Camping in Tollymore Forest . First Night in the Tent.

Hi Steemians,

This week me and my girlfriend both had some time off work, so we decided to set off for a few days to a place only an hour and a halves drive away, a place so far I hadn't had the pleasure of exploring. Tollymore Forest, County Down, Northern Ireland.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Tollymore+Forest+Park/@54.2199951,-5.9429077,15z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x7bdd670b88e1c0b8!8m2!3d54.2199951!4d-5.9429077

It made think of how much of my own country I've never seen. Northern Ireland where we live is such a beautiful country and I've seen only a fraction of it. Quite disgraceful really!

You can fall into a routine of visiting the same places because you know what to expect and that brings a lot of comfort especially when you have a small child, but knowing what to expect is sometimes boring and we wanted to mix it up a little, so we decided to do something we have not yet done as a family.

We had a brand new tent sitting in the shed, that was given to us for free so we thought it was about time we tried it out, I had some old camping stuff and so did my girlfriend, from before we even met. So we got our two camping stoves, a cool-box full of food and drinks and a few changes of clothes then packed it all into the car and set off on our wee adventure.

About an hour later we caught our first glimpse of the Mourne Mountains which mean't we weren't too far away.
The Mourne Mountains are the the most famous and include the highest mountains in Northern Ireland. Slieve Donard 850m (2,790 ft) is the highest of them all. Unfortunately I didn't climb it but that's for a different adventure.

Now we were only minutes away and with the view getting more spectacular every second, then we lost sight of the mountains as they disappeared behind trees and google maps kindly told us we had arrived, as we turned in off the country road to see this pretty awesome arch way and read the sign Tollymore Forest Park, we were all super excited to have arrived and see where we would be staying for our first time ever camping as a family.

We got ourselves signed in at the reception then found our little spot in the camping area. There wasn't too many people around which was good in case we failed horribly at pitching the tent like the seasoned campers we were masquerading as... Who am I kidding, we were professionals, at least that's how we felt as we put up the tent in style with minimal arguing :) and Stewart's expert guidance of course.

Our tent was up and everything was unpacked so before dinner we took a little walk around to kind of get acquainted with the area and find out where everything was ...

... Then it was BBQ time!

We had bacon burgers, sausages and chicken skewers which ended up being to much food but we didn't let it go to waste.

After we ate dinner which was amazing, we sat up a while and played snap and dominoes then we ate some biscuits and had a cup of tea which just seemed nicer because you have to put that bit more effort in than normal. Then it was time for bed!!!

We had an early night so we could get up bright and early and go on our first proper adventure around the forest. Unfortunately we all woke up a bit too early at around 4 am and couldn't get back to sleep because of the crows in the tree above our tent singing their morning symphony. I'm all for birds singing in the morning but no one could love the noise that comes from a flock of crows at four in the morning. Eventually we fell back asleep and woke up at a more reasonable time of 6 am which is still super early for Stewart but he was the one that got us up and out of our tent, so our day had began and what a beginning it turned out to be....

Follow me to see our second day camping and our first real adventure of the trip where we explore the forest and I jump over somethings and backflip off some other things :)

Thanks for reading.

@g4gold