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In the morning we caught a lift at 6 o'clock with our first attempt. It was an army lorry, which took us to Blandford Forum. We got there about 8.30. There was a village green, and a bus stop. We went to the nearby shop to get something to eat for breakfast, and sat on the green, sometimes taking turns to stand by the road and hitch. After a while we both fell asleep, and woke again about 1.00. after some more unsuccessful hitching, we decided to catch the 3 o'clock bus , which would take us to the girl's village.
When we got there, we went into a garage to ask directions to the house. When we arrived at the house, the girl was there, with a friend. She was very surprised to see us, but took us in, and made us cups of tea, and played Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band records to us. After about 15 minutes, Harry arrived. We asked him if he had trouble finding it. He said no, he'd been to the garage in the village for directions and had been told that someone with camouflaged moccasins had been there a few minutes earlier, asking the same thing.
After an hour or so, the girls mum came home with the shopping. She was quite shocked to see us there, and took her daughter into the kitchen to discuss what to do with us. The girl must have won her over, cos mum came out and said we were welcome to sleep in the stable. Dad arrived home from work after a further hour, and wasn't very happy about it, but was not up to arguing about it with his wife and teenage daughter, and so reluctantly agreed we could stay. We went in the stable with the girls, and sat talking and listening to John Peel on the transistor radio they had supplied. When the show was over, the girls went back to the house and we dozed off. In the morning we were woken with tea and toast, brought by the mum. We spent another day and night there, but on the second morning Dad woke us up, and said he wanted us gone before he went to work. We wandered down to the village, bought some sandwiches, and sat in the bus stop. Eventually a bus came along. For want of anything better to do, we got on it. It took us to Lulworth Cove.
We explored the cove, and eventually discovered a small wood, about three quarters of the way round, and up a slope. We decided to camp there. Harry had a small tent, which I shared, and Mark built himself a shelter with branches and leaves. We found a weird conical object, similar in size and shape to a baseless traffic cone. We carved a face on it, and stuck it on a stick as a totem. We spent about 5 days there. We used to get water from the public toilets, and carry it back across the pebble beach in large buckets and pans, usually spilling the majority of it on the way. During the day we'd explore the cove and surrounding cliffs, or sit in the nearby cafe and listen to the juke box. One day we met a couple of girls who took us back to their tent at a campsite for a smoke. When we got there, we were a bit disappointed to find their brothers there, but we had a pleasant afternoon. There was an army range on the other side of the wood, and one day Harry came back from sitting on a cliff looking out to sea, saying he had been chased by a tank.
The last night we were there it rained heavily, and me and Harry broke the tent pole, larking about. In the morning we were cold ,wet and stiff. Mark, however, was snug and dry in his shelter. We decide to pack up and go home. We collected all our rubbish , and started to burn it. For a laugh, we decided to burn the totem head, as a kind of ritualistic sacrifice. As soon as we put it on the fire, it started to burn furiously, and gave off thick clouds of billowing black smoke. We thought it might attract attention, so we were half-heartedly beating it with sticks in a futile attempt to put it out. Suddenly a soldier burst into the clearing, machine gun levelled at us. He shouted over his shoulder, "Titch! Over here! Quick!". Titch, a huge soldier with a massive container of water on his shoulders, came crashing into the clearing, shortly followed by 5 or 6 other soldiers. They quickly and efficiently extinguished the fire. "What do you think you're doing here?" asked the first soldier. We explained we'd been camping, and were just packing up to go. "Don't you know this an army firing range? There's unexploded shells all over this area". We'd only been camping in a minefield. "Err, what was that thing we were burning?" I asked sheepishly. "That's an explosive missile head. It could have blown up at any time. You're lucky you weren't all killed."