Before we left Cirencester the trees were well on their way to losing all their leaves. I love this time of year for the colours in the trees. I had one last walk down through the park and walked round the back of the church. The church dominates the town and is a large church, almost cathedral like. All the time we spent in Cirencester I had never been around the back, walked past it many times but never ventured round the back.

I love graveyards and this one was fantastic with so many old headstones in all shapes and sizes and at all sorts of angles. What I call a proper graveyard. And of course the trees were at their best in their autumnal colours.

That night we went out for one last time to our favourite pub in Cirencester The Toro lounge. They do the best burgers and a great pint of craft beer and a good glass of wine for Nikki. Nikki had got back that afternoon from visiting her sister and boys so I thought after her long hectic weekend and drive it would be nice to take her out rather than her get her apron on and start cooking tea. That’s my excuse anyway and I am sticking to it.

She didn’t complain about the idea and within half an hour of her getting home we were on our way down to the town. It was good to go in there again after missing out last year because of Covid.

We are now at South Molton at the site we have used many times. They have some new pitches which they were building last year when we were here so we opted to go on one of them and a good choice it was. We have no one around us and just look across the fields and trees, and the spell of good weather is also helping to make it all look so good.

We had a walk around the site just to stretch our legs after the drive and as we passed the clubhouse, well nearly got past it, I said to Nikki fancy a quick drink. I didn’t have to ask her twice so in we went. What a great surprise we saw some friends who use the campsite a lot in there so a few drinks later and a great catch up Nikki left to go and start the tea while I had one for the road and then wobbled home.

We have a quiet week this week with just visits to see Mi Mi, that’s Nikki’s mum. Then next week a very busy expensive week to include. Dentist check ups, Doctors check ups, camper mot and service, car mot and service and a new rear camera for the camper which means a trip to Taunton. So no more going out.

Yesterday I walked up through the woods on the site to get some cold crisp air in my lungs and check out the lakes. Sit in the sun under a tree and think about far off places in the sun without the cold crisp air.

So that’s where we are now. This morning it’s very frosty out there but the suns starting to come out. A chill out day is on the cards today. The last picture is of the church in Cirencester at night, it just looked so nice in the dark on the way home from the pub. Cheers.

The last few days on site were not without incident. We were on duty and the emergency phone went about 7pm. Always a bit of a worry when that phone goes because you expect the worst. Nikki answered the phone and a voice on the other end said there’s a cow on site, if I had answered the phone I would have said there’s been a few all season. But Nikki being the professional she is got all the details and she rang the farmer while I put my coat on and went off in the direction of the cow. As I got there a bloke was standing looking at the cow, it’s dark at this time don’t forget. I told the bloke not to go near it as that’s what the farmer had said to us and he would be on his way.

The bloke staring at the cow told me he was a farmer and he was keeping it in this corner nice and calm. So that was good news a farmer on holiday comes to our site and a cow gets on site near him so he keeps it calm until the farmer of the cow arrives. The farmer arrived, checked some fencing and said I am going to drive him down this way and he will jump over this bit of low fence. If you ( that’s me) stand there and give it a push it will help. If you feel more comfortable have this and he hands me a bloody great big stick.

So there I am stood in the dark with my bright orange waterproof coat on shorts and my flip flops thinking if this cow stands on my foot it’s going to hurt and there’s going to be lots of paperwork to fill in. As it happened the cow went the other way and jumped over the fence.

The next couple of days the site closed and as the last person left I closed the gate behind them. We then started closing down the site. We left the site 5 days early as everything was done. We only went to a site in Chirk which we have been on before, about 50 miles away. We spent a couple of nights there before heading off to Cirencester. one of the highlights for me while being there was a loverly old American RV.

I can’t believe we have been at Cirencester ten days already. We like Cirencester site as it’s the first site we started on. Although I don’t like towns, Cirencester is a nice old town with some loverly old buildings and pubs, a lot of different shops for Nikki to browse around, it’s not full of your usual high street shops, instead it has lots of small independent shops and the charity shops have a better selection of stuff because it’s a wealthy area. What I mean by that is the clothes in them smell nice and don’t smell of mould and wee like some charity shops.

It’s a loverly walk from the site through the Bathurst estate into town. With a stop at an old airstream caravan which is now a Tea and coffee stop and does the best sausage rolls you have ever had.

While here we went to the pub for a bite to eat with friends and then a couple of days later some other friends came to see us for a couple of days so we had to go back to the pub again with them. The weather has been kind to us until today but it’s not cold. Nikki goes away for a few days from here tomorrow leaving me to look after myself so I might have to go back down the pub. It’s a hard life.

We have to keep remembering we don’t get paid again now until the end of March. Not so good as the rear view camera in the camper has packed up now so that’s going to be another £1000 to put right. Might have to be beans on toast for the last two months.

So that’s us up to date, we are here in Cirencester for another few days then off to south molton in Devon so we can go and see Nikki’s mum. From there we go to Dulverton, Minehead, cheddar, and then back into wales and head out to Pembrokeshire ready to start work. I will leave you with a couple more photos of some fungi I saw at the bike park before we left Snowdonia.