Good News.... Bad News

First the bad news...



Yesterday we received the devastating news that my son-in law Gavin's father had passed away, needless to say we are all in a state of shock. Gavin and Kristina departed  first thing today for Scotland along with our deepest sympathy for him and his family.


"May your flight to heaven be on the wings of angels and in the arms of all those who have gone before"



On the RV front we've had some good news at last.....

The weight of the RV (which had been a major problem in our minds) turned out to be nowhere near as bad as we had originally thought.
This morning we drove down to Bridgend to use the  LPG facilities of the Countrywide stores and topped up the two long range LPG tanks. Each tank holds 100Ltrs though they never fill to more than eighty percent (due to expansion) so we loaded a total of 160Ltrs.
It was desperately needed as we ran out of Lpg just short of the Pencoed turn off on the M4 and completed the final section on petrol only. This was our first experience of topping up with Lpg and though at first daunted by the task, it went as smooth as clockwork.

Kay rode in the right hand seat (known as the death seat) of the RV for the first time and found it very alarming to see cars and lorries coming at her head on, to which I had a constant stream of her shouting  "get over, get over, get over."
Being left hand drive I have an idiot strip (and its needed) on the windscreen to keep me well left in the carriageway but for the person in the right hand seat it feels intimidating as everything is coming right at you, I've told her it will be far better when we get over to France.

Then we drove over to Swansea's municipal weighbridge and received the good news that we were well under the 7.5 Ton limit by 1 full Ton at 6.5 Ton and that included ourself the full tanks of fuel with nearly all of our equipment. The only items we need to load now are clothes and food of which we will be keeping to a minimum anyway.

Then it was back to the compound to store the RV, where we decided to take the Toyota back over and get it weighed as well to be on the safe side. The weight of the car came to 900Kg with a full fuel tank. As we are allowed a combined vehicle and tow limit at 8.25 Ton we can go back to our original plan and get the Smart Trailer and still have some weight allowance to spare.

Due to our uncertainty over weight issues and then the technical  issues of using an A Frame with the electric starter on the Toyota IQ (which could have caused steering lock problems) our departure date has been set back by one week to the 7th of February.

Light it seems, is at last at the end of the tunnel

Or is it some clown with a torch bringing us more problems?



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