Christmas

Well, we didn't intend to be this side of the channel at this time of year when we were planning our trip and it has been impressed upon us why we won't be here next year. These RV's were not designed for this weather and the cold seeps in through the walls, windows and countless holes in the bodywork. The heating has been working overtime but it is still cold when the temperature drops below freezing. Then you have the problem of the water pipes freezing to contend with and this has meant using Tricia's hair dryer in the pump locker to thaw them out. I am planning to fit some low wattage heaters, like those you get for greenhouses, into vulnerable areas to alleviate this problem,

With the change in the weather again, and a thick covering of snow, we are worried that we won't be able to leave Kent until it thaws a bit. We will have to take that decision tomorrow night. If we do get away we will be at Wareham Forrest for the next few weeks.

We would like to wish all our followers and anyone who views the blog a wonderful Christmas and a happy and prosperous New Year. Keep following because we are definitely crossing the channel in the Spring.

Google Map of our progress

Some time ago a friend of ours, Ezhil Suresh, sugested I create a Google map of the places we have been to. So here it is:
View Harveys Quest in a larger map

I will try to add a few photographs for each of the locations when time permits.

Quick update

We have done a lot since our last post and a longer version is under preparation. Until that is completed here is the potted version. After leaving Inverness we spent a few days at Blairgowrie and then moved on to Preston Pans on the outskirts of Edinburgh. Thirteen days were spent here then we carried on south to Trimdon near Hartlepool where we spent a week. From there is was on to Sheriff Hutton near York for a week then down to Manton in Rutland for one night. We didn't like the site so moved to Ryhall in Lincolnshire for a week.

The van then had to be serviced and have a few other jobs done to it at Roade in Northants and we spent a few nights in the yard of the workshop (free camping, yeh ha!). When that was done, and we had been removed of what was left of our life savings, it was off to Cambridge. First to Bourn Golf Club for a night, where we were visited by our friends from Bexhill, then to Great Shelford CCC site for a week. We liked Cambridge because we could use our push bikes to ride right into the centre of the city. The motorbikes didn't come off the trailer all week.

Now we are at Great Easton near Stansted Airport and we will be flying to Germany at 07:15 tomorrow morning to join in birthday celebrations returning next Tuesday. It should be an excellent weekend and we are both looking forward to it immensely because we feel we haven't had a holiday for a while. We will be on the move again next Thursday.

Can't see the wood for the caravan site

The site at Aberfeldy was large and very busy but we had been put on a corner pitch which meant we had an extra bit of room for the trailer and the bikes. We visited Pitlochry, including the salmon ladder at Clunie Hydroelectric Power Station, the Pass of Killikranky and the Queens View (picture right). We spent one day on a fairly long ride over to Portnacroish in Appin to visit Tricia’s aunt Seonag. The run took us through some great countryside on narrow twisty roads through Crianlarich, Tyndrum and Connel. You would love these roads, Suresh.


While in Aberfeldy we also visited the oldest Yew tree in Britain (maybe even Europe) (picture left) at Fortingall. The tree is reputed to be 5000 years old which means it was old when the Roman ambassador to Caledonia, Pontius Pilate’s father, lived there and Pontius is said to have been born there too.

We had another uneventful journey up the A9 and A96 to Nairn. The Delnies Wood site is located about three miles before you get to Nairn from Inverness and, as the name suggests, it is in a pine forrest. Although the weather hasn’t been great, and in fact I am sitting writing this because it has been raining heavily today, we have managed to get out and about. We have had a walk around Culbin forest, between Nairn and Findhorn, with my brother, Don, and walked along the Moray Firth shore to Nairn from the camp site. We have also cycled to Fort George and Ardersier. I did a walk with Don around Carrbridge (picture right) the other day, Tricia is still having problems with her ankle so she went for a cycle ride to Whiteness Head instead.

A couple of days ago we rode or motorbikes down the road to visit Ardclach Bell Tower, an ancient monument, and Dulsie Bridge. Both were very photogenic and the ride was pretty good too.

During our stay here in Delnies Wood we have been able to make several visits to my mother, who lives in a care-home in Nairn, and we have seen a bit of my brother and his family too.

We have just under a week left here before we head over to Bught Park in Inverness so, hopefully, we’ll be able to get out for some more sight-seeing trips.

Soaking in the Lakes

It has been a while since our last posting mainly due to the poor internet access we have been having. This post documents the journey from the Cotswolds to the Lake District and beyond.

From Hanley Swan we moved a short way further north to Shropshire and spent three nights at a small site called Crossways Farm near Shifnal so that we could visit a friend that lives in Telford. We also spent some time getting re-acquainted with Telford’s places of interest.

Preston seemed like a good place to break our journey to the Lakes and it gave us a chance to visit Blackpool, as neither of us had been there, and climb the tower. The site, Moss Farm, was near Much Hoole and once again it was quite small and very quiet. After the lovely weather at the previous locations we now had almost continual drizzle. This did not deter us from a trip to Blackpool but it did dampen our spirits a little. We paid to go into Blackpool Tower and wandered round looking at the different exhibits, ending up in the circus at around 16:00. We didn’t realise that the show went on for two hours and that we would miss the last trip up the tower. I rushed down to the reception at around 17:15 to discover that we had indeed missed it. I explained what had happened to one of the stewards and he had a word with the manager who endorsed our tickets so that we could return the next day. We went back to see rest of the circus performance which was excellent and well worth the entry fee on its own. Our opinion of Blackpool seafront on the other hand was that it was all rather shabby and in desperate need of a face lift.

The following day we returned to the tower, having a ride on a tram in the process, and took a ride to the top of the tower. We then returned to the camp site and started packing up for the run to the Lake District.

The run up to the Lakes was uneventful and we stopped to take on gas near Kirkby Lonsdale. We found the site near Ulverston, Priory View, without any problem but the road was very narrow and it took nerves of steel to get Harvey down to it. The site was huge but once again it only had pitches for a few vans so we had the place pretty much to ourselves. I was looking forward to re-visiting some of the places that I had been to as a youth, Coniston, Hawkshead, Windermere, etc. and showing them to Tricia. The weather, however, had other ideas as it rained torrentially almost constantly. One night we didn’t get any sleep at all because of the wind and rain lashing the van, we even had to bring in the slide out at 04:30 as its awning was flapping furiously and seemed like it was going to tear itself to pieces. We did manage to get out for about a five mile walk around the vicinity of the site, checking out Canal Foot and Morecambe Bay, picking wild raspberries from the hedgerows en route. The canal is the shortest, widest and deepest in Britain and was built to give ships access to the town of Ulverston.

On another day we took a ride round Lake Windermere and Coniston Water on the Guzzi’s, visiting Hawkshead on the way round. The roads were great, the scenery spectacular and the rain continual.

On a third day we had a trip on the Haversthwaite to Lakeside steam railway followed by a cruise on a Windermere steamer from Lakeside to Bowness. A couple of hours were spent walking around Bowness in the rain before getting the return boat and train to Haversthwaite. We got totally soaked on the short ride back to the camp site. So, in a week, we had managed three forays into the Lakes and now it was time to pack up and move on again.

We were unable to dump our holding tanks at Ulverston so took a detour to the Windermere Camping & Caravanning Club site to use their facilities. This done, we made for the M6 and headed north. We had a lovely sunny run up to Glasgow at which point it started raining again.

We just had an overnight stop in Strathclyde Country Park on the way up to Aberfeldy, which would be our next stop. We were motoring up the A9 when the engine started missing indicating that we had run out of LPG (the gas gauge is totally unreliable). Luckily I could switch to petrol and we continued on but, at 10mpg, didn’t want to be running on petrol for long. Checking the LPG finder we discovered there was gas at a service station a few miles ahead but it was on the other side of the dual carriageway and this entailed going farther until a suitable place to turn round could be found. Having done that at the A822 turn-off we then headed back to the garage and filled up with gas. We then had to travel south for a few miles until we could turn round again and head back to the A822 turn-off.

The decision had been made previously to take the scenic route up to Perthshire, leaving the A9 just before Auchterarder, at Greenloaning, turning onto the A822 and heading for Crieff. We stopped for lunch in the Sma’ Glen and arrived at Aberfeldy mid afternoon.

Bang goes another several hundred quid!

On the way up to Towcester to get the jacks looked at I found out that the bang we had heard on Saturday was a rear tyre blowing out. Getting it replaced involved sitting at Cherwell Valley Services for three hours. At the same time Tricia, who was following me on her bike, had broken down and was being recovered.

The jacks were looked at and pronounced knackered and one of the front ones that had been working was broken in the process.

We moved on from Oxfordshire to Worcestershire on Wednesday, leaving Tricia's bike in Oxford to be repaired.

The site at Hanley Swan is very nice, right at the foot of the Malvern Hills. We planned to do lots of sight seeing in the area but first we had to do some shopping and get some bits to fix the van rear lights and towbar socket wiring. We found a retail park near Great Malvern and got the bits I needed in Halfords. On returning to the bike I found that it wouldn't start and so we had to be recovered back to the camp site.

So now we were stranded with only our push bikes for transport, which we used to ride into the local village for essentials. I had to get a new battery sent up from Poole so it would be a while before my bike was serviceable again.

We had a visitor over on Sunday, a friend of ours from Tiverton, and she stayed until Monday when we went for a picnic in the Malvern Hills. The first bit of Cotswold sight seeing we had done.

The battery eventually turned up on Friday and we were able to ride over to Oxford and pick up Tricia's bike. We then rode the bikes down to Poole for the weekend on Saturday and returned to Blackmore on Monday.  On Wednesday we packed up and headed the few miles up the road to Shifnal near Telford in Shropshire.

Through the Keyhole at Beacon Hill

Our pitch was called Keyhole 7, hence the title of this post. Tricia's daughter Emma arrived with her little boy, Charlie, on the 27th of May and we were then kept pretty busy entertaining him but the site has a play area and a pool, both of which helped.

I finally decided on a motorcycle trailer from Indespension for dragging our bikes around and I took a run down to Southampton to give them our requirements. They built the trailer on Wednesday (the 2nd) but I couldn't get it collected until Friday the 4th. When we collected it it had a spare wheel but no carrier and no deck rings. We had to wait while the deck rings were fitted but the spare wheel carrier had not been delivered so they said they would post it on. When we got it back to the site I checked out the electrics only to find that the socket on the towbar was a real bodge job. With a bit of fiddling around I did managed to get the correct lights working most of the time.

On Saturday we packed up Harvey and, accompanied by Emma and Charlie, and towing the trailer with the bikes on board we headed for Gate House Wood near Sevenoaks in Kent. The journey was uneventful and when we arrived we found that the site is located in an old quarry and surrounded by quite a high bank (not good for TV or mobile phone reception). It is very well kept, with trees and shrubs around the pitches and a modern, clean facilities block.

The main reason for being in Kent is to do a four day LGV driving course which we started on Tuesday the 8th at 08:00. We got thrown straight in at the deep end driving an 18ton Scannia with a range change gearbox (an eight speed box split into high and low range and selected with a switch on the gear stick). We were pretty knackered by the time we finished at 16:00 and that was the pattern for the next three days too. We had a break over the weekend and tried to just relax and not worry about the driving. We had a lovely afternoon with some fiends in Bexhill-on-Sea on Sunday. On Monday we did some more practice and we took our tests in the afternoon. Unfortunately we both failed! We had a real Ogress of an examiner and we both failed pretty much on our use of the gearbox.

The rest of the week would have been doom and gloom but for a visit from our friends from Bexhill who spent the night camping in Harvey. I did manage to replace the dodgy trailer socket wiring with a piece of 7-core cable and get things working better but in the process found that there was a problem with wiring of the side lights on the trailer. The cable had been stripped at one place and trapped by a bolt in another. So the feed for the side lights had to be disconnected again. Indespension have ordered a new wiring loom for me but it will take four weeks to arrive so they are sending a complimentary tailer board on to our next site.

On Saturday we packed up Harvey again, hitched up the trailer and headed for the site entrance and the Motor Home Service point. We had to dump the tanks before leaving (a task we have pretty much mastered now, especially when there is a purpose built dump point as at Gate House Wood). We had to drop the trailer off and reverse up to the dump point so hadn't checked the electrics. After dumping and re-hitching the trailer we found that the brake lights weren't working on the van or the trailer. After about half an hour I found that the Scotch-lock connecting the US wiring to the UK light clusters was badly corroded and, after moving it farther along the conductor, got them working again.

Everything was going well on the journey (too well, perhaps!), and we were making good time, until we were cruising along the M40 and there was a loud bang and some crashing from the roof. A truck following some way behind started flashing his lights so I pulled off onto the hard shoulder and, risking life and limb, climbed up on the roof for a look. What I found was that the plastic cover for the front aircon unit had been ripped clean off. We decided that there wasn't anything we could do so we continued on.

We arrived at Green Hill Farm at around 16:30 and got ourselves set-up on our pitch. This is another well kept site near the village of Bletchingdon in Oxfordshire. We will be here for four nights in order to take Harvey up to LAS Motorhome Maintenance on Tuesday for them to look at our leveling jacks again.

 

On Wednesday we will be off to Hanley Swan near Worcester for a couple of weeks.

A short trip to our next stop

After a bit of shunting about at Huntick farm, we have now moved to our new location of Beacon Hill Touring Park about a mile up the road. This is a much larger site than Huntick Farm and, being the Bank Holiday weekend, it is mobbed with families. There are tents and caravans everywhere, on just about every spare inch of grass. We have Tricia's Daughter and Grandson staying with us and Charlie can recommend the paddling pool. The site is also surrounded by woods so there are plenty of places to explore. We are going to be here for the next week and then we will move on to Kent.

Up to the elbows in brown stuff

If anyone has seen the comedy film RV with Robin Williams they will understand that there comes a time that the holding tanks require emptying. Now, I didn't want to bore you all with the details but some friends of ours suggested, after having the saga related to them, that we should share the experience.

It all starts back at Hogleaze really. This was the storage facility that we were using near Dorchester. When it came time to move from there to our current location it was decided to do some maintenance on the van. One of these jobs was to sanitise the fresh water tank. This entailed pouring an anti-everything agent into the tank, filling it up with fresh water and letting it stand for thirty minutes. When the time was up the water had to be flushed into the holding tanks through all the various pipes in the plumbing system. This filled up the holding tanks, of course, but we had already checked that Hogleaze had a dumping point. What we didn't realise was that the access to the dumping point is at the side of the road and higher than our vehicle. The outlet from the holding tanks is gravity fed!

Oh, well. Not to worry we would dump our tanks when we got to Huntick Farm. Except that they don't have a drive over dump point either. So we used the loo but tried not to put too much water down the sink. Doing the washing up in the toilet block on the site and showering at home. After a couple of weeks of this we decided we had to do something about dumping the tanks, especially when the black water tank suddenly looked as if it was full, so we aproached another site that we new had the facility and asked if we could use it. They said we couldn't, we offered them money, they said they would get back to us. They didn't get back to us so we had a brain wave and booked in for a night at their most basic rate. That was OK and we duly turned up and were directed to the dump point.

When we attempted to connect the hose to the junction things went a bit horrific. The dump valve for one of the tanks had leaked and when the cap was removed all this extremely smelly liquid started to run out. Luckily we had bucket! With this drained we managed to get the hose connected and commenced to drain, what I thought was the black water tank. To ensure it was all gone I asked Tricia to have a look down the loo. She immediately shouted that the tank was still full and, having put some more water in, it was now filling the pedestal. We decided it must be blocked and when I went have a look there was Tricia with the loo brush almost entirely inserted into the loo. Thank goodness for surgical gloves!

Anyway, this was not doing any good and we were in danger of losing the loo brush, so we decided to dump what I thought was the grey water tank and leave the blockage for the moment. It was amazing then, that when I opened the grey water dump valve the blockage immediately cleared. Hey, ho. That's the last time I believe the labels on the side of the van. Some extremely funny person must have switched them at some point. Having now completed the operation we returned to Huntick Farm a little wiser and a lot smellier than we left.

It's Started!

I retired as planned on the 31st of March and we moved Harvey from storage to our first site, Huntick Farm Caravan Park, on the 1st of April. We are now living in the van but the process of moving all our belongings in is ongoing. We are also clearing the house ready for renting which will take another few weeks. Once this is done we will plan our next move and the start of our UK tour.

A New Year

Well here we are in 2010 and I am now almost a month into my notice period so it is real now. Retirement will happen on the 31st of March.

At the moment our plan is to move onto a touring site near to home at the end of March and get the house ready to rent. We are then going to start by doing a leisurely tour of the UK aiming to be back in the south when the MOT is due in September.

Once the RV is serviced and MOT'd we will be off across the channel and the adventure will begin in earnest.

In the meantime there are still lots of questions to be answered and lots of things to buy for the new life.