Camping Cock up in Cocking

The pain has passed and it’s time we shared some of the highs and lows of our trip along the South Downs Way. I am going to start with the camping cock up in Cocking.

Day One took 13 hours of hard pedalling (don’t ask me why – we didn’t let up any) - and despite meeting some lovely people we were all getting despondent as we neared the end of the day.

Then phone calls started to come in from our support team (problems afoot) and supporters club (which pub are you in?) which slowed us down even more AND added to the trauma.

Earlier in the day space at Graffham campsite was confirmed as ours. A nice campsite with showers and a pub nearby - wonderful - that thought had spurred us on. However when our support crew arrived they were told our tents had to be erected by 8pm or we would lose our space - because Caravan Club Rules cannot be broken under any circumstances. I'm not going to go into why our tents were not immediately put up but the long and short of it is that we lost our space and needed to find an alternative place to sleep.

On the trail we Belles could do nothing about it but pedal and hope the problem would sort itself by the time we arrived. Frantic calls were being made out of the black van but no solution had been identified by the time we arrived at Cocking.

There were plenty of fields around so Vicky and Amber went in search of a house and found a very helpful lady in a nearby cottage. Turns out this is all Cowdray estate land and she phoned the estate manager who was categoric that NO camping could be done on his land. So that was not an option. With tempers extremely frayed and potential for saying things we might regret, we turned our focus on a car park and were debating illegal camping when my brother Rob (supporters club coming to join us for a quick drink) declared the problem solved.

Rob and the Bluebell pub in Cocking had, between them, got it all sorted. 10 minutes later (at 10pm) we found ourselves pitching camp in the dark, in a long grassed field, in the rain, for a night of ‘wild camping’ courtesy of an elderly farmer who (as Rob put it) quite fancied the idea of 4 lovely ladies sleeping in his field overnight. He is such a salesman that boy!

As tents were pitched by all hands (including Heather and Tom my niece and nephew who impressively got one tent up all by themselves) Suzy and Rob went in search of food - which they found at the local Spar. (It was another downer to find that the Spa (reportedly along the road) turned out to be a Spar!).

So it was soggy sandwiches in the back of the van rather than a hot tub and sauna before a quick drink at the Bluebell (with their ladies loos spookily labelled ‘Belles’ - it was meant to be) followed by a second night of less than comfortable, cold, sleeping with rain a'drumming on the tent and Vicky providing my night time 'entertainment'.

Next morning, on discovery that we had not, after all, died from hyperthermia in the night, we dragged ourselves out of bed (and then we all dragged Amber out) for another day of fun on the trail - starting with a breakfast of scrambled eggs on bread and coffee in the car park.