Ok, so that's a slight misquote of the opening line from the Eagles song, but at least the words fit the tune! And here I was, at 11am on a sunny Saturday morning, driving into the entrance of my favourite Norfolk site for a stay of eleven nights. I had left home just after 5am and followed my usual route, with a stop for breakfast at the Cheerio Cafe on the A17 and another stop at the Necton Diner on the A47 - although I was quite surprised to find that since my stop there last August the place had closed down and was completely empty, so unable to have a brew I had just taken the dogs for a walk round the large car park before setting out on the last stage of my journey. The drive itself had been easy and without any problems, and as I turned into the road leading to the camp site the familiarity of the area grabbed me and I felt like I was coming home. Which hopefully, if I win the lottery one day, I will be - I've already picked out the house I want!
The site owner, Reg, had booked me onto pitch no. 8, the next-but-one pitch to where I was last August, and after paying my fee I drove round, positioned the van on the pitch and set to work putting up the awning and setting everything out inside it - it took a while but then I was in no particular hurry. With all that done the only thing left to tackle was the tv aerial - because of the line of trees immediately behind the pitches on that side of the site the tv reception was a bit hit and miss, but luckily there was a sizeable gap behind my pitch so after slotting the aerial together I lashed it to the trees with some spare rope and pointed it through the gap - and after re-tuning the tv to allow for being in a different area I had a perfect picture.
It was while I was setting out my things inside the awning that the sun had decided to disappear, and I'd just finished sorting out the aerial when it started to rain - not the sort of weather I wanted, but at least I'd got the awning up and pegged down before the wet stuff arrived. It didn't really matter too much though - by then I was feeling quite tired after my very early start and long drive and I wasn't planning on going anywhere, so after taking the dogs for a quick walk round the site I was quite happy to make a brew and chill out for the rest of the afternoon. Later on came a visit to the site shop and an hour or so on my laptop, catching up with the topics on the UKCS forums, then after a final dog walk I settled Sophie and Sugar on their beds in the awning and took myself off to my own bed - and sleep overtook me before I had time to even think about any plans for the following day.