On a whim, after looking at the sunny weekend forecast, I decided a mini-holiday was what my family needed. Living in Cornwall we are spoilt by lovely beaches and fun things to do in the sun so I needed to find something to top that.
At 10.30pm I googled ‘last minute campervan hire’ and up popped a range of companies but one caught my eye – O’Connors. Just up the A30 from us, over the border into Devon, well that’s a holiday in itself, a whole other county.
By 11.30pm the weekend was booked – before I could change my mind. I hadn’t really considered the fact I would be driving a vintage vehicle with no ABS or power steering – or the fact that for the first night of the weekend it would be just me and my boys – a 2 year old and 3 year old – before my husband joined us on Saturday.
In the morning I packed my sense of adventure and left pretty much everything else behind. Being a camping novice, 17 years + since I last slept in anything other than a classy hotel (I work in luxury Caribbean travel!) we had no sleeping bags or giant fleeces but ignorance is bliss. So kids crammed in to our little Renault Clio, packed to bursting, we set off in glorious sun – the weatherman was right, Summer had arrived.
This is going to sound like an advert but I mean every word – from the moment I arrived at O’Connors I felt like I was on holiday. They made me a cup of tea while we went through the paperwork and the kids played with toy campervans.
I met Nice Guy Eddie and it started to dawn on me that perhaps I had bitten of more than I could chew – but everyone was so lovely that I couldn’t help but be at ease. So after a couple of false starts, we noisily made our way to Waitrose – well we may be camping but everyone needs hummus and nice bread – and went on our way rather haphazardly.
Night one was helped immensely by a french family whose kids entertained mine while I tried to work out the tent – but what a sense of achievement I got when it stood there proudly, housing the car seats and suitcases!
Yes, I don’t own a ruck sack, we had white company linen and airline suitcases! Day two and I picked up husband and we were on our way again with half of the traffic in the county behind us…sorry drivers of Devon!
The following days are a haze of sunsets with red wine, ice cream cones, beaches and walks through fields of barley – feel free to break into song – we did. I only meant to write a few lines to help people who are trying to decided whether to take the plunge to go for it but this has turned into a rather epic post. I will stop now and leave you to imagine your own adventure…Thanks Nice Guy Eddie, we’ll be back soon.
By Jaye Cowle
