17-18 January 2015
Battle Hill Farm Forest Park Campground, Paekakariki
Team: Mark, Spike, Myself. Assorted other tramping club families to total 27-odd adults and children
Saturday lunchtime, and Spike went down for his nap. It started raining. Mark and I spent the whole time he was asleep debating as to whether we should still go the half an hours drive up the coast to go camping as planned. Because of this dithering, when he woke at 3, I had just put a cake in the oven that needed to cook for an hour and a half, and the car wasn't packed - half our stuff wasn't even organised.
We threw everything together, and organised for my Mum to come over and get the cake out of the oven, and dashed off just on 4pm. When we arrived, we discovered the campground was "full" for the weekend, and there were several large groups set up in the different parts of the campground. Having come from a summer-holiday stay at Pounawea, where the tents and caravans were packed in like sardines, this was a breath of fresh air. The open space was fantastic.
We pitched the tent, set up the beds inside, and sat down to chill out with the other families near the fire (which was only needed because most groups needed it for cooking dinner). We did some exploring, over to the toilet block and down to the river, then sat down to our cold bacon and egg pie for dinner (yum!). At some stage, Spike made friends with a mother from another group (by vanishing across the campground), enabling him to "borrow" their ride-on bike for the late afternoon / early evening.
Eventually we tried to put Spike to sleep, which he was not keen on. Not surprising, given how light it still was outside, and the noise of all the other kids still running around outside, and enjoying the jumbo swing immediately behind our tent. We finally got him to sleep at about 10pm, after several attempts. He tended to stay quiet in the tent (happy to be closed in on his own), mainly because he was figuring out how to escape his portacot!
Sunday morning we were awake stupid early - sometime around 6am, since thats when it was light - with Spike demanding to get up and dressed and do stuff. Thankfully we weren't the only ones awake early, and Spike managed to stay fairly quiet for a while, mainly by riding around the campsite on the bike he had "borrowed" the night before. We passed the morning with a moderately long walk with Spike in the Tula, where we found a fantastic stash of drop wood for the fire for those who were staying Sunday night, and participating in a water fight.
At some point while we were wandering around the campsite, a random gust of wind came around the side of the trees and blew away the gazebo we had up - a big 6x3m thing. Picked it clear up, pulling up the guy ropes, twisted it around and threw it towards another group of tents - which we knew had people inside. We were far enough away at the time that there was nothing we could do about it except pick up the pieces afterwards and check no-one was hurt (thankfully the answer was no).
When Spike refused a nap, we opted to drop camp and head home for Sunday night, rather than trying to stay again with an over tired toddler.Other than that, the weather was perfect, the lightest of breezes, lovely and warm. Fantastic camping, fantastic company, and even the long days weren't enough to put us off the idea of doing it again.
