LG Winter Camp 2025

It was an odd kind of a week that was running very much on its own alternate time which started with travelling by Transport For Wales trains to Leominster, Herefordshire to be picked up ready to complete the journey to a new venue in the South-west of England.

After a while I got the hang of hearing Welsh and English station names being announced even if they were in England and their welsh versions are seldom used and the journey towards Bristol and the Seven was quite smooth compared to other venues.

Talking of Wales, we went on the Welsh side of the Wye to Tintern Abbey near Chepstow which is a ruin undertaking as can be evidenced from the scaffolding renovation works part structural and part to restore elements lost in previous attempts.

It's pretty big, very much self contained settlement although finding it took a bit of doing as the signing wasn't obvious.

We called in the cafe adjacent to it for a bite to eat as it had been a good while since we'd eaten and I had a "White Monk's Breakfast" which was the local form of the traditional a full bacon and egg "English" fried breakfast that was extremely good.
 

 When we got to the Eleventh Century manor house we were staying at we did explore the extensive grounds there were a lot of snowdrops and daffodils out looking towards the local fields and hills.

 I did mention the time seemed different and it was cos it was CatMas (Christmas) and everything was centred around that so we had a tree that was decorated.

Santa came with presents and a Christmas box on CatMas eve.

There were arts and crafts sessions that included making decorations such as chains, things for the tree such as my CatMas one, making place mats for CatMas dinner and so on that was fun.

We did Home Economics, making Mince pies, decorating Ginger biscuits with seasonal art, cup cakes and even making our very own Pizzas from dough so with a great issue with cheese mine was tomato, turkey and ham.

We held games with a twist on musical chairs, quiz's, landing a jelly object on a CatMas tree target and getting a pin on the top of the donkey. The team I was part of came second in the General Knowledge quiz.
 

Catering was by us and we had a traditional very tasty CatMas Dinner with Christmas pudding  and turkey, ham and salad with chips Boxing day meal. Well we had plenty of turkey and ham so you might as well us it which our parents always did!

On the way we called a cross of gift shop, delicatessen, butchers and restaurant before making our way back to the Midlands which for me meant a stop over at a friends before catching the train back home.

Thanks to Karla and Caroline for organizing  the structure and big chunk of the catering, others who provided party food and a delicious cottage pie and for everyone for making it a super child-like time.