What's that big blue wet thing?

Sweep sat in his special place on the dashboard and watched all the scenery whizzing by - they galloped through Gloucestershire, shot through Somerset, dashed through Devon, and crashed in Corn.. (No, Sweep, you can take alliteration too far, you know).

Driving over Dartmoor, Sweep was amazed at the view - he could see so far, and it was all pretty and green. The Jon-Cub in the back seat looked up from his book and exclaimed "Wow! There's like, loads and loads of absolutely nothing!" Sweep thought that perhaps this was a smidge unfair - all that "nothing" was very lovely, and it must have taken ages to make. Anyway, whoever made it, thought Sweep, must really love it to do such a grand job. He did notice, though, that most of it seemed to smell of poo.

After driving through miles and miles and miles of lots of lovely nothing, The car turned off the big fast road onto a smaller winding one. Sweep thought it was funny that, while most of the vehicles on the big fast road with two lanes each way had been little cars, it seemed that most of the traffic on the little winding road was big lorries. "These humans are daft" thought Sweep - "I'd do it the other way!" He thought this especially on the bits where the road wasn't wide enough even to have a white line down the middle - for they were the very bits where the big lorries liked to come the other way. "They do like a laugh", thought Sweep, as he reached for some clean underwear.

After a while, Auntie Angela suddenly jumped up all excited in her seat and pointed out the window as she squealed "look - sea!" Sweep was puzzled. "See what?!" he thought. "All I can see is lots of this lovely 'nothing' stuff, and over there is a big blue wet thing. It's very flat and it goes a long way, farther than I can see, but I don't know what it is. Maybe they've had a lot of rain round here."

Auntie Angela explained that the big blue wet thing was called "The Sea". She told Sweep that it was very big, and went as far as you could see and then kept going. "How does she know what it does after you can't see it any more?" thought Sweep. Then he remembered that Auntie Angela was a teacher and could see you doing things even when you were somewhere else. That must be it.

Quite soon after that, Uncle Bill said they were nearly at the campsite where they would be staying. This made Sweep wonder whether it was a place where you had to mince about and call everyone "ducky", but it turned out not to be that sort of camping. They arrived on a big field where lots of other people had built little houses out of cloth. Then Sweep watched as Auntie Angela and Uncle Bill and the Cubs made a little house out of cloth as well. The Cubs didn't seem to be enjoying it, because they kept saying rude things to each other that Sweep chose not to hear - but after a while, there in front of Sweep was a little green house made of cloth. "Cor!" thought Sweep "This Cornwall really is a land of magic and mystery!" It was a mystery how the Cubs hadn't killed each other, anyway.

Sweep asked Uncle Bill to lift him up onto the roof of the car so he could have a look at the view. There was even more of that lovely 'nothing' all around, and Sweep thought that the Maker-bloke must really like this bit, because on the one hand it was beautiful, and on the other, this bit didn't smell of poo at all. Well, except for the bit near the little wooden house in the corner of the field, anyway.

Sweep thought this was going to be a great place for his latest Grand Adventure, and he snuggled down for a nap so he could dream about all the lovely places he was going to go and see.

Tune in next time to see where Sweep ends up next!