First camp...

At some point in every dog's life they need to get back to their wandering pack mentality and go camping. I've plans for some vanvenutures with Rowan in the future but with DDU still on life support in the garage that wasn't going to happen for the bank holiday weekend.

So with usual Rooke chaos of weather avoidance, last minute campsite booking, and squeezing everything into rattly car - the algorithms aligned to 2 nights in Cobleland near Aberfoyle in the Trossachs - one of our favourite campsites. And also in usual Rooke chaos we ended up with a last minute abandonment of the first night due to unforecasted heavy rain and so arrived early on Friday morning.

It all worked our really well though. Rowan took to camping pretty well - long walks tired him out, lots of new things to sniff, and he was only mildly barky (now he's discovered his voice) at strange people wandering near his tent. And I think he kinda loved sleeping in with us. Niomi made a friend which really helped and Emily said she really enjoyed it too. So much so that we managed to convince the lovely campsite owner Oliver to let us squeeze on for another night too as Scotland's notorious May sunshine had finally arrived. Now I just need DDU back on the road...

The troops in bluebell land

Paying respects at the Faerie Tree

Doune Hill

Its that kinda Green Man time of year

On guard

A sentry eyed view

The great outdoor of Loch Ard

And again...

Explorers

Happiness is waking up with a dog in your face

The Wedding Train...

As we stood at Glasgow Central with a big line of people in front of us, and a departures board showing the train to London before ours delayed as well as ours showing delayed, I started to get a slight sinking feeling. We were headed to my niece's wedding in Birmingham, but the build up hadn't gone exactly according to plan. Our aging 18 year old Mondeo hadn't exactly been on top form and had developed an 'apparently' non-harmful, yet rather stress inducing rattle. Sort of sounded like something will fall off any time soon but the mechanic assures you that won't happen. 6 hours on a motorway with that? No thanks. So plan b was to get the van back on the road after its winter break but as ever that's never a straight forward process - and being 26 years old it inevitably has a bit of corrosion in its rather complex electrics. This meant it struggled to get going and then completely died once it was in the garage. So reversion to train was the plan, but plans sometimes don't go to plan. And there we were - delayed but on a hard timeline to get to the wedding on time. (Note to self - time to consider a new car).

And then rewind 12 hours earlier and we were dropping Rowan off back to the breeder in the rattly car for his first sleepover. In our heads this was to be a lovely family reunion - mum and dad welcoming their pup back. But dad had other ideas and decided to assert his authority for the first ten minutes. Thankfully things did get easier after that, but we left Rowan with the breeder with our nerves slightly rattled. And so, there we all stood at Glasgow Central, delayed, over tired as it was very early, and slightly frazzled from the past few days.

Still, by great fortune we made the wedding with 5 minutes to spare - there was a sprint across Birmingham New Street in full wedding garb and then a brisk walk up Kings Heath High Street but we made it with luggage in tow. The wedding was a really lovely day - full of fun and laughter - and Ruth and Wayne had clearly put a lot of thought into making sure everyone had a lovely time. We really enjoyed ourselves so massive thanks to them!!

And then the journey back? Well for a variety of reasons we were two hours late coming back with what ended up three changes and some very full trains, and then I had to rush off to recover Rowan in the rattly car from the breeder. Not really ideal but we made it - and two claims to delay repay gave a bit of consolation for our slightly fraught journeys. It did however feel like we were away for a lot longer than one night!!

Congratulations to Ruth and Wayne x

Spot the difference. Mum, Dad, Rowan (on the left) and his sister

The Happy Couple

Slightly frazzled but we made it!