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Herefordshire, United Kingdom

The problem with drinking lots of beer and camping isn’t so much the need to go to the bathroom throughout the night so much as the lack of ensuite facilities in ‘The Beast’. Despite my bleary eyed trips across a field in the darkness, I actually managed to get a few hours precious sleep courtesy of yesterdays hard yakka and the warmer weather. Today I actually did awake to the welcome sounds and smells of Liam cooking breakfast… the smell of the breakfast, not Liam, even though we’d all been a little lax with showers.

We ate, packed up and then felled The Beast – it went down without a fight. The day was still young and even more glorious than yesterday so rather than head for home, we headed for the nearby hills and Goodrich Castle. I won’t bore you with the details of the castle because I didn’t really pay too much attention to the signs, preferring instead to just explore the very well preserved remains.

As it happened, the castle was just around the corner from last nights pub so we made good on our promise to the hoteliers to return some day. We had lunch and said our fond farewells to Jules and Geoff before piling back into the car for the return trip to Oxford. Alfie and I promptly fell asleep in the back, giving into the remainder of our respective illnesses, waking only in time for our drop off at the coach station for our respective buses back to whence we came.

Despite the relatively short distance between Oxford and London, it was 9pm by the time I walked back through the door at Vic and Pete’s. I quickly unpacked the camping stuff from my bag, repacked it with fresh clothes and climbed into bed as soon as I could, willing myself to sleep knowing that a taxi would be waiting for me outside at 4.20am ready to whisk me away on my next adventure…

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