It’s finally Beltane, which kicks off our adventures into outdoors as it’s the first camping trip of the year.

We are off to a Beltane camp at the wonderful Thornborough Henge, and as it’s a fire festival, we will be around the communal fire celebrating with mead, fire, friends, and nature. Perfect.

Beltane can be celebrated by making ribbon and flower crowns, or making candles with flowers, flower bath salts and so much more. Or gather some we garlic and take woodland walks.

With our camp there will be story telling, singing, dancing and drumming, just what you need to honour the fae and spring spirits.

Get planting if you can, I don’t have a green thumb but this year I’m trying. I have some lavender, Clary sage and rosemary. I also have an abundance of bluebells and forget me nots.

Hope you all have a Blessed Beltane and this is the start of nice weather.

After a bit of a rocky start, and seriously terrible sleep our original plan had to be quickly revised to accommodate a shorter amount of free time, and desire to drive far. So I moved our Monday plan into the Saturday slot. It’s local, pretty and it can be done in the showers of rain.

Hackfall woods was our new destination and it’s not that big, so easy to walk around. Well it should have been easy, but this leg length hurts my back too much, so it’s not easy and it’s super painful to walk around. Thank goodness there are a lot of seats and prettiness to distract me from pain.

Follies all hidden in the bluebell woods, the smell of wild garlic is divine, it’s worth the slippy mud to be around the river and see various waterfalls, streams and we even found a sandy beach by the River.

It’s raining and chilly but that doesn’t stop us enjoying the area. We have sandwiches and crisps with a flask of coffee to warm us up.

We eventually ended the walk, thoroughly spent all my pain threshold and we were hungry, hunt for a chippie was soon on the agenda. Mission accomplished. The perfect end to a glorious adventure.

Once back on site, we changed into our fire clothes (ie an outfit you don’t mind smelling of smoke) and headed off the the communal fire, for drumming, dancing and stories to be told.

After the cold of the tent, we opted to sleep in the car instead, as we’ve had many a successful sleep in the car. It proved to be a wise choice, far warmer and definitely quieter too.