Sun 4th Jul '21 - Day 23

Northampton

 

My alarm goes off at 2:45am to watch England vs Ukraine in the Quarter Final of Euro 2020 (2021). Kane goal after just 4 minutes. 2 further goals in the first 5 minutes after half-time. One more goal from Henderson to seal a comprehensive win and raise expectations.

The kids wake at 6:30am playing in the upper bunk. They’re excited by promise of pancakes for breakfast which we’d been told about the day before. But with a whole camp site to potentially feed we first eat our normal breakfast anyway – that’s a mistake as the pancakes are plentiful. It’s mixed, cooked, served by the husband and wife owners who are trying to get the campsite off the ground after buying and refurbing the site over the last 12 months, followed by Covid interruptions. It’s also a great way to bring the campers together.

Grey weather, and although dry for now there is rain forecast for after lunch. We head off on foot to find sheep – a community project since 2018 with over 50 fibre-glass life size sheep dotted around the town. 

Each business or entity that owns a sheep can then design and paint their own and give them names too. Including names such as Amb-uwe-lance, BaBa (hairdressers) and Ulurewe. We take a photo of each to record the successes in finding a great many of them. 

Our camp site has a sheep of their own on order as local businesses try to build on this success of this initiative. Another drive to encourage people to stop for a night or two rather than passing through is the conversion of the old railway tracks into a Historic Line; a picturesque walk.

We are oblivious to Hurricane Serojar which ripped through on April 12^th this year. However, its scars are still highly visible with roofs patched or indeed missing from buildings and houses. We walk to railway precinct – Northampton station – volunteer run, though sitting empty of people is more like a life size climbing frame.

By the time we return from our walk at 11am it looks as though this local drive hasn’t yet worked on last night’s clientele as the camp site is near empty with people eager to get on the move. Kate and Sienna pop to a local craft shop and then it’s a bakery lunch at Wrens. On the walk back to the van, as the rain starts to fall, I detour off into the local pub and watch Sydney Swans comprehensively beat local team West Coast Eagles 118:26. It’s clear I’m the only Sydney supporter to I keep my support to myself.

In the afternoon we decide to drive to Horrocks, a small holiday village by the coast 15 minutes away. Everything looks better in the sun, but the kids enjoy a pirate ship playground under the clouds. Here we also discover a map of Uwe Turn; the complete location of all the Northampton sheep. Armed with a photo of the map we now know where to seek out a few more clusters of sheep.

Driving around there is more evidence of the destruction of the storm, which I don’t even remember making the news in Sydney, with plenty of damage to fragile barns and to tin structures on the back streets. The extra few sheep hunted down.

Parked up, we tally up in the van all the photographed sheep – now up to 50 (+ a few kelpies and 1 person). Sausage and pasta for dinner in the van as the rain has returned with regular flashes of lightening from a storm nearby.