RABBIT PIES AND ROUNDERS

We are now into the full swing of our summer season, a time of 18 hour days and rapidly dwindling supplies of toilet rolls.

Hard work it may be, but there’s a real buzz from meeting new guests each day, plus the even warmer feeling of welcoming back guests who’ve stayed with us previously. Some have young families, others are now into 3 generations of Greenacres camping, dating back to 1976 when the site opened. And I’m delighted to say that Christine Hill, the original site owner, returned for a brief visit, for the first time since she left in 1994.

Our regulars have been doing their bit rallying the troops – huge communal games of rounders have kicked-off most evenings (do rounders games “kick off”?). Fading light is the best excuse ever for dropping a simple catch! I reckon the age range of our players has been from 3 to 69 – 66 years must be some kind of record, and so fantastic to see everyone joining in together.

The weather has been simply amazing. After torrents of non-stop rain in 2009 this summer has been just the opposite – almost no rain at all for the past 8 weeks. OK we’ve had our share of cloud and some showers, but much of the grass on the campsite has a distinct straw colour rather than the usual lush green.

We’ve welcomed visitors of a different kind twice in the past couple of weeks – a film crew from TV production company Wall to Wall. They are currently in Shepton Mallet, shooting a new BBC1 TV series The High Street, focusing on the changes in High Street shopping over the decades. In a program about the WW2 era they baked pies using the rations available – rabbit, mutton and other “delicacies”. They then wanted a rural setting to film the pies being sampled by “yokels” – and they chose us! Needless to say one (young) member of the family grabbed the limelight – we’ll see if she makes it past the final edit and onto air in the autumn.

The cameras returned for a longer spell last Friday, when shooting the episode on the “swinging 60’s”, which will feature people camping in a period VW camper van. Actually I’m told it was a 1971 model, but immaculate nonetheless. “The Grocers” – Carl, Debbie, Harry and Saffron - stayed the night and cooked breakfast in the pouring rain the next day. Surely it never rained in the 60’s?

Sadly the time came for our 4 lambs – Betty, Sophie, Larry and Bambi – to leave us. They grew so quickly and now they're just too big for our young guests play with. So they have returned to the farm. But they come back to the fence by the campsite to visit us each day – I think they’re homesick! The lambs have provided so much pleasure - from scraggy little waifs to finished sheep - they completely won us over and our plan is that there will be lambs at Greenacres for many years to come.

Best wishes,

Duncan