Out of season in Southwold.

From our home in the East Midlands, the sea side is a stretch in any direction, but none more so than Southwold on the Suffolk Coast.

- DAVE & JACKIE RICHARDS

Travelling east to west at any point across this country reveals the striking lack of decent roads, and Southwold remains a mystery to many people simply because of the absence of a fast route. It’s only about 180 miles to the East, but after negotiating the length of the A14, we were pretty much left to our own cross-country devices. We’d picked a couple of days early last June, just before the schools were due to break up and the town invaded by families. It’s a curious time capsule of a place and anti-social types that we are, much prefer it empty and slightly forlorn.

After an epic four hour journey, we continued straight through the village and down Ferry Road to the campsite. It’s right next to the harbour and is the only decent campsite for miles. Without further ado we pitched up. This can occasionally be arduous in the stiff breeze here, but in our faithful old bay, we simply back up onto the levelling blocks, (because of something to do with leading and trailing brake shoes, you should always reverse onto them)... Popped the Dormobile roof, and then removed everything that we’d packed tightly into the bus for the journey, and flung it all into our orange pop up tent.