Posted by Mark on Tuesday, 15 December 2015
Apart from the issues with the Satellite system, the drive down was fairly uneventful. We had decided to not to pause too much as the weather was pretty yuck and there was the big storm coming in so we were quite glad when we pulled into Mark and Vickie’s place in Norfolk. They are doing this place up and it makes our project look simple in comparison and as a consequence they could not put us up, so a night in Badger was decided on. We walked down that evening to the local pub where Vickie is working part time in between her teaching and her studies, that girl is always busy, I reckon she gets it from her mum!
We had a great evening and the next day all went into Bungay where the girls went shopping and us blokes compared the latest fashion items and discussed new hair styles! The next day it was into Badger to head for Colchester in the caravan park by the A12. This site has recently been bought by new owners and is a surprisingly nice park. Although next to the busy A12 the noise from this is pretty much constant and so you soon ‘tune’ it out, so it did not disturb our sleep.
The following day we collected the car we had hired for the time we were going to be in the area. We did this from Enterprise who picked us up from the camp site and took us to the car which was a rather nice new Qashqai in black. As Oliver wanted me to run him to the wedding in a couple of days’ time, I thought that doing this in the Motorhome would not be ideal ! That evening we drove over to Long Melford to meet up with Steve for a beer and an Indian Curry at Long Melford Valley which is one of our favourite places. We went to the Crown in Long Melford for a pint of Best and bumped into Steve and Julie who were just back from yet another holiday, this time it was Iceland, Steve is a very keen photographer and they got a chance to see the Northern Lights whilst there. I joked that there is no reason for them to visit us in Orkney now!
After the drinkies we walked ( as that is the tradition ) to the Indian and were welcomed warmly by the owner. After a splendid meal we drove back to the Old Railway Station, Steve had invited us to stay the night there but I am not really ready ‘move back in’ to the Station, more time needs to pass for me. We drove back to Badger at the camp site. The next few days were spent visiting Family and friends, apologies if we did get to meet up with you this time, but last time we really overdid things and this time we wanted to have time with Oliver and Nicola. We had a lovely meal with Tim and his girlfriend Vickki and her nine year old son Jordan who was superbly behaved and a credit to Vickki, although she did admit to me that when Tim was around it was like having two kids in the house!
Oliver had asked me to be Best Man which was a real honour although I did add the proviso that I could not as his dad, do the traditional Best Man’s speech. I spent some of the evening with Oliver who was on his own as Nicola was spending the night with her Mum. We compared notes on who was wearing what and what was to be done the next day. Unsurprisingly Oliver was excited and nervous. A lot of the details of the wedding arrangements they were keeping quiet about so it was with some in trepidation that Anna and I booked ourselves in to the George Hotel in Colchester High Street the night before and after a nice meal at ASK with Steve who was also booked in, we settled down for the night.
More about the wedding to follow……