DAY ONE
We’re on holiday in Norfolk! We’ve gone to the Haven Caister-On-Sea Caravan Park, where we are staying in a top-notch caravan with heating and parking spaces and everything! For our first day we went to Norwich, the sort of capital city of Norfolk. It’s a really old, Tudor-type city and it has loads of posh Tudor houses and cobblestone streets. It took us a while to find them, but when we found the first street and the first house, they seemed to be just the centre of a Tudor roundabout, where we found all the other Tudor-type places.
One thing we went in (that most certainly wasn’t Tudor) was an enormous Norman cathedral full of stained glass windows. It was huge and really fun. There was also a tomb with an engraved skeleton on it that said something along the lines of: ‘You are to end up in the same place as I’ or something along the ‘you’re going to die too’ direction.
Charming, isn’t it?
When we left the cathedral we were all starving so then we got some lunch from Tesco and sat in some park-bench-y area. We were surrounded by pigeons for ages and we had to keep stamping and jumping up whenever they came. Once I accidentally dropped a bit of cheese on the concrete and when I next looked up a whole flock of greedy, fat pigeons had appeared, looking at me with their favourite ‘Gimme more, gimme more’ expressions.
After lunch, there wasn’t really much else to do and we were all really cold (the weather appeared to have decided against us) so we got in the car and drove to our caravan holiday park. It certainly was a lot better than we’d expected it would be! When we checked in and opened our caravan’s door, we got a massive ripple of surprise. It’s really modern and nice on the inside with decorated curtains starring ships, anchors, compassing and boats’ steering wheels. Our duvets are all really patterned as well. It turns out, they gave us a caravan that was much more expensive than the one we booked, probably because it’s school time and there aren’t many people here. We dumped our luggage in and then went to the swimming pool nearby.
The water was warm and nice for a start; then we noticed the big water-slide that opened every quarter of an hour or so, and we went down it a few times before it closed for a while. We had just decided on trying a ‘human snakes and ladders’ game that quite clearly wasn’t going to work, when who would come along but our friends Matilda (another one!), Arthur, and Seth! They got in the pool with us and we realised our snakes game wasn’t going to work, so we played bull dog, racing games and tag, all of which were really fun. However, a couple of hours or so later we had to get out. This was at five, and later at six, we were all snuggled up in our caravan.
But oh no! we remembered that there was some entertainment going on soon, so we stuffed in a few crackers and half a cookie, and went to see what was happening. It was nothing much; we missed the family Bingo and our friends couldn’t come, so we thought we should go back.
DAY TWO
For day two of our holiday, we got up in the morning and had quossiants, followed by rain, hail and clouds. Unfortunately, we had an amazing day trip at Bewilderwood booked in, and we had to believe that it was going to chuck it down, drizzle, throw down buckets, shower, and pour in torrents. We were even considering not going, but we couldn’t resist the temptation of our day out, and when we got in the car to go, the sun came out ready for Bewilderwood!
In case you were wondering, Bewilderwood is like an enormous adventure playground. But it’s not just an old zipwire and a couple of swings – it’s basically treehouses, bridges, and absolutely enormous drop slides! Apparently, there’s a book about it too, in case my description does not make any sense. Bewilderwood is also the land of Twiggles and Boggles and it has funny signposts pointing up and saying ‘Sky’, left and saying ‘That way’, right and saying ‘This way’, and down and saying ‘The wrong way’! We took ‘That way’ and went on the ‘Treasure Trail’ direction.
The first place we went to was called the Sky Maze. It was a connection of bridges and treehouses all really high up in the trees. We had to climb up the Entrance Staircase to get to the bridges, and then you had to do the tree-top maze to get to the Crow’s Nest at the top. It was amazing! There were bridges made of spaced out rods that you had to step over (of course there was netting just underneath the rods) and massive rope nets you had to climb up. We had to find the Coloured Feathers along the way and write them down on our treasure sheet, but we kind of forgot.
When we had finished the Sky Maze, we had a look at the Tricky Tunnels, but they were quite short and not the best. We moved on to the Slippery Slopes, which were loads of huge, fun drop slides, and I was the first to go down them! Seth, Arthur and Matilda were there too. When Tilly was sitting at the top of the slide, not wanting to go down, five-year-old Arthur said, ‘Look, I can do it, Tiwwy,’ and, half-pushing her out the way, tumbled down the biggest drop slide. Matilda said she had then thought, Well, a five-year-old’s done it. I suppose I’ll have to, and when down and we all had loads of fun bashing into each other at the foot of the slides!
We also went on the Wobbly Wires, a network of giant zip-wires. We had races on each one, and for some reason Seth (who was on the zipwire on the left) kept winning. We looked into it and noticed that Seth’s wire went less far than the other one, so he had less to go on!
To get back home we went on the Scaaaaaaary Lake Boat Ride, and guess what the weather had in store for us? You guessed it: hail. It hailed ice on our heads while we travelled in a rain-filled boat, unable to get out! Finally we got back, teeth chattering, coats soaking, leggings soaking, everything absolutely soaking!
When we got back, we had more time for dinner before the entertainments came on than we had yesterday. It was Glam Rock night! Seth, Arthur, and Matilda (their one, not our one) were there and we all danced the night away. Being only five, when Arthur played air-guitar, he looked really funny! We danced to Queen (a band that we really like) and Guns ‘n’ Roses 🙂
At each entertainment night, they have this thing called Fun-Stars Go Live! and you basically have to divide everyone into groups – Yellow and Blue. The Blue theme tune goes like this – ‘Ooh stick you, ‘cos we’re on Blue and you’re Yellow’ and the other, Yellow one goes – ‘I just came to say YELLOW’. They’re both a bit strange :/ Anyway, there are two people picked from Yellow and two from Blue. On this night, I was picked as the one on Blue. When the host said, ‘So what is your name?’ I said, ‘Lavinia.’ He said, ‘Yer-wha-wha-wha?’ I said, ‘Lavinia.’ Then the host and the captain of the Blue Team said it was a really cool name. Wink wink!
One of the games you had to play was where the host asked a question and you had to say the wrong answer. For instance, if the host had a yellow T-shirt, and he asked what colour his T-shirt was, you would have to say something like, ‘Red.’ If his name was Ben and he asked what his name was, you would have to say something like, ‘Maurice.’ If he had blond hair, and he asked what colour his hair was, you would have to say something like, ‘Brown.’ It was very simple rules wise, but when you were actually up on stage and you had to answer the questions false-ly, it was kind of difficult. I got one wrong when I was told that you only had three seconds to answer the question. The one I got wrong was when he said, ‘What do you do in a swimming pool?’ I said, ‘Sw -‘ and then checked myself quickly. Then I remembered I only had three seconds and so I cried, ‘Dive! Dive!’ The host named Charlie turned to the audience and asked if one could dive in a swimming pool. Then I remembered – I’d answered correctly, and so, false-ly.
At the end of all the dancing, at about nine p.m., some weird, so-called ‘Glam Rock’ music came blaring out, and five ladies and a strange man came on. They were all dressed in weird, shiny and skin-tight clothing and they started shaking their behinds and making weird poses and generally being really strange. One particularly odd part was when the man started doing air guiter, but his arms were really close together and it would have to be a tiny guitar. Because of this, the main lady said in a fake American accent, ‘You look like you got a ukulele!’ And the man said, ‘A rock ukulele!’ And the weird fake-Texan lady said, ‘Awesome.’ And they both continued dancing.
DAY THREE
The next day (today) we were going to go for a walk on the beach to Great Yarmouth. However, it was very windy and our teeth started chittering when we got to the sand, so we turned around and headed for the swimming pool instead. There Tilly and I got in and started playing. About an hour and a bit later, Seth, the other Matilda, Arthur and their mum, Nicola, came in to the pool. We played for a couple more hours, and then, at around eleven thirty, got out.
We then went to the park while our mums went and had tea in our caravan. Seth was adamant that he was going to do the mapping and even when he led us the wrong way he was certain that we were the ones who were wrong! We went to plenty of parks and then bought some tickets to go on these massive dropslides. However, when Tilly asked, the lady said, ‘Sorry darling, the slide will close in sec and there’s not enough time. You can always come back tomorrow though, if you wanted. It opens at [so-and-so] o’clock. Sorry.’ We then decided that, since it was already five, we would go back to the caravan and get dinner on.
But! But but but. We didn’t go back so soon; we got some money off our mums and sauntered through the pub laiden with cash and walked on into the casino 😉 Anyway, we took a shortcut through the pub and went into the arcades with our money. Tilly and I hadn’t been in arcades for a long time so it was pretty much a new experience for us! We sold our tickets (that really we weren’t bothered about) for 2p coins to Matilda (not our one, the Matilda with the same middle name as our one, Rose, but still not our one), who was more interested in tickets than 2p coins. However, after all our hard exchanging work, we didn’t get anything but more tickets that we sold, and more 2p coins that we used for nothing.
After dinner, we went back to the entertainment place. This time we actually got in time for the family bingo, but unfortunately we didn’t win. Hopefully we will at some point on our holiday! The dancing was actually a bit lame (as not-our-Matilda said), but ah well, we’re here so we’d better make the most of it! We did the ‘Aaaaa-gaaaaa-doo-doo-doo’ (Agadoo) and this superbly weird Dabbing Song of 2017, but at least we had fun doing them! We ordered a drink of water and they gave us lime of their own accord! It was really awesome. There was a tiny bit of dancing and then Fun-Stars came on again (the Yellow v. Blue thing), and then we sat down and watched the true entertainment of the night…
It was Richie Austen! He’s a comedian and a musician and we’re not sure if he was joking or not but he said tomorrow he’s going to enter the Magic Circle. (My advice is, if you’re going to enter the Magic Circle, don’t put how to do your tricks on C.D.s and give them out at random holiday parks.) Anyway, he was really funny but also actually a bit rude! Funny-rude, I mean. One funny rude thing he did was where he had this plate of metal with two large holes at the top. He had also called up a female and a male adult volunteer. He held the plate up to the lady’s chest and said, ‘No, no, don’t worry, it’s not for that.’ Then he turned to the man, who had his eyebrows raised, and said, ‘If you’re that excited, then come find me at the end of the show – I’ve got one with one hole in the middle, if you like.’ I mean, how funny-rude!
We had a nice sleep and now about… today!
DAY FOUR
Today we went to Gt. Yarmouth. Really, it should be called Gt. Chavmouth – it was full of chavs and old, run-down, closed shops. It really wasn’t great! The ocean was lovely but the shops and signs on the beach were very tacky; Devon, Caister-on-Sea, anywhere else near the beach would have been nicer! The actual trip was quite nice though quite short, but it was just so tacky and… well, strange.
Anyway, we went back to the caravan park for lunch and then Tilly and I decided to try out the soft play area and see whether it was tiny or huge. Turned out, tiny – but that didn’t matter, because Seth, Matilda, and Arthur were there too! Of course we didn’t know they would be, and they didn’t know we would be, so there was a lot of, ‘How did you know we were here? How did you find us?’ And therefore a lot of explaining to add. We stayed a tiny bit longer playing ‘bash everyone with big spongey wrestling blocks’ and then Nicola very kindly offered to buy a Go-Kart for us all to share. We checked it was alright for her to pay, and then went and bought a four-seater Go-Kart.
There were two large seats at the back, which both had steering wheels, but only one worked to steer. There was a brake-bar in between both seats and you could move both seats back and forth to your liking. There were also two seats in the front, though much smaller ones, and the crate in front meant not much leg space. For the first part, I sat in the front with not-our-Matilda, with little Arthur on my lap, and Seth and Tilly went in the front. Eventually Arthur got too heavy and hurt-y for the people who he sat on, so we decided that everyone should have their own seat and their own personal space, though I guess apart from one, because we took it in turns for a person to stand on the back bar and push when the engines stalled. It was really fun.
When we’d put away our Go-Kart, Arthur and not-our-Matilda went back to the caravan. Seth pleaded that we go to the baseball court and play baseball or football, so Tilly and I gave in very reluctantly. When we got in, we started playing football. Being goalie, I only got the ball out the goal once, and being footballer, Tilly got one goal in the goal that didn’t have a goalee, and Seth scored about seven goals in each one. Then, two boys on bikes came circling round the ring, and called out, ‘Hey, what are you f-wording b-words doing in our pitch?’ I was the only one who heard and told Tilly. Then I said to Seth, ‘Right, we’re going to go now!’ Meaningfully hinting that he should too. Before he could answer, the boys said, ‘Can we play you a round?’ and Seth said, ‘Yeah, sure.’ Tilly and I then turned and ran as fast as we could back to the caravan and very quickly explained to Nicola that, unaware, Seth was playing with swearing eejits. She asked us if we could go and pretend dinner was ready. As we ran back, Seth was turning a corner looking very sad. He said, ‘They started swearing and then they threw my ball over the fence and nearly punctured it, and then they started teasing me about how my ball was multicoloured and shiny – so I left.’ We congratulated him on his wise decision and went back again.
For the entertainment that night, it was the 1960s night. They started playing Nancy Sinatra and The Beatles, and we danced along till ten o’clock. Arthur started to get really tired and randomly started crying that he couldn’t get the prize he wanted with his arcade tickets, and then we all went back and had a nice sleep.
DAY FIVE
For the last day of our holiday, we went swimming in the morning. We played Arthur’s made-up Hide and Peek, where the seeker got to peek with one eye, which really didn’t work. One of the reasons why was because not-our-Matilda didn’t know that the seeker was meant to peek, so when she saw Arthur doing it, she said, ‘Hey, you’re peeking!’ Arthur said, ‘I know.’ She cried, ‘Not fair!’ and then we stopped playing because it got so confusing.
After the swimming pool, we got in the car, had a lunch of cookies, and left. That’s two weeks running that we’ve had a holiday with our friends and it’s so much fun!