Two more days of shower dodging and ancestral parish visiting were planned. Firstly, I returned to the hotspot for the next deluge of emails. Ah the hotspot was no longer hot. I failed to connect to the internet. Fortunately, during the previous day’s foray online I thought I had better send the next  lesson to my online students whilst I could, even though it was a few days early. That would have worked well except I had inadvertently sent lesson five masquerading as lesson four. There was nothing for it but to try to do things on my fairly new to me phone, beyond making a phone call. This, dear reader, was a learning curve. I managed to use up my miniscule data allowance (miniscule because this is not how I normally use my phone) and work out how to access some of my emails. I even manage to send replies and an s.o.s to my boss who could send my poor students the correct lesson on my behalf. I tried again to book our National Trust tickets. Still no email confirmation but a booking number appears on the website so I was hopeful that that it was indicative of a booking.

The parish visiting took us through several picturesque villages on the Hampshire/Wiltshire borders and I discovered that, in the 1840s, the family lived on a farm that had been targeted by 300 Swing Rioters, ten years earlier. Driving from parish to parish, punctuated by shower-dodging photography, is not very conducive to accomplishing my three miles a day of walking, that I have managed to keep up all year so far. My solution at home is to jog up and down on the spot to make up the steps. My travelling companion doubts that the caravan floor will cope with this. Walking round the caravan site proved to be the only option. On day three the weather did not play fair and although I set off in the dry to complete an estimated ten circuits of the site, before I got to the end of circuit two, it began to rain. By circuit three it was torrential and as I was wearing wellies, I had developed blisters. Did I give up? Well it was very tempting, especially as I kept passing the warm and dry van but no, I soldiered on.

No family history for our last day. Instead a drive out past Stonehenge to Stourhead Gardens. These are beautifully landscaped grounds that were laid out in the eighteenth century, complete with numerous classical follies. It turns out that my initial booking had gone through, as had my attempt to book using the phone, so we could in theory have gone twice!

My only previous visit to Stourhead was forty years ago. We walked round the path that meanders round the lake, amongst mature trees and rhododenrons that were at their best. There were swans, coots, mallards and Canada geese on the lake. A double bonus. This was the best day weather-wise so we stayed dry and the designated, strictly one-way only, walk round the grounds was more than enough for my daily step-count, so no circulations of the campsite were required.

All in all this wasn’t quite the relaxing break we had planned but better luck next time. I am not looking forward to catching up with 600 or so emails on a borrowed computer. I am hoping that my own was curable and will be ready soon, although I am aware that I may have to bite the new machine bullet before too long.