They drank ginger beer and then ate some ripe plums. Timmy wouldn’t have any plums, but he
licked up some spilt ginger beer. Then he snuffed up a few odd crumbs and went to drink at a little stream nearby.
The party set off again in the car. Anne fell asleep. Dick gave an enormous yawn and fell asleep too. George wasn’t sleepy, nor was Timmy, but Julian was. He didn’t dare to take his eye off the speedometer, though, because Mr Luffy seemed to be very much inclined to speed along too fast again, after his good lunch.
‘We won’t stop for tea till we get there,’ said Mr Luffy suddenly, and Dick woke up with a jump at the sound of his booming voice. ‘We should be there about half past five. Look, you can see the moorland in the distance now – all ablaze with heather!’
Everybody looked ahead, except Anne, who was still fast asleep. Rising up to the left for miles upon miles was the heather-covered moorland, a lovely sight to see. It looked wild and lonely and beautiful, blazing with heather, and shading off into a purple-blue in the distance.
‘We take this road to the left, and then we’re on the moors,’ said Mr Luffy, swinging violently to the left, and making the luggage in the trailer jump high again. ‘Here we go.’
The car climbed the high moorland road steadily. It passed one or two small houses, and in the distance the children could see little farms in clearings. Sheep dotted the moorland, and some of them stood staring at the car as it drove by.
‘We’ve got about twenty miles to go, I should think,’ said Mr Luffy, jamming on his brakes suddenly to avoid two large sheep in the middle of the road. ‘I wish these creatures wouldn’t choose the centre of the road to gossip in. Hi, get on there! Let me pass!’
Timmy yelped and tried to get out of the car. The sheep hurriedly decided to move, and the car went on. Anne was thoroughly awake by now, having been almost jerked out of her seat by the sudden stop.
‘What a shame to wake you!’ said Mr Luffy, gazing down at her kindly, and almost running into a ditch by the side of the road. ‘We’re nearly there, Anne.’
They climbed steadily, and the wind grew a little cold. All around the children the moors stretched for mile upon mile, never-ending. Little streams sometimes splashed right down to the roadway, and ran beside it.
‘We can drink the water in these streams,’ said Mr Luffy. ‘Crystal clear, and cold as ice! There’s one quite near where we’re going to camp.’
That was good news. Julian thought of the big canvas buckets they had brought. He didn’t particularly want to carry those for miles. If there was a stream near their camping place it would be easy to get the buckets filled with washing-water.
The road forked into two. To the right was a good road, leading on and on. To the left it became not much more than a cart-track. ‘That’s the one we take,’ said Mr Luffy, and the car jerked and jolted over it. He was forced to go slowly, and the children had time to see every little thing they passed.
‘I shall leave the car here,’ said Mr Luffy, bringing it to a standstill beside a great rock that stood up bare and grey out of the moor. ‘It will be sheltered from the worst winds and rain. I thought we’d camp over yonder.’
There was a little slope just there, backed by some enormous gorse bushes. Thick heather grew everywhere. Julian nodded. It was a good place for camping. Those thick gorse bushes would provide fine shelter from the winds.
‘Right, sir,’ he said. ‘Shall we have tea first, or unpack now?’
‘Tea first,’ said Mr Luffy. ‘I’ve brought a very good little stove for boiling and cooking things. Better than a wood fire. That makes kettles and saucepans so black.’
‘We’ve got a stove, too,’ said Anne. She scrambled out of the car and looked all round. ‘It’s lovely here -all heather and wind and sun! Is that the farm over there – the one we shall go to for eggs and things?’
She pointed to a tiny farmhouse on the hill opposite. It stood in a small clearing. In a field behind it were three or four cows and a horse. A small orchard stood at the side, and a vegetable garden lay in front. It seemed odd to see such a trim little place in the midst of the moorland.
That’s Olly’s Farm,’ said Mr Luffy. ‘It’s changed hands, I believe, since I was here three years ago. I hope the new people are nice. Now – did we leave something to eat for our tea?’
They had, because Anne had wisely put away a good many sandwiches and bits of cake for tea-time. They sat in the heather, with bees humming all round them, and munched solidly for fifteen minutes. Timmy waited patiently for his bits, watching the bees that hummed round him. There were thousands of them.
‘And now I suppose we’d better put up our tents,’ said Julian. ‘Come on, Dick – let’s unpack the trailer. Mr Luffy, we don’t intend to camp on top of you, sir, because you won’t want four noisy children too near. Where would you like your tent put?’ Mr Luffy was about to say that he would like to have
the four children and Timmy quite close, when it suddenly occurred to him that perhaps they might not want him too near. They might want to make a noise, or play silly games, and if he were near it would stop them enjoying themselves in their own way.
So he made up his mind not to be too close. Til pitch my tent down there, where that old gorse bush is,’ he said. ‘And if you’d like to put yours up here, where there’s a half-circle of gorse bushes keeping off the wind, you’d be well sheltered. And we shan’t interfere with one another at all.’
‘Right, sir,’ said Julian, and he and Dick began to tackle the tents. It was fun. Timmy got under everyone’s feet as usual, and ran off with an important rope, but nobody minded.
By the time that dusk came creeping up the heather-covered moorland, all three tents were up, the groundsheets were put down, and the sleeping-bags unrolled on them, two in each of the children’s tents, and one in Mr Luffy’s.
‘I’m going to turn in,’ said Mr Luffy. ‘My eyes are almost shut. Good night all of you. Sleep well!’
He disappeared into the dusk. Anne yawned widely, and that set the others off too. ‘Come on – let’s turn in, too,’ said Julian. ‘We’ll have a bar of chocolate each, and a few biscuits. We can eat those in our sleeping-bags. Good night, girls. Won’t it be grand to wake up tomorrow morning?’
He and Dick disappeared into their tent. The girls crawled into theirs with Timmy. They undressed, and got into their warm, soft sleeping-bags.
‘This is super!’ said George, pushing Timmy to one side. ‘I never felt so cosy in my life. Don’t do that, Timmy. Don’t you know the difference between my feet and my middle? That’s better.’
‘Good night,’ said Anne, sleepily. ‘Look, George, you can see the stars shining through the opening of the tent. Don’t they look enormous?’
But George didn’t care whether they were enormous or not. She was fast asleep, tired out with the day’s run. Timmy cocked one ear when he heard Anne’s voice, and gave a little grunt. That was his way of saying good night. Then he put his head down and slept.
‘Our first night of camping,’ thought Anne, happily. ‘I shan’t go to sleep. I shall lie awake and look at the stars and smell that heathery smell.’
But she didn’t. In half a second she was sound asleep, too!
3 Anne’s volcano
Julian awoke first in the morning. He heard a strange and lonely sound floating overhead. ‘Coor-lie! Coor-lie!’
He sat up and wondered where he was and who was calling. Of course! He was in his tent with Dick – they were camping on the moors. And that wild cry overhead came from a curlew, the bird of the moorlands.
He yawned and lay down again. It was early in the morning. The sun put its warm fingers in at his tent opening, and he felt the warmth on his sleeping-bag. He felt lazy and snug and contented. He also felt hungry, which was a nuisance. He glanced at his watch.
Half past six. He really was too warm and comfortable to get up yet. He put out his hand to see if there was any chocolate left from the night before, and found a little piece. He put it into his mouth and lay there contentedly, listening to more curlews, and watching the sun climb a little higher.