Back in Dorset

Before we left Tanner Farm we picked up a stowaway in the form of a mouse. We were watching TV one evening when it appeared from behind the dashboard and sat watching us for a few seconds before bolting back again. The next day we found nibble marks in packets and boxes that we had to throw out. I realised we would have to catch Mickey before he chewed his way through the vehicle wiring so we fed him up oats (we had found that he liked oats) to keep him from gnawing at other things. It didn't stop him eating some Holly berries from Tricia's Christmas arrangement though. I eventually caught him using a tin tray and a Pyrex casserole dish using instructions for a humane trap that I found on the Internet. We kept him captive in a storage box and fed him on oats until we were due to leave when Tricia took him down to the end of the park and let him go. We then took off before he could track us down again and headed back to Dorset to take up residence at Wareham Forest Tourist Park, which is located near Cold Harbour between Wareham and Bere Regis. We spent a lovely Christmas with some friends in Poole and I managed to catch up with some ex-work colleagues on Christmas Eve.

Last Thursday we took the bikes off the trailer for the first time since the beginning of November. Yesterday I charged the bike batteries, which had been indoors during the cold spell, and today I fitted them and we took a ride into Poole. It felt really good to be mobile again after the enforced incarceration of the wintry weather.

This weekend we are going to the Motorhome Show at Shepton Mallet with Harvey and hopefully we will meet up with some other RVers and partake of the entertainment.

Finally for this post, we would like to wish all our blog followers a happy and prosperous New Year.

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.