Day 9 of camper van escapades and we were bright eyed (ish) and bushy tailed (kinda) at 5am again. So much for holiday lie ins!

We woke up to the calm, quiet, serenity of the farm having been transported to Bunnyville, with rabbits, rabbits, and more rabbits everywhere. Big (well, not so big) and small. As far as the eye could see.

A jet black squirrel went squirreling by the van - that's a new one on me. Apparently they're thought to be descendents of about a dozen similar squirrels that managed to free themselves (or perhaps had a human accomplice) from a private zoo in Woburn in the early 1900s. They have a genetic pigmenation error making them black instead of the usual grey. And there endeth your squirrel lesson for today!

Your creativity definitely gets a workout when you live in a van. We've been wrestling with our mugs! Not the ‘ugly mug’ face variety, but the coffee and tea in bed in the morning variety. We have cubby holes above the bed so nowhere to easily put a hot drink down. Way too much chance of me spilling my tea everywhere!

Enter our new £4 tray from Tesco (not an advert - similar trays can be bought from anywhere selling trays 🤣) that now lands in the middle section of our bed each morning and serves as a neat little table. And yes, I'm sure that clumsy here will send the whole thing flying one morning, but for the time being it seems like a good idea!

We left the farm and headed to Ely, just 33km (20 miles) up the road. A little half hour jaunt. To park on the drive of some good friends for an afternoon and evening of lovely company, nice food, and Evie trying to rule the roost over their red fox labrador - way too much yappy dog! We could also have done without it hitting 30C again. 🥵

Over by Ely Cathedral they've installed The Knife Angel monument. More info in the attached photos. It's an imposing sight, over 8m tall, and made up of over 100,000 seized or surrendered knives. It hurts my heart to think about the scale and impact of knife crime in the UK.

Another night at ‘home’ in the van and tomorrow we're back on the road and heading north…