For the bank holiday, I went camping in a foreign country (Wales), using my tent for the third time in two months, a lifelong record for me. A couple of my dancing friends invited some dancers and their uni friends to come canoing with them down the river Wye to Monmouth. I was probably drunk when I agreed, because its not something I'd normally spend a weekend doing, especially a bank holiday one.

I'm glad I did go as we had an amazing two nights, with a great indian meal on Friday night followed by a couple of hours getting more friends addicted to pub quiz machines.  My stalwart game of Word Up appears to have been renamed to Word Soup. Saturday and Sunday were spent in canoes going down the river Wye, with more floating in the sun than actual paddling. We visited three pubs on the Saturday, although none had quiz machines that I saw. There were fourteen of us, with two others who camped with us on the Saturday night and joined our expedition on the Sunday.

Each canoe was a two-man affair, and they gave us big blue barrels to put all our stuff in. They also gave us a paddle each, although the join on mine was loose and it broke after about an hour. Luckily we managed to fix it at our lunch stop, using duct tape and four tent pegs to patch it together. It lasted the rest of the journey without trouble.

Saturday night we camped in a field of campers and cows, having a barbeque of sausages, bacon, burgers and chocolate-filled bananas. This was followed by several hours around the campfire, drinking beer and wine, telling jokes and singing along to songs, mostly from the 90's. Late on, the last six of us awake visited another group of campers who were singing at another campfire. They were a christian family, and seemed most unimpressed by our renditions of Bohemian Rhapsody and King of the Swingers, although they did seem to enjoy the Beaver Song. But they gave us some more alcohol, so weren't too bothered.

Sunday saw us floating some more in the sun, completing some rather lame rapids, and having a pub lunch to break up the day. I caught more sun than I have in a long, long time, and for much of the afternoon six of our canoes were moored together. Mid afternoon saw us in Monmouth, time enough to get back to Exeter for an evening of salsa and world music [some strange on drums band at timepiece].

All in all, I'm happy I went camping in Wales.

I also found a sign on Saturday morning telling me to beware the sheep. I'm not sure quite why.