Getting used to the Car Boot sales & Keeping our fingers crossed.

Another successful Car Boot sale last Sunday, due in part to the fantastic sunny weather we had and this has helped a bit to lessen the financial damage done by the snapped timing belt. We hope to pick up our car this week from the repair man so with luck it will be available for this coming Sundays Car Boot sale which is now undercover in the town centre car park.
It can be quite enlightening this Car Boot thing and I defiantly met the next Dell Boy...
A young man of between eleven and thirteen years took a shine to a ABS rowing machine exerciser that I had for sale for five pounds.
'Ere mate how much for that?' he asked.
'Five pounds.' says I.
'Tell you what I'll give you three pounds fifty pence,' says he.
'Nope,' I replied. 'Five pounds.'
'Go on,' says he. 'Three fifty.'
'Look if your so desperate,' says I. 'Four pounds.'
'Go on,' he replies. 'Three fifty.'
After haggling for for what seemed like ages I dug in my heels.
'No it's four pounds or no deal.'
'I'll be back in a mo,' says he and disappears to return with his grandmother.
'Go on,' says his grandmother. 'Let the lad have it for three fifty.'
'Absolutely not,' says I. 'He's already knocked me down from a fiver.'
'Here,' she says handing the lad fifty pence.
'OK,' he says. 'Four pounds it is,' and off he goes happy as Larry
'Oy!' I shouted after him. 'Remember me when you make your first million.'
Don't you just love em.








Sold some other bits and bobs in the week so we keep on looking on the bright side and hoping that everything will pan out OK in the end.
We have contacted Freedom motor homes in Gloucester and will be paying them our first visit to look over some of their RV's as we hope to have one ordered before Christmas (depending on who offers the right RV at the right price of course) to avoid the rise in the dreaded VAT.






We have put our Pegasus 534 caravan up for sale.

It's all going to be in the timing now as we wait too see if our storage unit is going to be available at the end of this month, so we can start moving some items out of the house.
Will the Caravan be sold before I need to put it in storage?
It's keep our fingers crossed time and hope that all falls into place and that we don't have any more mishaps.
More Anon

Ohh... Well it could have been worse

Just had the estimate for the repair bill of the car OUCH...., needless to say it's well over a grand which will take a huge lump out of our moving fund you could say it very nearly wiped it out.
So there will need to be some careful financial management over the next month or so but it was something unforeseen and we will just have to muddle through well it's no use crying over spilled milk as they say.

The upside is that our son-in-law Gav has been a gem, he has offered us the loan of his estate car so that we can keep on track with the Car-Boots and shifting any more rubbish as my car will not be available for at least ten days.
One lesson learned... even when you've planned for a rainy day as we did, it can still be not enough in some cases.

We are keeping an optimistic outlook and the Car Boot last Sunday went well and we have planed for at least another four more over the next four Sundays.
Now It's all down to the signing of the contracts on the 5th and the move out to our daughters by the end of October / November by then we should have had the car back and we can start looking at some more RV's.

We've plans to put our caravan in storage locally and if everything works to plan it's where we will put the RV temporarily until we have a towed vehicle, (AKA a Toad ) something small like a Smart to hitch on the back but the issue here is do we use an A Frame or Trailer?

More anon

Ohh….. The fickleness of fate

Well things were going too smoothly weren’t they, we had packed up loads of stuff for storage, rubbish was being dumped and the Car Boot sales were looking good, something had to go wrong.

Driving out of town from a writers group meeting (bang), it sounded as if a spanner had been thrown into the engine, worst of all it was the rush hour and I was in heavy traffic.

I managed to pull over into safe location and with some panic managed to get the recovery people to collect the car.

My eldest daughter with Kay attempted to come to the rescue but you guessed it, while on their way to meet me they broke down as well, this was turning into my worst nightmare.

Travelling back with recovery man we passed my daughter at the side of the road. He leapt out and had a quick look at what the problem was and hey presto, fixed it in two seconds. The problem it turned out was the clutch cable which had come loose. She was very relieved that it wasn’t going to be a major repair bill and has now has her car booked in for a new cable.

OK I was now back home and the recovery man gave me the bad news, it looks as if the timing belt on my car had snapped and I could be in for a major repair bill. Bleeding heck I was really miffed as the car had only done 25,000 miles from new.

The car was then delivered to a garage for assessment which I’m still waiting for and I will let you know anon what the outcome is.

This was the last thing we wanted. We had intended to visit my eldest daughter’s caravan near Tenby today to take down the awning and pack things away for the winter and we had loads of things to take to the Car Boot on Sunday.

'Ahh… well' Kay said. 'Let’s take each day as it comes and work through the problems, we can leave the packing down of the awning to another day,' she reminded me. I just hope the weather holds out. My youngest daughter’s partner has offered me his estate car to take things to the Car Boot tomorrow so now it’s just the problem of the repair bill and when we will get the car back.

Keep following the blog and we will let you know the outcomes

More Anon.

Give us 50p for your old car boot mate?

It’s amazing how people want something for nothing these days.

‘Ere luv how much for that pack of old underpants?’ barks an old biddy.

‘£2.50 dear,’ I reply. A bit miffed as they’re a new unopened pack of three that originally cost £5.00.

‘I’ve only got £1.00', she answers.

‘Go on then take them,’ I reply. ‘Your old man must be desperate.’

We’ve just completed our first car boot to get rid of some of our load O’ clutter and it went reasonably well. We didn’t overload ourselves but still made enough to pay the Solicitor his deposit.

Every bit helps I’m reminded and it gave us the chance to see what the punters are looking for, so next time we will be more prepared.

We found it quite enjoyable, though if you haven’t done one before be prepared to be mobbed by a hoard of, not punters, but the professional Car-booter’s as soon as you open the back of your car. They descend on you like flies on a carcass even before you get your table up.

We were there for barely three hours and most of the stuff went but as soon as we arrived back home it was in the shed, up the attic and under the stairs, digging out loads more junk for next week’s foray.

My Daughter commented on how empty the house is starting to look, but as I look about me while I type this, I can see there’s still a mountain of stuff to clear and we haven’t got to the big stuff yet.

More anon.

Sorting out the years of Clutter

One of the biggest problems at the moment is the amount of things we need to get rid of or store. It comes as quite a shock when you climb into the attic to find a sled that we returned from Germany with thirty two years ago still rusting in piece covered with cobwebs.
Needless to say we are being quite ruthless, if it's of no use in the RV or of use in later life then it's pointless keeping it.

We visited several storage people like, Enterprise, Store-it and Store-with-us and they're not cheep so check around. We did manage to get a reasonable rate when we mentioned that it would be a long term store. Then there is packing material and cardboard boxes to purchase. Car-boot sales, the local recycling tip, shredding years of collected paperwork and all the clothes you've collected that have only worn once or sometimes never, needing to be culled.
I  have thrown out socks that have never been on my feet and there will be shoes that probably have seen nothing of the road and only the inside of the cupboard. How come we buy all this rubbish? most likely it was an impulse thing. Well that will all come to a grinding halt, if it don't do several jobs at once and take up as little space as possible its out.

We're not down hearted about it as if the deal on the house should fail at the last hurdle we can congratulate our selfs on having had one almighty clear-out.
Reselling things on Amazon and EBay have proved useful at least we get something back, after all one mans rubbish is another's treasure.

We have worked it out that it's only seven weeks before we need to be out of here and in our daughters so its boxing this and throwing that and steadily chipping away at the rubbish mountain.

OK its back to the trash box.
More later.

A Frog or a Prince?

We have been looking on EBay, the MMM magazine and Dealers web sites for our potential new home that we will live in for at least the next seven years so it has to be right first time.
Unfortunately some of the potential RV’s were too far away for a proper inspection but we did see two likely candidates locally. So after a couple of phone calls we arranged a visit.

Visit No 1


A lovely Four winds Windsport 2008 it ticked all the boxes so off we went to meet a wonderful gent of 74 years that informed me he had just passed his HGV for a larger model hence the sale.
(There's hope for me yet).
The RV was undercover in huge garage and the condition was first class with many extras, I fell in love with it straight away. We were given a good look around and we thanked the gent for his time and help.
This was without doubt a PRINCE the only downside for us which Kay had picked up on, was the lack of storage space especially for clothes (trust a woman to spot that one) and the asking price. We had set a budget and unfortunately it came in well over that (my fault for mixing up the reserved price and the offer price).
So with deep regret it had to be rejected.

Visit No 2
(no Image)
A dilapidated Fourwinds Windsport 2000 this was without doubt a FROG. The asking price was £32.000 well within budget, but Ohh…. dear we felt as if we needed to wipe our feet on the way out it was in such a deplorable state. At one time this would have been a nice unit, but neglect had severely damaged the machine. The huge awning was missing and when I asked where it was he pointed under the RV to the ground where it lay mangled and dirty. ‘It blew off last week but we can come to some arrangement,’ he said.
We came away laughing like school kids at the cheek of it. I would have offered him £5,000 to drive it away to a company to totally gut and refurbish it then it would have been worthwhile, but to be honest I didn’t want to go to all that trouble.

We are planning a visit to a couple of dealers to view some of their RV’s and we will keep you posted on the outcome, but we have to be very careful on what we select. Thank god for the Full-Timing and motor home forums where we post and receive some very good unbiased information. We are joining the ARV Club were we will receive the ARV magazine so that should be helpful.

If anyone is planning to do what we are doing you really do need to do some research, like what are the going prices for the units you’re looking at, what are the legal aspects such as weight and what your licence will allow you to drive. The big one is what to look out for when doing an inspection i.e. damp, legal ownership, MOT & Servicing records, the right layout and so on.
The dealer would be a safer route but obviously more expensive, as they have to make a profit so its swings and roundabouts.

Anyway wish us luck on our future home hunting.

Well laid plans of Mice and Men

Kay & Stu

OK we’ve gone and done it! I know some will say ‘you Bl***y fools and at your age.’ but life I reply is not a rehearsal and you only have one chance, so for us this is it.

What am I getting on about? Well changing our life style to one of a dream that has been in our minds for the past two years. My good wife Kay and I have decided to sell our home of the past thirty two happy years and purchase a large American Recreational Vehicle AKA an (RV) to spend as much time as we can touring the UK and Europe.

We will be residing occasionally with our youngest daughter and her partner for short periods now and again as that will be our permanent address in the UK but for the bulk of the time we will live like nomads enjoying the freedom of visiting places we have always wanted to see.

This was a practical solution to an old problem that was beginning to get worse.

The passing of time tells me that age doesn't come alone and that it was getting more and more difficult to keep the garden and house in the condition it now enjoys. Several years ago health problems meant that the ability to do certain things would become harder with each passing year so it had become time to think of downsizing.

We did look at several bungalows not long ago, but either the location or price dictated that was not feasible.

So purchasing an RV  and to enjoy the freedom of exploring what we had both enjoyed with our caravan whilst moving in with a daughter who has the room to spare and for us to use as our main base had some good benefits.

Firstly it enabled us to keep our roots in Kay's home town I.e. doctors and such, but secondly we would be away from under their feet for most of the year. 

After all would you want aging parents cramping your life day after day? I know I wouldn't and we wouldn't blame her for not wanting that either.

Both of our children are grown and have families of their own and we were left with a three bed semi with a large garden and a future of watching the sun set each night on a large council estate waiting for the grim reaper to visit.
At first our small close of a dozen houses was a haven of peace and quiet but as the older generations have departed it bit by bit (literally in some cases) and the younger more vociferous generation are moving in.

There is only so much F’n this and F’n that, that you can take and when you see the very young of these families repeating their parents not only disrespectful behaviour and language but their ignorant ways. You start to realise that all the love and attention you have given to your bricks and mortar can soon mean very little to your comfortable quiet life and possible future safety.
Though to be honest, that can happen wherever you decide to live theses days from a palace to a flat.

We suddenly realized that the house had become a comfort blanket and what we asked ourselves had happened to our sense of adventure?

We had toyed with the idea of renting but were soon put off that by the nightmare stories of properties being trashed. Also we didn’t want the constant worry of returning to a home that would possibly need major reinvestment to get it back to its normal well loved state, the hard work that would have involved and we would still have our original problem of maintenance.

Well we said to ourselves it’s either now or never and as all our collateral was invested in the house it was time to sell up and get on with it, so we put the plan into action on Monday the 23^rd of August.

We expected it to be a long drawn out process, well houses weren’t selling and mortgages were hard to come by and cash was short due to the recession.
Oh how wrong we were!!!!

We rang three estate agents on the Monday the 23^rd of August to arrange valuations. One arrived on the following Wednesday the 25^th and on Thursday the 26^th, the other two arrived. We opted for one who then arrived back on the 27^th to talk through the process; he arrived back again on the 31^st to take photographs and announced he had a potential buyer who would like to view that Friday. Yee gods we thought this is moving too fast!

On Friday the 3^rd of September the buyers came and very nice they were to. They had a good look around and requested to come back the following day Saturday the 4^th to view again which they did.

This was moving far faster than we had ever planned for and knowing how that the housing market was depressed, had expected that the property would have been on the market for at least a year. We had also decided that if after a year it hadn’t sold, we would cancel our dream and stay put, well time after all is against us at our age.

 The offer came back on Monday the 6^th of September and we are due to sign contracts by the 5^th of October.

Good God! We realised that all this had happened in just under a fortnight. We had yet to arrange selling off of some of our furniture and goods. The Girls would take some and some would be trashed being too old or of no use and something’s would go in storage.

We can’t purchase the RV until the sale of the house has gone through so we will just have to keep looking and viewing potential units.

Kay is a really organised lady and to keep me in tow has laid out our entire plan on a flow chart. The pair of us sat down with butterflies bouncing around in our stomachs as we suddenly realised it was all Go, Go, Go.

The reason I am writing this Blog is twofold it will remind us of how far we are through our dream, complete with trials and tribulations and hopefully give useful information to others intending to go down this path.

So keep tuned in and enjoy the ride!!!!!!!!! We look forward to comments from other people intending to do the same or even if your wish is just to see two old fools behaving like teenagers.

Just for us to remember what the old house looked like when we left it here is a selection of the photos that the estate agent took

The front

Our kitchen

Living room

Main bedroom

My Playpen at the bottom of the garden

Dining room

The conservatory

Second Bedroom Kay's Office

Rear of the house

View from my Playpen

My Grape Vines and the Patio

The small bedroom

And finally the Bathroom

P.S The photo at the top was taken when we were caravaning at the Leek C&CC Site two years ago, thank god we've both lost a great deal of weight since then which means we can carry more load in the RV.