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