Little Lolly's Small Adventures: naturist camping

Showing posts with label naturist camping. Show all posts

Rijsbergen, Netherlands to Orpington, England.

Our route from Rijsbergen to Orpington

Paul and I didn't sleep very well last night - it was too hot to sleep even though we had the fan on. Eventually, though, at some point we did manage to fall asleep.

Paul was awake quite a bit earlier than me and read for a bit while I managed to sleep through until the alarm went off about 6:45 am.

We set off for Calais around 7:30 am with the caravan in tow. Traffic around Antwerp was bad but it wasn't quite as bad as we thought it would be, fortunately. It was good that we left half an hour to an hour earlier than we could have so that we had plenty of time to get to the ferry terminal in Calais.

The journey was more or less uneventful with a stop for petrol at a garage in Calais before we caught the ferry. On the ferry we bumped into a couple of people we knew from a German naturist walking group that we joined last year. Small world! The rest of our journey to Dover and then to the Naturist Foundation in Orpington went smoothly.

Once we set up the caravan we walked around the Naturist Foundation's property and it was as I remembered it since my last visit a few years ago. It is a family friendly place with a children's play area, a nice swimming pool with a roof that can be opened or closed, sauna and games courts where volleyball, mini-tennis, badminton & petanque can be played, outdoor gym, a jogging/walking track and much more. The site also has lovely manicured lawns, a function room/dining room, reading area, bar and much more. Please note that the photographs are from the Naturist Foundation's website to show you what the place looks like as I am not allowed to take photographs.

We got out our folding bicycles and wound our fake flowers around the handlebars. The bicycles do look rather nice!

Hot and cold spring rivers, and a naturist campsite

Hot & Cold river/hot spring

Today it was time to leave Rotorua Farm Stay and see where the road took us. We stopped to soak in the Hot and Cold spring rivers on the way. Once again we enjoyed rubbing clay all over ourselves and soaking it off, and relaxing.

From there we headed further north in the direction of Tauranga to Katikati Naturist Park (http://www.katikati-naturist-park.co.nz/) which is a naturist campsite with a few chalets. The campsite is lovely. It has a pool, sauna, 2 hot tubs, mini golf, a pentanque court, a play area for children, a river to swim in, you can feed the eels; barbecue facilities and kitchen amenities, a small shop, etc.

Mini golf at Katikati (photograph off the internet)

After unpacking we had a game of mini golf - Paul won hands down! I have a problem with accuracy... One of more permanent campsite owners has a cat which plonked itself down on the mini golf green to sun itself. We didn't mind it watching our game but we ended up having to play our balls around it - an extra skill we could add to our mini golf skills!

The campsite has WiFi which is great because we can try to plan what we would like to do tomorrow. However, we had a bit of trouble with the internet. Paul went onto his telephone and discovered that there was WiFi and there was a prompt to get a voucher code to get access to the internet. So he went through the motions of getting the code but the code was never sent to his telephone in a text message; and he couldn't log on to get access to his email to see if a code was sent there. We went to reception to find out what the problem was. Apparently you had to physically buy a voucher from reception and use the code. Although the wiFi seemed to be Katikati's own wiFi (even though it was named as such), it wasn't really - they got a special deal from the network for users. Paul wasn't terribly happy because he had naturally paid money for a service that he wasn't getting. Eventually the campsite owner agreed to give Paul a voucher to log into the network. Soon afterwards Paul found that he had also access to the package that he had originally tried to sign up with!

Today's route, more or less.

Oh, a smile a while moment... One chap at the campsite, obviously batting for the other side, brazenly asked him about his penis tip full piercing. Paul didn't bat an eyelid and said it was fine, didn't hurt. Methinks the chap is going to go to Rotorua tomorrow for one!

PHOTOGRAPHS

Hot & Cold

Getting white clay from the river bank

Mix it with a bit of water to make it more into a paste

Smear the paste on.

Lovely gooey stuff!

Rinse off and relax. The clay also works as a good sunscreen
for shoulders and face!

Katikati Naturist Park

(Photographs off the internet)

Entrance to reception and small shop

Last Days at La Chiappa & Dive.

Not much has been happening other than relaxing. KwikFit in the Netherlands contacted Paul and admitted liability for what happened. They us to bring the damaged radiator back with us to the Netherlands; and send them the VW invoices.

Yesterday Paul went to La Chiappa's reception and asked one of the receptionists to ring VW for him. Because his French is limited he got her to find out more or less when the car would be ready (again probably Thursday after 5pm), and also asked them not to throw out the damaged radiator - Kwikfit wanted to see it. The receptionist was very understanding and was of great help to us.

In the afternoon we took around the campsite's outer borders, along the coastline. The bordering fence between the campsite and a lighthouse became non-existent so we followed a path below the lighthouse and down to narrow cape or point of the coastline. During the walk we saw a baby tortoise - it was no bigger than the palm of my hand. We left him to continue his own little journey. Some of the surrounding bush had been burnt by a fire but fortunately there was new signs of life with a bit of green showing through the charred bushes. It was nice to walk as nature intended - with nothing on, feeling the fresh air, sun and water on our skin. I felt at peace, relaxed.

This morning we went to the Hippocampe Dive Centre and booked ourselves on a dive for the afternoon. It was good to see the familiar faces of Lulu, Wolfe and Nadine as well as other members of the team. They were a bit surprised to see us again because we had said our goodbyes last week, but we were made to feel welcome again. We had hoped to do a wreck dive but plans had to change because of the choppy sea. We still enjoyed our dive though. Our dive guide today was a James Bond (Daniel Craig) look-alike!

Despite having a cold, my ears, nose and sinuses felt ok (one should never dive with a cold and I was fully aware of that fact prior to going out) and the dive went smoothly . My right ear though, at one point, would not equalise and became painful. I tried to surface but Paul, thinking that I my buoyancy was a problem, kept holding on to me. I tried to explain by pointing out what my problem was. Our dive guide came over to see what was up. He also didn't want me to surface and with signals, told me to stop, and then held onto my jacket whilst I tried to equalise my ear again. After quite a few tries my ear equalised and I was pain-free, ready to continue. I've not had problems with my face-mask before but today it kept on leaking. A couple of times I emptied excess water, as I had been taught, but in the end I gave up. At least I could still see to a major degree. If the water collection in my mask had been bad I would have taken it off - I can see in sea water without any problems.

We finished the day with a meal at the campsite's restaurant and have been doing a bit of packing. Hopefully the car will be ready for us sometime tomorrow!

Walk & Hair Dye

Chalet at La Chiappa

The past 2 days my cold got the better of me so I spent quite a bit of time sleeping while Paul did some reading.

Tahiti Beach

Today we decided to check out "Tahiti" beach, a 40 minute walk along the coastline in a south westerly direction from the campsite. It could have been a lovely beach but huge mounds of seaweed was banked up, making the waters edge look as if was rocky but in actual fact it wasn't - it was soft rotting seaweed. We found a log on the outskirts of the beach and sat looking at the small cove and scattered sunbathing bodies. A bit later on we were joined by 3 goats who seemed to be calling for the rest of their herd - but there was no answer. Clouds began to gather so we decided to leave the cove sooner rather than later. Just as well we did because it started to drizzle.

Last week we had bought hair dye and were going to dye our hair for when we attended our friends wedding vow renewal. Although we could no longer attend, due to car problems, we decided to dye our hair anyway. We had a good laugh, even more so when we traipsed to the communal showers to wash the hair dye off!

It's just about time for bed and we are lying here listening to a thunderstorm. Rain is pouring down and the sweet smell of wet earth and vegetation is rising; fresh and welcoming.