pissing down and blowing up a gale, but in normal circumstances this would be a great location.

The site itself is based on a farm and there is a herd of goats, a couple of pigs, some llamas, chickens, geese, turkeys, horses and a water buffalo all knocking around. The kids were always willing to go off to do the washing up as we supplied them them with plenty of leftover fruit, veg and bread to feed the animals afterwards.

We had expected to spend a lot of time lazing around the site and on the beach, but it was a bit chilly and damp for that so we went out a lot. The first day we went to Brading, where everyone thoroughly enjoyed the Wax Museum. I was a bit miffed that I left my camera back at the tent but didn’t let that ruin my day.

On Tuesday we went to Blackgang Chine. It has expanded quite a bit since I was last there (at least 30 years ago) and now has a roller coaster and water slide but there was plenty there I remembered – the dinosaur models, the whale skeleton, the lifeboat exhibition.

Its a strange place as it is still family-owned and has a bit more character than Thorpe Park, Chessington and similar places. It is more basic with fewer rides but more attractions, some of which are endearingly old-fashioned. The park is built on the edge of an eroding chine, but it has been expanding inland quite a bit.

The entry ticket allows you to go back once within 7 days so we kept that in reserve for a cheap day out later in the week.

Actually what we did was left the kids there for a couple of hours to exercise their independence on Saturday while we went off in search of a cream tea.

On Wednesday we went to Carisbrooke Castle, just a few minutes up the road. Not that anywhere is very far from anywhere else on the Island: it is not a huge place.

I like this castle. I still have the same attitude I had as a child and I’m always a bit disappointed when a castle turns out to be just a pile of stone with lots of pictures showing where the walls used to be, or when it is really just a slightly fortified stately home

Despite being 900 years old in parts, Carisbrooke has its walls intact so you can walk around them, and climb the 70+ stairs up to the keep. They also still keep donkeys to raise water from the well.

We visited just in time, as the wind started to pick up by the time we had gone all round the ramparts. When I got to the keep it did feel a bit precarious and I was glad to get down again. By the time we did all the indoors bits it really was getting gale force so we did it all in the right order, but it was a scary night back at the tent with the walls blowing inwards.

We stayed quite local on Thursday. I explored the local village a bit and went up on the cliffs and later on we took a walk on the beach and, despite the presence of a seal carcass washed up there, the kids went for a swim.

On Friday we went up to Yarmouth, watched the boats for a while, got ripped-off for breakfast at the Mariners Cafe (not bad, but very over-priced for what it was) and failed to visit the castle because it is closed on Fridays and Saturdays. Charlie was disappointed, but it didn’t look like much of a castle really.

After Yarmouth we went round to the Needles. This is described as a theme park but really its like a land-based pier. We had been looking forward to taking the chairlift down to the base of the cliffs but when we arrived it was closed due to high winds.

After we had done the tourist thing of filling up glass ornaments with coloured sands, the wind had dropped a bit and the ride started up again so we got to ride down the cliff. It was still a bit blowy, but not too bad.

On Saturday we started by going back to Brading to visit the roman villa at Charlie’s request. He is very interested in history. Jayne and Chrystal are as well, but Chas is a bit more obsessed. The villa is in a new building, only a few years old, and a remarkable bit of award-winning architecture. To be honest I found the new building more impressive than the villa it was built to contain. Like most roman villas its just a few mosaics, an indication of where the walls were and a lot of imagination.

Our national inclination with antiquities is to preserve them, but I sometimes wish we were more inclined to restore and renovate. Even cleaning and touching up the colour on the mosaics and replacing the missing bits would be a start. I would be fascinated to see a proper villa with walls and roofs, even if it was not all original. This approach works well on the HMS Victory but doesn’t get tried enough on buildings.

After the villa we dropped the kids off at Blackgang Chine and headed for Godshill village. Godshill is popular because it is pretty, although the popularity makes it less pretty as every other building is a tea room or shop, but I guess that is unavoidable. There are still a few ‘unspoilt’ villages on the island where you can look at thatched cottages and churches, but none of them has a model village like Godshill does.

The model village is a fairly accurate miniature of the real Godshill – as it was before it got taken over by commercialism. It is so accurate that the model village contains a model of the model village. And that model is accurate enough to contain its own model of the model village. I don’t know if it gets any more recursive than that as I didn’t take a magnifying glass with me.

After seeing all those tilt-shift photos on Flickr where photos of real places are made to look like models it was fun trying to take photos of a model to try and make it look like a real place. On the way back to the campsite we remembered to pick up the kids and enjoyed an evening playing cards while the wind and rain came back in force, trying not to think of how we would get the tent down in such weather.

When Sunday morning came it was calm and dry so we got everything together a lot more quickly than we expected, and got up to Ryde with loads of time to spare so we had a look in the town before going to the ferry terminal and had a breakfast twice as good as in Yarmouth and at half the price and still managed to get onto the ferry before the one we were booked on.

Quite a packed week, but we still didn’t see half of what is on the island and will have to return at some point in the future and hopefully with better weather, or in a cottage instead of a tent. The wind and rain did get us a bit down, but we kept telling ourselves that we were still more comfortable than a lot of people in Gloucester, Tewkesbury and other flooded areas.

In a fit of misplaced optimism about the weather prospects we booked a week camping on the Isle of Wight and just got back yesterday. We had to stay in Crawley for the Broadfield fete but set off the very next day which turned out to be very fortunate indeed.

After a week of solid rain and misery I had nightmare visions of trying to pitch a tent in the middle of a downpour but last Sunday was not too bad at all and when we reached the campsite it was a bit damp underfoot, but not actually raining, so putting the tent up was a doddle but I was a bit worried that the ground was so damp I could just push the pegs in with my finger – how secure can it be if the ground is semi-liquid?

After that it was all downhill though. The campsite was on top of some cliffs right on the South-West coast of the island and in the middle of the week it started to get windy. Not just breezy, but 30-40mph winds. Our tent has a large dome section in the middle so we were able to cook and eat inside, but it was scary seeing the walls curving inwards instead of out. I had to make frequent tours of the perimeter checking the pegs and tightening lines.

Some of the pegs kept getting pulled out and I replaced those with my limited stock of industrial-strength huge tent pegs. The wind kept unzipping the doors and at one point snapped several of the wooden poles on the windbreak clean in half – these are poles at least 3cm across and they just snapped!

Half the tents around us got totally flattened, with metal poles broken. By mid-week the site was starting to look a bit empty as the owners of destroyed tents decided to give up, and cars were starting to get stuck in the mud.

On Friday we we found the site had suddenly filled up. It turned out that every other site on the same side of the Island was turning people away as they were too waterlogged and everyone was getting re-directed to our site.

Somehow our tent (£114 from Argos) survived the gales, which returned again on Saturday night along with more rain. By some lucky fluke Sunday morning was dry and calm so packing up the tent was a lot easier than we feared. We had not been looking forward to trying to fold an enormous tent in strong winds.

As we took it all down we found that the ground under the groundsheet had turned to mush. It was like a little section of Glastonbury or the WW1 no-mans-land under there. When we were dismantling our bedroom we actually found a frog living there!

Taking the poles out we found that 5 of the 9 poles had been shredded. These are fibreglass poles which are quite flexible, but they had been split lengthwise into 3 or 4 sections. Somehow those bits still held the whole thing together though.

In spite of all that, we actually had quite a good time. Most of the bad weather was in the late afternoons and evenings. During the day we were out visiting the various attractions and having fun. The only inconvenience was having to spend the evenings inside the tent – but at least it is big enough to do that.

Having good weather on the days of setting up and striking camp made all the difference.

I declined on the grounds that thirteen is an unlucky number and I don’t do screaming babies in fields, and felt vindicated in my decision when we woke this morning to find it was pissing down.

I am sure they will have a great time trying to cook for 12 on a two-burner camping stove before paying 20p for a shower then retiring to a sleeping bag full of spiders. I will try not to feel jealous when I climb up onto my soft mattress tonight.

When we got up properly it was still more than a little damp and after breakfast we headed off to Kimmeridge Bay, only about 6 miles away.

Being more optimistic than us the kids put their swimmers in the car just in case, but when we reached Kimmeridge it was still overcast.

Kimmeridge Bay is an amazing place, which I still remember vividly from a school geography field trip. The cliffs are made of shale in fine layers which crumble at the touch. Fingers of rock extend into the bay which enabled Charlie and Chrystal to walk out about 100 metres into the sea.

While they were doing that I wandered along the bottom of the cliffs, keeping an eye out for fossils which are supposed to be plentiful there. As I walked it started to drizzle and I was able to get some shelter from the cliffs. Then the rain started coming from seawards and there was no shelter at all. I then noticed that tiny pieces of shale were tumbling from the cliffs and thought that maybe loitering near the overhang was not such a good idea.

As the rain persisted, all the more sensible people headed for their cars, leaving me totally alone in the bay, battered by the wind and rain, watching erosion taking place before my very eyes.

It was remarkable to see that. Erosion is always explained as such a long, slow process, with the seas taking hundreds of years to wear down that its a surprise to see it in real time. With such erosion being caused by a light drizzle and medium wind I do wonder how many centimetres of cliff are lost in a year.

Access to Kimmeridge Bay is via a private road with a toll – £3 for a car. On the back of the ticket are some warnings/instructions. One of them is that it is OK to remove large fossils from the beach, but hammers are not to be used. Seeing the cliffs literally crumbling on their own I could see why such a rule makes sense.

I did not find any large fossils to take away, but I did find a few small ones – actually fragments of fossil but still recognisable as fossil ammonites (I think). The Natural History Museum is not going to be asking for my little bits of rock any time soon, but I am still awestruck by them. Just the thought that this animal was swimming around anywhere up to 200 million years ago and then lay in the rocks all that time until I found it.

According to Stephen Jay Gould the area around Kimmeridge is one of the best places in the world to see evidence to support the theory of punctuated evolution, if I remember rightly. I can’t say that my brief amateur attempt at fossil hunting did anything of the sort, but I am still ridiculously pleased with my meagre little fragments.

The reason for the four-day durations was that we had to be back home for Thursday so Charlie could do his paper round, but that suited me: I’m not sure I could take too many days living in a tent. Jayne loves camping, but I still have to be persuaded.

At least it gave me some different things to photograph than the sights of Crawley and London, including some spectacular scenery.

This was our home on both trips – Woodyhyde camp site – although we stayed in a different field the second time.

I don’t really have anything to compare it to, but I suppose it was OK. The shower and toilet block was functional, there was always plenty of hot water and the showers were free.

I am told that some places have token- or coin-operated showers. Its not that I mind paying, but I just wouldn’t fancy the hassle of making sure I had correct change all the time. I needed all my change for bloody pay & display car parks!

There was a shop selling all the basics a lot cheaper than I would have expected such a place to be. The opening hours were both regular and erratic in that it opened every morning and every late afternoon but not always at the same time, nor for the same duration.

There was a notice up on the outside of the shop with a phone number to call in the event of an emergency. I imagine that was for if there was a fire, or if the water had stopped or something.

On the first trip Charlie went up to the shop one morning at 8 o’clock and it was not yet open. There was a woman outside on her mobile phone and Charlie said that her side of the conversation went something like this:

“Hello. Its 8 o’clock and the shop isn’t open yet… well it is an emergency – I’m out of milk!”

It made us laugh anyway.

The site is only for tents, with no caravans allowed. That is one reason we chose the site. As far as I’m concerned its bad enough camping without having someone next door sitting warmly and comfortably in a caravan while you are trying to light a gas stove outdoors in a force 6 gale. Given that access to the site is by a tiny farm track which leads under the steam railway at a very narrow bridge its probably just as well that caravans are not allowed.

The site is about a mile outside Corfe Castle village on the road to Swanage. There are a few footpaths and bridleways going past the site leading in various directions. One of them goes into a field right opposite the turn-off for the site and as soon as you get into the field there is this brilliant view of the castle ruins.

I don’t know how many times we passed the castle or saw it from a distance, but I still find it impressive every time I see it. Even in ruins it is imposing so I can only imagine what it must have looked like before it was blown up.

Instead I unwound by sorting out the 311 photos from the digital camera and deleting the 500 spam comments and 200 spam e-mails which accumulated in 4 days.

Tomorrow I shall systematically inflict my holiday snaps on the world at large via Flickr, with a few choice examples on these pages as well.

You have been warned.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. Don’t we all sometimes look fondly back to simpler times?

A lot of this feeling was artificially induced by living in a tent without any modern conveniences, and heightened by having steam trains passing the campsite a couple of times an hour, but was re-inforced by visits to the nearest town, Swanage.

Walk the streets of Swanage and you will see unfamilar shops. The whole deplorable phenomenon of ‘clone high streets’ has missed out Swanage. There are two supermarkets but they are small Somerfields and Co-ops in the centre of town instead of huge out-of-town Tescos. Otherwise the only familiar names I saw were Woolworths (a tiny one in the old style), Wimpy (old-style again), Theshers, Boots, New Look and the main banks and building societies. And these were all spread out across the whole town. Otherwise it was all independent privately owned shops. There was even a proper butchers shop and in the absence of a Blockbusters the local newsagent had a sideline in video rentals like every newsagent had in 1980 but very few still do.

It would not have surprised me if the shop actually rented tapes instead of DVDs and I didn’t go inside to have my illusions shattered.

Of course, the total lack of Macdonalds, Pizza Hut, KFC and other fast food outlets which was so charming to me was greeted with slightly less enthusiasm by the boy…

In four days we covered a lot of ground and saw a lot of places but hardly scratched the surface. I spent a few childhood holidays in the area and returned on a school geography field trip in 1976 so I dimly remembered a lot of the places. The surprise was how little some of them had changed. Now I have got the initial buzz of re-visiting old haunts out of my system we can take it a bit easier when we go back – and we will go back.

On our return to home I delved into Wikipedia to look up a lot of the places we went to, and found out so much that I had missed, that I now want to go back and see them again in a new light. (How I wish I had access to Wikipedia when I was at school!).

In a few short days we visited Swanage, walked the coastal path up to Durlston Castle, went to the tank museum at Bovington (and saw a ‘tanks in action’ display), went to the Isle of Portland to see the views of Chesil Beach and the rocks at Portland Bill (where we failed to get our kite to fly properly), visited Lulworth Cove, saw the giant at Cerne Abbas, went into Corfe Castle, travelled on the steam railway and passed through Dorchester, Weymouth, Poole and countless villages. In most cases we were woefully under-equipped and next time we will know what to take with us.

I regret not having made it to Kimmeridge Bay to hunt for fossils and to the ghost village of Tynham. That is something for next time, if the army ranges are not in use then. Most importantly we also know now where to find the best place for a cream tea.

We were extremely fortunate with the weather as well. At times it was easy to feel we were back in Greece as the sky and sea were so unexpectedly blue. Standing at the top of the cliffs on the South Coast path, seeing dolphins breaking the water near a passing two-masted sailing ship we did not feel as if we were in 21st Century England at all.

Driving back home and hearing the news on the radio about airport closures and chaos felt like the signal that we had returned to the present.

Camping is not my idea of a good time, but Jayne loves it so I gave in. It was just the three of us, because the girl is away on a two-week army cadet annual camp, but this was probably harder than if there had been four of us – I think the boy got a bit bored with only adult company.

I can see the appeal of being away from electricity as it means no computers, television or mobile phone charging, so it should be easier to relax, but against that you have to consider the reliance on public toilets and living in a goldfish bowl where everyone else can see and hear what you are doing all the time.

I did take the opportunity of getting loads of photos… I shall be spending most of the evening uploading them all to Flickr.