A long weekend camping in Wales

Last week Steve went up to Swansea in Wales for the NZ Paralympics training camp. Tim Prendergast was there so Steve spent a few days training with him and doing the last few key sessions before the Paralympics. 

Tim training in Swansea.

Swansea is about 45 minutes from Cardiff in the South of Wales and is right at the start of the Gower Peninsula. It was a bank holiday weekend here so we decided to go camping and thought we would pick Steve up on the way through. Swansea is about 2 and half hours from Solihull and we carried on to the end of the Gower Peninsula to Rossili Bay and Hillend Camp ground. 

We climbed up the headland above the campsite. You can see Rossili beach on the left then the camp ground dotted with tents behind us.

At the top!

Sari leading the way!

The view from the top looking down at Worms Head

Walking back down the ridge 

We met a family of wild ponies on the way back down and they were not worried about 3 little kids at all. 

We had a wild weekend with beautiful sun and torrential rain. But we always had dry places to sit and sleep and lots of fun walking and swimming and sitting around the bbq.

 

Our awesome campsite.

The campsite was really a big field and it got a bit wet underfoot by the end of the weekend but this was lots of fun for the kids to play around in. James caught a couple of waves and Steve and the kids had fun in the sea in their wetsuits! Mieke and Caro liked being able to read in the tents and go walking and exploring the local town and market. Bella made friends with the girls camping around us and exploring with them, Sari enjoyed the adventure playground and walking barefoot through the mud. They both loved meeting wild ponies on the walk we did up the hills above the beach. Phoebe spent a lot of time playing around in and out of the tents and on the canoe parked on the grass with her cousin Elijah! Unfortunately it was too rough to get the canoe in the sea! We are back at Mieke and James'  now and Steve heads into London tomorrow to spend the next week with Tim as he prepares to race on the 3rd and 4th of September. We went into Swansea on Sunday and saw Tim run a great 800m so can report he is in really good shape for his upcoming races. We also got to watch one of Tim's teammates Holly throw the javelin. She was awesome and the girls really liked her so watch out for her in the Paralympics Javelin. 

Bella with the campsite behind