This was our third trip to the Caravan Club website at Black Knowl.

Organisation for these trips is getting a little more efficient and it takes just around a full day to load everything up and swap all the caravan stuff from caravan to car and to load the bikes of top of the Sorento.

The weather forecast wasn’t good with weather warnings of severe wind and rain for much of the south of England and in particular Hampshire.

The alarm sounded at around 07:30 and by 10:15 we had hitched up and were on the road, the satnav showing an arrival time of about 11:30 and a distance of around 60 miles.

We arrived at Black Knowl at 11:50, ten minutes before the “allowed” arrival time but in light of the inclement weather we really wanted a hard standing pitch so we could also erect Sue’s tent.

Needless to say we weren’t by any means first as there was already a queue of vans waiting for reception to open. Still, we did manage to establish ourselves on a decent hard standing pitch and hunkered down in the van until the predicted rain and storms had subsided.