- Date: 12th October 2024
- Nights: 7
- Pitch #: 31
- GPS: 52.932839, -1.053015
Sat: A good start to the holiday. Weather dry but cold! The journey down to Wetherby was fine, where we enjoyed a coffee and a relaxed stop. The journey following this wasn’t the best, as road works and an abnormal load ahead of us caused some stop-starting of traffic pretty much all the way to the A46. From here however, we arrived at the campsite with just a little rain. We haven’t been to a C&CC site for some years, so things are a little different. Firstly, you don’t pick your own pitch, instead we were taken to our pitch, which wouldn’t have been our first choice, but there you go. We were sited in a rather woody area with many tall trees, not much chance of sunshine here. I don’t know if the whole site is like this, something we’ll check out later. The pitches are rather small width wise, so much so that I don’t know where you are supposed to put your car when you have an awning. Luckily, a small hardstanding space was available next to our pitch, which the warden said we could use to park our car, bonus indeed!
Sun: A trip to the Great Central Railway was on the cards for today. I’ve been looking forward to going here for some time, but campsites in the area are few and far between, so this was one of the main reasons for choosing this campsite. We headed for Leicester North to start our journey. This was a good choice, as parking is free here and enables us to spend a little time at the main station in Loughborough. Leicester North is a very pretty station, complete with cafe, we arrived just in time for the first train, so jumped straight onboard. Half an hour later we arrived at Loughborough, where we looked around and enjoyed the delights of this heritage railway. They have some good stock here at the GCR. Our visit noted a 9F, Tornado, class 20, class 08’s, class 37’s and many more! This coupled with being the only double line heritage railway in England, makes it a great day out. From here we were due to go to the Space Centre, but the carpark was full, so we’ll save that for another day.
Mon: A day onsite, due to being busy yesterday. We took a walk around the site to see what it was like. Not many hardstanding pitches, far more grass, probably due to the previous campsite owners. Whether the C&CC will change this remains to be seen. I hope they do, as there are not enough ‘good’ pitches for the larger outfits, or indeed those using awnings. Most of the hardstanding pitches will only take small outfits without awnings. The current pitches are thin and only allow a small caravan and car. If you have a large 8ft wide twin axle and want to use an awning, pitches are very limited. Parking ‘Infront’ of the pitch like you do on many sites, is not really an option here. There are many water points about the site, although these are behind pitches, so not the best for intrusion declarations! The Elsan point however is excellent, the best I have seen. Undercover, good position to avoid ‘spillback’ and the rinse water pipe in the best position to avoid faffing about. However, waste water is by the sinks and is not well signed. Many a camper has wandered by lost, looking for this holy grail 🙂
Tue: A trip into Nottingham was on the cards today. The site is serviced by a bus just a short walk away from the site, ideal for us campers! The bus you are looking for is the Cotgrave, just remember this when you want the return journey from Nottingham, not too easy to find! We visited the castle and the cave. The cave was a very interesting tour, well worth doing. The castle itself is well, not a castle! It was ‘demolished’ in the centuries ago and is now in fact a museum/art gallery. There is still a lot of history here to be learnt, but without Robin Hood and the caves, there is really not much to see! After eventually finding the correct bus stop, we returned back to the site, where we enjoyed a restful evening with still some good weather! The bus driver was a little vocal during the trip, exploiting the virtues of getting some good footwear to limit his broken driving shoes – interesting indeed 🙂
Wed: Poor weather, so another trip to the National Space Centre in Leicester, hopefully to get parked this time! This is a pleasant drive down the A46, so very easy to get to. Thankfully this time, the car park was quite empty. Good news we thought and then we heard them, screaming children 🙁 Bus loads of the little blighters were there, it was like being back at school again, in the bloody playground. We paid our dues and entered, but were just overwhelmed with them, you couldn’t get to anything or relax and take it in. I have to say, that during school visits, the entrance fee should be somewhat reduced, or have public days with no schools. It really detracted from the experience. Don’t get me wrong, the place is excellent and very interesting – just not when the schools are there. The planetarium is excellent, we watched a show there and it was very impressive. We returned back to site and recovered from the ‘experience’. Showers onsite as I found out that morning are very nice, large with a sink – but they are button press, quite long, but still button press – really? No curtains at least. The smell is still there however, I hear they are addressing this, but it isn’t very pleasant!