St Thibery's shady olive groves

My sleuthing in the Departmental Archives, in Carcassonne, turned up an almost total blank so I'm not convinced that my family came from this part of the world despite an ancestor, Guilhaume Ferrier, giving Belcaire as his home town, on his marriage certificate, when he married in Edinburgh in 1758. I might come back and have another go next year.

The Plane trees of the Canal Du Midi

The site we were on was only a short cycle ride from the Canal du Midi and the tow-path is lined with Plane trees making it a very pleasant cycle ride through dappled shade. Plane trees are everywhere with many roads lined with them and it is said that these were planted by Napoleon to provide some shade for his marching armies. They shed their bark in odd shapes and the trunk looks a bit like a surrealist painting but they are very pleasing to look at. Along the tow-path we stopped at a mooring for a boat hire company and viewed the boats whilst drinking iced-tea. The boats were fantastic, some accommodating up to 10 people in relative luxury but they are very expensive to hire.

Eating Cassoulet at Camping La Pujade

Leaving Camping La Pujade was bit traumatic and involved Harvey's right front wheel being on the very edge of a drainage ditch that ran down the side of the road as I tried to avoid the trailer grazing a large boulder that had been placed at the entrance to the site. The trouble did not end there because after turning off the Carcassonne to Narbonne road on to the Bezier road at Trebes I had to negotiate a narrow bridge with a ninety degree turn at the end and just to make it more difficult a large truck was sat on the other side of the bridge waiting to cross. The trailer did clip the kerb that time. The road between Trebes and Bezier must be the worst I have ever driven on causing us to shake, rattle and roll the whole way.

When we got to Bezier I missed the turn onto the ring road and started heading into the city. Realising my mistake I took a left turn with the intention of turning round in the entrance to a building site, however there wasn't enough room to get the trailer to change direction so after going backwards and forwards a few times I was in a bit of a quandary. Luckily a lady, who spoke perfect English, came out of one of the houses on the other side of the road and told us that there was a turning circle at the end of the road. By this time a car was noisily announcing its intention to turn into the building site and a tipper truck was trying to leave so I managed to back onto the road and continue up it until I found the turning circle. It had been designed for cars and was in the form of a square so I had to mount the kerb on every corner but eventually managed to head back the way we had come.

St Thibery Motocross track

We arrived at St Thibery Moto-cross park in the mid afternoon only to be told that there was nowhere to dump our waste water. The tanks were full because there had been nowhere for us to dump at Camping La Pujade so things were a bit dire. We enlisted the help of a German family, whose daughter spoke fluent English and French, and finally got it agreed that we could use our macerator pump to empty into the chemical toilet disposal point. That done we set ourselves up on the site. There were no pitches as such just a large expanse of gravely hard standing in an olive grove with some electric and water points scattered about. The olive trees providing a bit of welcome shade for the motor-homes.

Our German neighbour was a bit concerned when he saw our air-conditioning units and went to some lengths to explain that they would trip the electric for the site and we would have no hot water for the showers. I managed to assure him, taxing my limited German to the extreme, that we knew this and only used the electricity to boil the kettle but I didn't mention the microwave oven. Having seen a moto-cross bike in his trailer I asked him about it and was told that he rode in the classic events and had had an accident cracking some ribs which has put him out of action for three months.

In the evening we headed into the village and found that a Jazz Festival was in full swing in the square in front of the Mairie and it was on all weekend. There were tables and chairs filling the whole square and it was heaving with people. Food was being served, a shame we had just eaten but we indulged in some crepes, and the wine and beer was just €1.50, the cheapest we had found so far. The normal price for 2.5cl of beer is between €2.50 and €3.00. The music was pretty good too, so we determined to come back for another look and some food on the Saturday or Sunday night.

The fountain in Agde - Tricia with Sid and Laurie

We had arranged to visit our friends in Agde on Saturday morning not thinking about it being change-over day and the roads being like a UK bank holiday. Only allowing ourselves about 20 minutes to travel the 11km meant that we ended up spending about 45 minutes in a queue on the main road before deciding to take to the back roads. Once Vias market had been circumnavigated we found it was quite easy to get into Agde by the back road and find their house.We had a lovely afternoon and evening in Agde, had a dip in their pool and ended up staying the night and travelling back to St Thibery after lunch on Sunday. Laurie and Tricia went shopping to the supermarket in the morning and checked out if the filling stations sold GPL. One did but as usual getting Harvey in and out was going to be interesting. It was so hot that while we were shopping in Hyper U we bought an electric fan.

A meal with the Glanfields

On Sunday night we went back to the Jazz Festival and had calamar (squid) and a pork escalope with frites which was pretty good for €11.00 for the two of us.

It was Laurie's birthday the following Tuesday so we arranged with Sid for us to come over for a surprise visit. The four of us went for a walk around the town in the afternoon, stopped for a café frape in a café near the river and saw some remarkable murals. After a cooling dip in the pool we went out for a meal together at the Poivre Rouge.

Remarkable murals in Agde

It was market day in Agde on Thursday and we had arranged to go over and have a wander round in the morning and go to the beach at Cap D'Agde in the afternoon. Tricia managed to buy some shorts and a dress and I got a fairly masculine looking man-bag for 3 Euros (not a wrist strap in sight).

The beach at Cap D'Agde was mobbed of course so we had to pick our way amongst the bronzed bodies in order to find a postage sized patch of sand and then expose our, still white, skin (OK then, my still white skin as Tricia tans really quickly).

Laurie and Archie having a dip in the pool

There was a good view of Fort Brescau, out in the bay, which brought back memories of a previous visit to Sid and Laurie in Agde in 1993 the upshot of which was that a not so good day became known as a Fort Brescau day. OK, on that previous occasion we took a boat trip out to the fort to discover we had arrived just as it was closing for lunch and the boat returned for us just as it was reopening. We had to spend two hours on the beach with no shade and no swim things or lunch.

Cap D'Agde beach with Fort Brescau in the distance

Before we left the UK Tricia had been told about a fantastic bridge that was somewhere in the Herault region and, on asking our friends about it, we learned that it was a viaduct on the A75 about 40 minutes north of Agde so we decided that we had to go and see it for ourselves. Tricia also liked the look of a mountain village with a châteaux called Najac so we determined to do both together. There was a visitors centre at the Millau Viaduct where the whole process of the construction was explained and even Tricia found it fascinating. It is an amazing feat of engineering considering that they built the bridge deck from either end sliding it out a few centimetres at a time until both halves met in the middle.

Tricia with the Millau Viaduct in the background

 We climbed a path up to a viewpoint and took pictures looking down on the bridge and the valley. I also got a few photo's of an eagle that was circling above the valley.

It was a bit further to Najac than we had calculated from the map so we didn't arrive until mid afternoon and the climb up into the village in the blistering heat just about did for us so we had a look in the church, which was lovely and cool, and then headed back down to the car and hit the road back to Millau. Since the toll on the bridge was €8.30 we decided to wend our way down into the valley and go through the town instead. Stopping for a coffee in a little café  where we watched the para-gliders flying off a nearby crag.

The Châteaux of Najac

On Wednesday we went to St Guilhem-Le-Desert which is a quaint mountain village that had built up around an abbey. We left the car down below in the park and ride and the bus took us up the narrow, twisty mountain road. After wandering round the village and the abbey for a couple of hours we had lunch on the beach, that is, on a sandy bend in the river below. After lunch we headed for Agde where we spent the night. Our friends were in Spain for a week but left us the key to their house so that we could use the pool. The following day Tricia did some shopping in the market whilst I spent time in the library using the free WiFi. I was planning our onward journey into Spain and looking for Aires that might be suitable for a motor-home the size of Harvey. After a last dip in the pool it was back to St Thibery and the roar of motocross bikes. The local club must be practising for a competition at the weekend.

The Abbey at St Guilhem-Le-Desert

We took Harvey to the Blue Elephant, a self service jet-wash, on the Friday to see if we couldn't spruce it up a bit. That was fun, we got soaked but managed to get a lot of the accumulated road muck off and Harvey is now looking much better. I even spent some time with the Autosol, later in the day, polishing the wheel trims to a mirror shine, while Tricia scrubbed the fly screens.

A street in St Guilhem Le Desert

Despite having spent two weeks near Carcassonne we didn't get a chance to visit the medieval city so we decided to go back there on the Monday of our last week in St Thibery. We had been there about 20 years ago but it would be interesting to see it again. It is an amazing place but unfortunately it is extremely commercial with every other shop being a café, a restaurant or a tourist tat shop. The entrance fee for the châteaux had gone up a bit too so we decided to give that a miss.

La Cite Medievale, Carcassonne

We left St Thibery on Thursday and headed down the coast, partly on the A9 to get GPL, to Latour-Bas-Elne which is just south of Perpignan. As usual gas is non-existent off the auto-route but even in the services getting to the pump can be tricky. There was a dangling height barrier of 3.3 meters designed to set off an alarm and stop trucks from entering the small vehicle pumps. As Harvey is 3.4 meters it would have set off the alarm so I drove round and parked by the adjacent truck pumps while Tricia went and asked if we could go under the barrier. She came back and said that we couldn't go under the barrier but we could enter the pumps from the “out” direction go around them and turn back again inside the barrier. This turned out to be much easier than it sounds, and several cars were doing pretty much the same as we were, so we managed to fill up both our road tanks and our domestic tank.

Now Harvey is parked on an Aire that is part of a motor-home dealership which has electric hook-ups and dumping facilities but no toilets or showers, so we will have to use our own. This will be our last stop in France for a while, the next will be near Barcelona and we will be heading that way on Monday.

Languishing in the Languedoc

The Bastille Day celebrations were a bit subdued, we had expected bands, fireworks, lots of dancing and drinking and the like but all there was was a brocante, a bit like a car boot sale, which went on for most of the day.

On Sunday evening there was a splendid fireworks display that we knew nothing about until they started going off. Lots of people had gathered on the other side of the harbour to watch and we stood outside the van with other camping-caristas (motorhomers) and we all went ooh, and ah, together.

The WWII submarine pens in Bordeaux harbour

Having checked out Laverie Automatique (launderettes) on the Internet and finding that the nearest were in Royan it was off in the car to do the laundry. When we got to the area of the first one it could not be found but we surmised that it had closed down and was now a clothes shop. After wandering round for a while and doing a bit of shopping in the indoor market Tricia asked in a dry cleaners and was told that there was one near a big supermarket a couple of miles away. There was no difficulty finding the supermarket and to our amusement the launderette was outdoors. Four washing machines and a tumble drier. We bunged in the laundry then went across the road for a burger while we were waiting.

Port Cailhau - Bordeaux riverfront

One of the reasons to revisit Mortagne was to be able to explore a bit more of the area around Bordeaux and I was hoping to get to see the submarine pens in Bordeaux harbour. So it was off to Bordeaux and after sometime spent searching for a suitable LPG service station for Harvey we found a park & ride on the outskirts of the city with a tram link that would take us to the centre and to the harbour. It was a bit of a hike from the tram-stop to where the sub pens are and by the time we got there Tricia was hot and bothered and totally underwhelmed by the whole experience. You can only enter the pens by appointment so I took a few photographs and we headed back to the tram-stop and took a ride into the city centre. The next couple of hours were spent wandering around taking photo's like a couple of Japanese tourists and stopping for a drink in a café in a little square. This was followed by a wander down to the riverside and then back back towards the centre to catch the tram back to the car park.

The Donjon overlooking the square at Pons

Tricia's brother and sister-in-law have a holiday home in Mortagne and they mentioned that a particular wine was pretty good and could be obtained for a reasonable price from a supermarket in Gemozac. The run to Gemozac was through fields of sunflowers which seems to be the main crop of the regions in the south but the town itself was a little drab and uninteresting so we carried on to Pons. Pons is a very attractive little town with a spectacular Keep dominating the town square with its modern fountains, just the place to sit in the sun with a cool drink.

We didn't think that we had gone very far east of Mortagne, down the Girronde towards Bordeaux, on any of our previous visits so when Tricia suggested we visit Blaye we thought it was going to be a new experience. Imagine the surprise then when we got into the town and found that we recognised the huge fortified citadel. The citadel has an enormous earthworks and several walls that would have had to be assaulted before getting into the town but luckily someone left the gate open and we just walked in. The town inside is quite quaint, with narrow streets, but, like a lot of these place, the buildings are no longer dwellings but are occupied by shops selling all manner of craft produce and tourist tat.

The cafe in the square at Pons

The ramparts of Blaye citadel

After spending ten days in Mortagne Port it was off to Toulouse. The town of Agen had been earmarked for the next stop over and a couple of suitable Aire's had been selected unfortunately we couldn't have got into the first one and couldn't find the second. After running out of gas and driving around for ages we found a picnic Aire and stopped for dinner and in the Aire was sign for a camping site nearby that accepted Camping-cars. So, despite it now getting late, we got the car off the trailer and went to see if we could find it. We drove around for a while and couldn't find the site that was advertised but we found another that would do so we went back to collect Harvey and went in convoy to the camp site. Camping Paradis at Montech was right on the canal bank and cost 5 euros a night in the car park outside the gate with no facilities or 10 euros a night for a space inside the gate with water and dumping (grey water only) but you could use all the other facilities. They had a toilet and shower block and a swimming pool so we decided to spend that night outside and move inside for the following night.

Leaving Camping Paradis near Montech

The next day a run out had to made to find an LPG service station and we had decided to reccy the next planned stop at Villefranche-de-Lauragais. On the way down to Villefranche there were no LPG stations and when we got there we found the Aire without any problem. It was in the back yard of Paul and Arlette Berniere and there was room for about six motorhomes comfortably although at one point he had nine or ten in. When we told him that we had an American camping-car he said he had had a Winibago and he had all the facilities we needed for a short stay. On the way back to Montech we took a run up the Autoroute, which was a toll road (peage), and found a service area with gas between two junctions and just down the road from where we were. Going through the entry toll barrier to the Autoroute we had forgotten about the bikes on the roof of the car and the ticket came out of the machine at the higher point, meant for truck drivers, so I had to jump out and reach up to grab it. Paying didn't seem to be a problem because you could do that at the upper or lower point. We then headed back to the site and a swim in the pool before dinner.

Aire de Camping-car Berniere

The following morning we headed for Montauban and the Autoroute between there and Toulouse and getting onto the Autoroute didn't pose any problems but when we arrived at the service area the LPG pump was on the far left, just before the petrol pumps, and our filler is in the right hand side of the van. We thought about for about ten seconds but the overriding criteria was that we couldn't afford to keep running on petrol so I turned around and pulled up to the pump facing the wrong way. After filling the tanks with 220 litres, and waiting till there were no cars coming in, I quickly drove round to the HGV pumps and the exit back onto the Autoroute. The next hurdle was the exit toll plaza and the toll for that section was 4.60 euros which we had in change the problem was the there was no change slot on the upper point only slots for cards (obviously truckers don't pay cash) so I had to lean out of the window to the point where I was almost falling out so that I could deposit the money. It took so long, however, that the barrier lifted before I had deposited the whole amount so we diddled them out of 60 cents. The rest of the run was fairly uneventful and we arrived at Villefranche in the mid afternoon.

Canal du Midi at Gardouch near Villefranche-de-Lauragais

The reason for us hanging about near Toulouse for a while was so that I could have a go at researching my family roots. Someone I had been in contact with had traced the family tree back to 18^th century Belpech and Belcaire so I wanted to corroborate what they had discovered. We had a trip to Belpech and a wander round the cemetery but didn't find any of my ancestors. I then decided to find the archives of the parish registers and found that this was located in Carcassonne. So we had a run down there one day and spent the afternoon in the archives looking at records of births, marriages and deaths or rather images of the microfiche of the ink splattered and moth eaten books. They were very difficult to decipher and I was going to need a day or two to do them justice so we needed to move closer to Carcassonne.

Camping la Pujade near Carcassonne

We had another Aire reccy day a couple of days later but didn't find anything suitable until we were heading back to Villefranche. We had seen the advertising signs on the way down and had earmarked Camping Le Pujade for checking out and it turned out to be a little camp site on a winery. The site is about thirty minutes from the Archives so is really convenient so we booked in by email (good old Google translate) and turned up yesterday (06/08/2012). Today I spent the day in the Archives and will be back there again tomorrow. Tricia plans to cycle along the tow path of Canal du Midi while I'm out.

Map of our progress reposted

Here is the map again as requested. I will try to find a way to keep a link to it on the home page. I am also trying to add photographs to each location but that may take a bit of time to master.



View Harveys Quest in a larger map

Finally Setting Out on the Big Adventure

We spent over a week at Ridge Farm caravan site, in Steep near Petersfield which included the Diamond Jubilee holiday weekend. We had a very busy time catching up with family and friends, some not seen for quite a number of years. We had a really good time and thank everyone one we saw for making it all so enjoyable.

Kennet & Avon Canal - Bradford on Avon

After Petersfield Harvey had to have a service and a couple of jobs done so was booked into Gold RV at Alton. We spent a couple of nights over at Poole with our friends, Kay and Kevin while this was happening and picked Harvey up again on the Wednesday lunchtime. It was then off to Marsh Farm near Trowbridge for a couple of weeks. The site was just a short distance from the Kennet & Avon canal so we cycled down the towpath into Bradford on Avon, which was about four miles away, a couple of times and had some walks along it also.

Knowing we were going to be in Trowbridge for a while we had arranged to meet up with an old colleague of mine and his wife in the local pub. Pub was a bit of a dive but it was great to see Norman and Carole again.

When we left Marsh Farm it was to go to an RAF reunion in Weston-super-Mare for ex-members (and one serving member) of 12 Signals Unit in Cyprus. This was celebrated by having a Meze in a Greek restaurant. It was good to meet up with people I had known well and not seen for years and I'm looking forward to next years bash. Hope it will be in Cyprus.

From Weston it was back to Alton to get a job done that had had to be postponed and an overnight stop in the car park of Gold RV, then on to Deal in Kent. The day of the ferry was fast approaching.

In the queue at Dover

A few nights were spent at Deal, about forty minutes from Dover, to say cheerio to Emma, Charlie and Jon and also Dave and Debbie. Then on Monday at 10:00 it was off to join the queues waiting to board the ferry. Watching the artic's going up the ramp and dragging their rear ends gave us a bit of trepidation but when our turn came we were directed to the lowest deck so it was a fairly flat run in. The crossing was very uneventful as was the disembarkation and I remembered to drive on the left leaving the docks. Tricia managed not to be seasick!

Tricia on the Ferry

Aire de Service - Le Crotoy

The next step was a short run down the coast to an Aire at Le Crotoy which was right on the estuary and very spacious. As we were out of LPG we decided to stay two nights here and spend Tuesday searching for a service station. One was found quite quickly on the A28 just south of Abbeville which would do the job. so we returned to Le Crotoy and spent the afternoon looking round the town. It has a nice beach and a quaint steam railway link to Noyelles sur Mer and Ault.

Steam Train at Le Crotoy

We liked Le Crotoy even though it was a bit touristy.

Relaxing with a beer at Le Crotoy

Thankfully our LPG adapter worked and we managed to fill the gas tanks and then make good time down the A28 as far as Rouen. Circumnavigating Rouen had been thought to be a bit of a nightmare but, despite not heeding Tricia's instructions, we managed to get onto the A13 and turn onto the N138 without any bother. The Aire for the night was at St Pierre-Des-Nids, south west of Alencon, and it was full of road mending materials and plant. However, we managed to unhitch the trailer and park the van, and headed into the town for a beer/wine. After chatting to one of the elderly locals, who recounted her war experiences and told us how happy everyone had been to see the English liberators, we popped into a little bar for a drink. Tricia managed to practice her French on the lady tending the bar and another of the locals.

Aire de Service - Saint-Pierre Des Nids

The following morning, awakened by the road crew arriving, the car was hitched up and we headed for Poitiers via Le Mans and Tours, arriving at where the Aire should have been at Jaunay Clan only to find it blocked off. A place to park was found in an out-of-town shopping centre's unused overspill car park. Luckily the 2.2m height barrier had been left open, and we walked over to the bar in the centre to get directions. The young chap tending bar explained how to get to the Aire de Futurscope, which would have been our next choice and we found this with no problem. The Aire was inside the Furturscope theme park and the ticket barrier was a bit of a tight squeeze both in width and height but once inside there was plenty of space for us to turn round and park with the trailer still hitched up. The tariff was only 2 Euros but the down side was that we had to be out by 08:00.We returned to the bar and thanked the bartender for his help.

The port from the Aire de Service - Mortagne-sur-Gironde

Up at 06:30 and ready to roll by 07:30, back onto the N10 and onwards to Angouleme, Cognac and Pons before striking out on the D6, a yellow road, for Mortagne-sur-Gironde. I had decided to approach the port from the east to avoid having to negotiate the town and the steep winding road down to the harbour so we turned onto the D730 for a short way and then onto the D245, which turned out to be a single track road. Luckily we only met one other vehicle coming the other way and managed to pass without any trouble. Unfortunately, after following the winding road for some two or three kilometers I took a wrong turn in Mageloup and ended up heading into Mortagne from possibly an even worse direction than the one I was trying to avoid. There were a few heart stopping moments as we drove up a very narrow street with cars parked partly on the pavement and partly on the road. Having negotiated that, though, it was a fairly easy run down the hill to the port.

The Bastille Day Brocante (Car Boot Sale) - Mortagne-sur-Gironde

One of our neighbours, the Storks

Saturday was Bastille Day and there is a fair on the approach to the Aire and there were stalls all along the road where we are parked so it was fortunate we arrived when we did and won't be leaving for a while.

Gosford Park

Harvey is currently on the Gosford Park CL site just outside Ottery St Mary in Devon. We arrived here last Thursday after a short and uneventful journey from Dorchester. On turning off the A30, though, the road narrowed considerably which made us a bit apprehensive  but when we reached the lane down which we had to go we gasped as it was barely wider than Harvey. Nothing daunted, however, I turned in and set off down it yanking a large amount of foliage out of the hedgerow on either side. On arriving at the entrance to the site the layout had changed from what we had seen on Streetview and I wasn't able to make the turn in without unhitching the trailer and reversing up a bit. Once on the site, though we set up camp in the sunshine.
 




The reason for being here was Jan and Ian's wedding in Exeter on Saturday, which went off very well with glorious sunshine for the photo's in the grounds of Larkbeare House. Later there was food and drink at Mazzard Farm near Ottery St Mary and this involved the imbibing of a small quantity of Otter beer (which was pretty good).






 Yesterday we travelled to Barnstaple to spend a couple of hours with Dave and Debbie, our friends from Bexhill, and returning via Tiverton we stopped at Bickliegh Mill for a cream tea.

Tomorrow it is off to Petersfield for about ten days so that Tricia can attend a work reunion and to catch up with friends and relatives in the Hampshire area. The distance is about 130 miles and it will take us around 3 hours.

Wallowing in the mire at Peterborough

By eleven o'clock on Wednesday 25th the waste tanks had been emptied and all was in readiness to move onto the car park, hitch up the trailer, drive the car onto it and strap it down. The best laid plans and all that, when the van started to move off the pitch it was quickly bogged down and no amount of to-ing and fro-ing was going to budge it. In the end a local farmer helped out with a tractor but the grass of the pitch was pretty ripped up by the time Harvey was off of it. By the time the trailer was hitched and the car was on it it was about 15:00 but we set off regardless.

Our arrival at Greetham in Rutland was going to be a bit later than intended so they were rung to explain and we were told that there was no entry after 20:00. Needless to say we were only as far as St Neots by that time so couldn't get into the camp site. Stopping for gas at Wyboston, the attendant said that if we were stuck we could stop the night on the forecourt but we decided to carry on and look for lay-bys to stop in on the way. At the time we didn't know that some sites had been flooded out so we weren't the only motor-home looking for a parking place. On the road between Wyboston and Peterborough the lay-bys were full of them in both directions so we turned round and headed back to the petrol station forecourt. It being 22:00 by this time we had a MacDonald's for dinner and went to bed.

In the morning it was up at 07:30, a cup of tea from the garage and then on the road to find a lay-by to hang around in until the show-ground opened it's gates at 10:00. One was quickly found with a snack van so we breakfasted on bacon rolls and passed a couple of hours reading. Then it was off to the show-ground, arriving at about 10:30 and joining a fairly short and moving queue we were soon allocated a huge pitch on firm ground near the metalled road. Our friends with the Four Winds Five Thousand weren't so lucky and ended up on a very soggy general area. After sorting the van out and having some lunch we headed into the show in the pouring rain. The exhibitors were still setting up and already it was starting to get muddy. Straw was being spread around in the tents but it did little to stop the conditions worsening. We had a shopping list so it was a case of tracking down the items and comparing prices from one stand to the next. In the main arena there was a display of static caravans and a van selling teas and coffees so we managed to grab a couple of seats at a table occupied by another couple and have a cuppa. Getting talking to the couple that we were sat beside we explained that, because we missed getting into our camp site the previous night we hadn't been able to fill up the fresh water tank. The chap, Malcolm, offered me the use of their 30l water carrier and a 12V submersible pump which I accepted gladly and after four trips to the tap we had a full tank of water. In the evening we headed to the entertainment venue and had a few drinks whilst listening to Keep It Cash, a Johnny Cash tribute band.

On Friday morning it was up with the Lark (09:00 for us) and then into the show to see properly what was on offer. It was a bit disappointing that, although there were more exhibitors than in previous years, there was very little in the way of motor-home parts so our list was not going to be reduced by much and in fact we saw some other things that we decided were bargains and should be purchased. Such things as two new 120Ah leisure batteries at £85 each. We bumped into Malcolm and June, the couple we had met yesterday, and arranged to meet them in the evening at the entertainment venue, which we did at 19:30. The entertainment was the Joe Loss Orchestra with Todd Millar performing hits from the '40's through to the '90's which was very good. Again a few drinks were had and we eventually got to bed about midnight. On Saturday a quick belt round the show in the morning was followed by a run to North Luffenham in the afternoon to visit friends. We went to the pub with them for dinner and had a very nice time, good company, lovely steaks and great beer. Thanks guys, see you again soon.

On Sunday, after days of continual rain, many of the exhibitors and several of the campers, including our friends with the Four Winds 5000, decided they had had enough and were heading home. Our friends had to wait an hour for a tractor to tow them out of the mud and there were hazard lights flashing all over the site indicating that people were stuck and needed a tow. In the afternoon the rain stopped and the sun came out for a while. We decided to stay on until Monday as did Malcolm and June so we met them again at the entertainment venue for another night of revelry this time accompanied by tributes to Gene Pitney (rubbish), Engelbert Humperdink (very good), Elvis Presley (quite good) and finally Buddy Holly (The Counterfeit Crickets, excellent!) Monday morning dawned nice and sunny and we brought in the slide-out, raised the legs and gingerly moved off the grass and onto the road. Once the trailer was hooked up and the car put on it we were off back to sunny Dorset.

Another Motorhome Show

Tricia and I are off to Peterborough in Harvey tomorrow, spending one night at the Rutland Camping and Caravanning Park near Greetham, then four nights at the Motorhome Show at the East of England Show-ground. It is about 223 miles so will take about five hours altogether (I only do between 50 and 60 mph). It will be the first time we have towed the car on the trailer so that will be interesting. I just hope I don't have to do any reversing. The couple that we are friendly with, who own the B & B near Dorchester, have headed up there already in their Fourwinds 5000 and we will meet up with them tomorrow. We have a shopping list as long as my arm and will be hunting down some bargains ready for our departure in July. We are also planning to meet up with some friends who live in the area and we haven't seen for a couple of years. There is no electric on the site so we will be relying on batteries and genny which will be good practice for wild camping in France. It will be back to Dorset next Monday.