Monday 31 January 2011

Saying Farewell

This will be the last week that we will be staying at Kristina and Gavin's for a while as the big moment to head out onto the road approaches.

So this is going to be a week of goodbyes,Crying face 

We will be having the occasional last luncheon with friends this coming week, Kay with her Sliming world pals and me with the Neath writers group and we will miss all of them, but we hope to pop back now and again to visit family and anyway they'll be keeping tabs on our adventure through this blog.

Today its been preparation day, loading our clothes and sorting where things will go.Fixing a few item, spraying silicon lubricant on the slide out rubbers and spray grease on the rollers tracks.

rv1

Final preparation the side outs out, sorting the storage and the toad waiting to go onto its trailer.

What is wrong with Insurance firms!!!!!         insurance-policy

(Jumps onto soap box)…….One of the big nightmares on traveling around this way is getting the right insurance cover. There are only a handful of Insurers that will cover RV’s such as Caravan Guard, the NFU, SureTerm Direct, Whittlesea, Comfort, Sheild, to name the few.

You start off by being as honest and forthright as you can by explaining what you need to have covered I.E.you have  big American Motorhome ‘OHH my god what is that?’ you have to explain every detail of what the vehicle is only to get the sound of someone chewing their nails.

But here comes the problem, some like Caravan Guard will charge you for twelve months cover but will only let you live in your RV for eight months and no longer. This it appears is because of the problem of Gypsies or “Travellers” using these insurance companies and then ripping them off with bogus claims.

So for the pleasure traveller who has no intention of ripping them off and is only interested in securing his vehicle. he’s treated as one of the above.

Then other firms lump huge increases on the cost of the cover if they regard you as a Full-timer or Long-termer, or they restrict the time you can use the RV abroad and limit your breakdown cover.

Surely it is less of a risk if the owner is living in the RV than one that is parked unattended in a compound. Hmm I think they need to re-evaluate how they work out risk assessment.

So you dream of retiring and to tour around and stay in a warm climate for six or seven months a year  in a nice large motorhome without the nightmare of being regarded by insurance firms as an unwanted minority group. All we want is to have decent insurance cover without being grouped as Gypsies.Steaming mad

The galling thing is that Gypsies or “Traveller's” who have never paid into the system are regarded by the government as an ethnic minority group and as such can claim loads of benefits from the state. Yet we “the even more minority leisure traveller” can’t claim anything (not that most of us want to) and we have paid into the system. How daft is that?

(OK Rant over)

We are fortunate that we are on the electoral roll at our daughters address and that this is our main base when not travelling (which we hope we will not use very much.) Well what's the point of staying in one place all the time when you want to travel?

 

More Anon

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