The blame for February’s feeble microadventure lies firmly at the hotel door of Sally Hinchcliffe, who resolutely refuses to sleep in hedges, bothies, bivvy bags or even a tent with me. I’m not taking it personally (that much); as an ambassador’s daughter brought up in a warmer climate I suspect there are few people who could tempt her out of our hotel room in Aberdeen this weekend into a sleeping bag after the ravages of #StormDoris in northern Scotland.
This reluctance to engage in the great (wet, cold) outdoors left me with only a couple of weekend options to get my February microadventure in, which is why I ended up in a wooden cabin on a retail park last weekend with the mini-cyclist as part of our half-term road trip to Englandshire.
After an emergency bike shop visit we spent some of the day freaking my south London living sister out by cycling around the paths of Lee Valley, which turned out to be in North London. Thankfully we came to no harm and enjoyed pottering along the canal side until it started to turn dark and rainy.

My sister then fled, my child cried for about 30 mins for his ‘Aunty Smmmeeeeegggg’ and we packed ourselves back into the car to find our home for the night. Surprisingly warm and cosy, the cabins are in the camping and caravan site in Edmonton, just behind a multiplex cinema on a small retail park. We also passed two llamas on the way, although as I write this I wonder if I was hallucinating from the traffic fumes.

After securing our mountain of belongings, we headed out to a local Harvester (who knew they survived the 1980’s?) for an underwhelming dinner and an argument about how much tomato ketchup and lemonade should be consumed in any one week.

We’re chalking February up as *interesting* rather than epic, but with another 10 months to go there is plenty of time to seek out more ambitious nights away than a wooden hut on the outskirts of Enfield. I’m working every weekend in March, including a trip to Inverness with Sally, so there is still an opportunity to entice her away from her life of luxury into my microadventure year..
I think its great that you are getting out even if it is in a hut or pod. Lovely pods at the caravan and camping club site in Bellingham. I can well recommend the place – lovely capers kitchen and common room, dark sky park to boot.
Thank you! Hopefully getting the tent out as Easter!
we are planning an Easter cycle camp- unless it snows when we set off.