Cotherstone – June 2012
We’ve bought a new awning and wanted to have a trial run of putting it up ahead of next week’s Kombi Sleepover in Banbury, so we ignored the weather forecast and set off for County Durham. We stopped at North Stainmore services on the A66 for breakfast before heading for the village of Cotherstone, near Barnard Castle.
We’d booked into Doe Park and got a really warm welcome. We were given a choice of pitches and found one which was ideally placed for the shower block and the dog walking area. Unfortunately it was raining so heavily that we had to wait 45 minutes until we could even think about putting the awning up.
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| Waiting for the rain to clear |
When the rain eased we managed to get it up fairly quickly without falling out and it looks like a huge improvement on our old one. We’ve even bought a carpet for it although after a couple of days of rain it doesn’t look brand new anymore.
Once we had it up the heavens opened again and despite there being two pubs within a 15 minute walk we opted to stay in the van. We ordered fish and chips from one of the pubs and they delivered them at 6.15. We missed England’s game with Sweden because it was raining too heavily to walk into the village so we settled down for the night, hoping Saturday would be better.
Saturday started wet as well and we decided to walk into the village, to catch a bus to Barnard Castle with Boris. We wandered round BC for a few hours and eventually went for lunch in a pub. I can’t remember it’s name but it wasn’t brilliant. We caught the bus back and had showers before walking back into the village for a few beers at the Red Lion.
It’s a really traditional pub with no food but has won awards for its beer. We got chatting to a couple who had moved into the village after retiring from running a B&B in Orton for ten years. She was Norwegian and they were both very friendly. I was able to swap C2C stories as their main client base had been walkers on Wainwrights walk. A good evening and even some sign of the sun for a while.
It was extremely windy during the night though and we took pity on Boz and let him sleep with us. Sunday was cloudy but mainly dry so we were able to get the awning down and packed away. I had a long chat with a guy from Darlington who had retired and bought a Hymer motor home. His Brother in Law has a Danbury so I pointed him in the direction of the Forum.
We left about 12 and Alison drove us to Middleton in Teesdale where we stopped for breakfast and Absinthe got a lot of admiring glances. After a short drive we realised we needed to turn round (not easy with the trailer on) before a beautiful drive to Brough.
We stopped at Forton services on the way home and spotted another Danbury parked there. We went across for a chat which was nice. All in all a good, if wet, weekend made all the better by my super Fathers’ Day presents.