Of Caravans And Things (FD) (Kinda R/WP)

The only thing I did for Halloween this year was eat pasta with pumpkin sage sauce and cheese, follow it up with some lemon cheesecake, and eat some chocolate. I had planned to do more, but everything else that's been going on, combined with a caravan holiday that was planned for the weekend after, meant I abandoned the other plans. I didn't even bother with pumpkin carving this year (the pumpkin for my pumpkin sage sauce came from a can).

The caravan holiday took place from November 3rd to November 6th. The caravan site had fireworks every night that weekend to celebrate the fact it was Bonfire Night on November 5th. The photo at the top of this post was taken on the first night. We didn't take any other photos of the fireworks, since the only cameras we had with us were the ones on our phones. "We" meant me, my Mam, and Lilie. Lilie wasn't the least bit bothered by the fireworks, by the way, and actually sat and watched them quite happily. Well, until she got bored and fell asleep.

Mam's new puppy, Alexis-Hope, was supposed to be there too, but Mam decided to leave her with a friend due to concerns about how such a young puppy would behave in a caravan (Lexi would have only just turned four months old at the time). We were a bit concerned about seven month old Lilie as it was, but she behaved a lot better than expected.

We had some fun times over that weekend, but we won't be repeating the experience. At least, not at that particular caravan park.

Things were set out in such a confusing manner that every time we left the caravan it took us an hour to find it again (bearing in mind it had taken us about an hour to find it in the first place, even with help from someone who lived on site). So after a couple of times we tried to avoid going out of sight of the caravan, and the one time we had to Lilie and I stayed near the caravan while my Mam went wherever it was - to find food, if you really want to know - so Lilie and I could act as a landmark for Mam to find the caravan again. It helped, but still took ages for her to find her way back.

Finding food in itself was a chore, since the only food options on the site for anyone who didn't want fish or sausages was plain chips or to pick up stuff from their little convenience store (where it cost more for bread and milk than I'd usually spend on enough food to feed me all week). A huge problem for someone like me who happens to be a vegetarian. Apparently they had a vegetarian sausage, but we were suspicious of it so weren't going to risk eating it (Mam couldn't see any difference between it and the regular sausage). We took the option of just chips and the very expensive bread and milk on the first night, since it took us long enough to find those things, but the following day Mam left me and Lilie at the caravan and went to find a grocery store to fetch us things to eat for the rest of the weekend.

There was apparently a nice place to walk that led to the sandy beach near the site. We'd planned to take Lilie to it. The beach near us is the kind with shingles rather than sand, so we thought we'd let her see some actual sand. But we didn't end up going, since we were too scared to leave the caravan and not be able to find it again. Her walks mostly involved her getting exercise on her extending lead while one of us held it outside the caravan. We felt a bit bad about it, but - as I said - were too scared to go away from the caravan, for fear we wouldn't find our way back. It was something that made us glad Lexi didn't come after all, since at least Lilie was a small enough dog that she was happy with us just doing that. Lexi is a larger breed, and I doubt she'd have been so easily satisfied.

Also, it was a cold weekend, and the heating system in the caravan was unreliable. When we got there it was way too hot, afterwards we struggled to keep warm even with the gas fire on.

The morning we left was a very frosty one. The temperature was around freezing, and there was a thick layer of frost on the ground. It was Lilie's first time seeing frost like that. She wasn't all that impressed. She stopped to sniff at it a bit, but mostly she seemed more interested in getting to the car to go home.
I think she'd had enough of the caravan holiday by then too. I know Mam and I were glad to be going home.