We were very excited about this latest weekend away as it was a meet-up with some people we had met on our trip to Canada – Bob & Barb Shorter. They have a Hymer Camper van and we had arranged to meet at the Graffham C&CC site, which we loved (and will return to).

The journey there through the lovely Sussex countryside was a real treat – especially as the sun was shining. We arrived and set up and, after setting up, sat down and had a jolly good catch up, with drinks. Quails eggs and stuffed vine leaves. I had made a fish pie and they joined us for dinner. We passed a very pleasant evening.
It rained and rained in the night – quite heavy too and the ground outside the van resembled a bit of a swamp. As Bob’s van was a heavy old German import, there was some concern that he would get stuck (apparently this has happened before!) in the mud but they were off with no trouble.

We set off for Petworth and had coffee and a mooch round this pretty town. I bought a new oilcloth for the dining room table. Very pleased with that. We also bought a very tasty-looking home made Scotch Egg from Cates’s Delicatessen & Cookshop, for our lunch. Lots of scrummy stuff to be avoided there! We then went for a short walk around Burton Mill Pond.

and thence to Bignor Hill for another walk and great views. Can confirm that the Scotch Egg was entirely delicious! We had arranged to meet Linda & Anna in the Forresters Arms pub in Graffham, and after a couple of drinks, we set off on a very pleasant short circular walk around Lavington Stud. This had some great views over the downs and was enhanced by the sunshine.

It was late afternoon by the time we finished the walk and so we retruned to the caravan with the girls and had tea and a chat with Bob & Barb. The girls had to leave after a couple of hours. We had a table booked for dinner at the Forresters Arms and so we quickly got ready and arrived at the pub. We had a great meal, good food and company and we resolved to meet up again soon.

There was more rain over night and it was a bit of quagmire. We left deep ruts when we moved off and popped in to apologise at reception. Hope they’ll have us back – although they did agree that it was pretty much unavoidable after so much rain. We were very lucky to have had a fine day on Saturday and we look forward to our return to this site.