There had been rain over night and the tent is still leaking through the roof as well as under the loose ground sheet. Adrian and I cleared out the bedroom and porch areas to let the air and sunshine dry it out. It got hot quickly this morning, the sun burnt through the clouds, so the tent dried quickly. After a slow breakfast (2 cups of tea for me) we repacked the tent and headed off to the donkey sanctuary. We got to cycle most of the way there on bridle ways and part of the red squirrel trail so although it was slightly uphill most of the way, it made for very pleasant cycling with generally good paths. A few of my limbs were aching today, it must be my old age, so I took it quite easy. The last 500m or so was on a main road which was fine until my sunglasses fell off into the road! I did manage to stop and collect them before they got squished under the cars in the queue of traffic behind us and, more importantly, Hannah and Emily managed at the back without me when I abandoned them on my rescue mission! We had kept our destination a secret from the children so it was a lovely surprise when we arrived at the entrance sign and a field of donkeys. The 'meet and greet' attendant in the car park said he would keep an eye on our bikes and we headed across to stroke and enjoy the almost 100 donkey they have at the sanctuary along with a number of ponies. It relies totally on donations, so we bought lunch at the cafe followed by tea, cake and ice creams. Emily found a donkey named 'Emily' and they all enjoyed lots of stroking.
We left just before 3pm and once on the bike path, it was a gentle down hill all the way... Lovely. We stopped at co-op for dinner and breakfast provisions and headed back for a late afternoon dip in the pool. We had popadoms with dip and curry with naan bread for tea which was delicious followed by mini Battenberg cakes (Hannah's choice) and hot chocolate for the kids.
After the children had gone to bed, Adrian and I spent half an hour or so packing up a bit for tomorrow and weather-proofing our kit from the rain that's coming overnight. We have lifted everything off the ground into the trailer, closed all bags and covered them with a bin bag, so hopefully if the rain comes in anywhere nothing should get wet.
We've made an alteration to our itinerary based on the weather forecast for Friday and Saturday. Friday is due to be wet all day - we need to cycle north tomorrow so there is nothing we can do about that, but although Saturday looks better the wind is due to pick up to 50km/hr (with gusts up to 72km/hr!)... We don't fancy cycling against that or taking a ferry so we are going to bypass tomorrow's campsite, which will also save unpacking and re-packing a soggy tent in the rain an extra time and we'll head straight to the ferry tomorrow afternoon.
The original hope was to divert to the east coast to see the Bembridge windmill, but that will almost double the distance. We will just wait and see now what the weather is like in the morning and make our decision then.
9 miles cycled to the donkey sanctuary today.
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