Billy's Week

We have just returned from a glorious week at The Naturist Foundation in Orpington.  The weather was fantastic, if not a bit hot at times, so I was often found lounging, reading in the shade.  We've been going to Billy's Week for the past 4 years (though technically now Billy and Jayne's Week, as she now organises much of it), as it is a family week with tons to do: Kids Club every morning, Kids' Splash time in the heated pool every afternoon, not to mention archery, darts, petanque, miniten, badminton, table tennis, pool, swimming gala, quizzes, bingo, mens vs women trivial pursuit, disco and a hexathlon.  There's even a service on the Sunday morning, so I didn't miss going to church!

My mum, bless her, has started reading this blog and when I said we were going camping, she asked if it is a 'natural' holiday?  Yes mum, camping in the countryside is something we love and is very natural for us. 😜

One of the things I love most about camping, is that it resets my body clock - though I did stay up fairly late (especially when I only had a little bit left of a book I was reading), I wake up at dawn.  And even when I fall back to sleep, I will wake up earlier than I would do at home.  Given DD1 starts school next week, I need to get back in the habit of waking up early.  Having to wake up at 5am in order to cycle to the train station, catch a train and then a bus, to get to work for 8am seems like a lifetime ago now!

The holiday itself was really good.  We arrived on the Tuesday and set up our camp, before going down to the pavilion (where there's a cafe during the day, as well as a bar) to join in the quiz.  Given my husband and I were late, we sat separate rather than joining a team, and we still didn't come last, and actually came top of one of the rounds! 
On Wednesday we headed into London to see Joseph, as part of Kids Week.  We see a show in London every year; previous shows we've seen have included Billy Elliot, Wicked and Kinky Boots.  I've never actually seen Joseph before, but knew all the songs from singing them during music classes at school.  It was really good!  Jac Yarrow was great, and whilst I didn't rate Jason Donovan's voice, Sheridan Smith was absolutely fantastic as the narrator and made the show.  The girls loved it, and it was good to only have a short train journey back to the campsite.

Thursday was DD2's 9th birthday, and tbh, I'm not going to go through every day with exactly what we did when as I can't remember!  There was a Pool competition and I came 1st of the women (in the second time round).  The Hexathlon was on the Saturday, and my husband came 2nd out of the men, DD2 came 2nd out of the kids, and DD1 came 3rd out of the kids.  I don't have enough hand-eye coordination to join in, and missing out half the sports wouldn't be very good.  So I read my books and sunbathed instead - it's a hard life, lol!  I read over 8 books whilst away, so have plenty to write up in the next few days, and I still need to finish writing my comments about the Welsh HE Consultation, not to mention getting DD1 ready for school...