Getting the escape pod ready

The wind has dropped at last so it was time to get out and start tidying up all the little jobs ready for Thursday when the RV goes in for its MOT.

Both the toad and the RV had a good wash down and small items like making sure the windscreen wipers are clean and the washer water bottle was full. Removing and storing the wheel covers, clean all the windows and check everything is working. I think we will leave emptying of the waste and water tanks till the morning.

The animals on this farm are real characters. As you work the Guiney fowl pester you, the cows come to nosey through the fence. The lady next door will have a fit when she gets back the Jerseys have just wrenched her smalls off the washing line, we managed to rescue her bra and the rest of the washing but her nickers are hanging from mouth of a cow and that’s where they’ll stay.

I had to run out again five minutes later as another decided to eat their electric lead to the hook-up and started to munch through it. Luckily I managed to scare the daft animal off before she electrocuted herself. They will poke their noses into everything even their cycles were licked and chomped.

BANG, I had the shock of my life, at first I thought Kay had dropped or blown something until she hollered out from inside that it was from the other side of the RV. When I went to investigate I found that I had left my tool box in full sunlight and in the lid of the electric box I had a gas soldering iron.

The heat from the sun must have expanded the gas in the small reservoir in the handle this had exploded and blown the lid off the box scattering all the electric connectors.

Lesson learnt do not leave tools in open sunlight, especially on hot days. Ah well back to finishing off any small jobs while the weather is still good

More Anon.

Boy I’m Getting Old

Last night Kay and I decided to pay the Bell Inn a visit in the local village of Haughton, as it was advertised that they were having a 60’s night with live music…well that’s our era, so off we went hand in hand down the lane to the pub.

It was a balmy night with a bit of a cold wind and the pub was fairly heaving with customers, so it was a bit of a fight to get to the bar, I ordered a pint of Mild for myself and a pint of Bitter Shandy for Kay and we sat down to enjoy the music. 

The advertising was spot on, the band was, (you guessed it) all over sixty years of age. I have never seen so many white haired old guys thumping out the old songs. It was a pity that the vocalist had a pronounced stutter, so "Ba Ba Ba Ba Ba Barbra Ann" took on a new twist as did "Do Wah Diddy Diddiy Dum Diddy Do". I couldn’t wait to hear their rendition of "I can’t get no s-s-s-s- satisfaction". 

Kay kept on giggling to herself remembering the sketch form “Only fools and horses” where the singer couldn’t pronounce his R’s so they came out as W’s and his rendition of Roy Orbison’s "Crying" was a real scream.

Watching the left handed drummer thump out the rhythm on a right handed drum kit made me realise why I'd decided to give up the drumming lark at fifty. Old drummers look so sad trying to emulate Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones (remember how sad an old fart he looked thumping the skins?) they should all have their drum sticks taken off them and have them publicly snapped in front of them to remind them to give it up (Trev Bathem if your reading this this applies to you as well..LOL)

Charlie Watts

To be fair to the old guys (Listen to me…. old guys!) the lead guitarist was a fairly accomplished player and they did put together some reasonably good harmonies, we did enjoy the music though for some reason I kept seeing the farm manager Elgin Sparrow-hawk from Green, Green, Grass on the mike (Ohhh Arrr Farmer Boyce).

Elgin Sparrow-hawk

The land lady (a very nice young woman) had risen to the occasion of the royal wedding and strolled around in a nice outfit supporting her NATO medal that she had been awarded for her time in Bosnia. But some of her female customers really do need to be aware that a gallon will not go into a pint pot the dresses were so tight that you were in danger of having your eye poked out just getting to the bar (which I visited a couple of times) so all in all we had a nice night out but Kay did wonder why I had a stupid grin on my face and kept rubbing my eye.

This morning although the sun shone brightly it was really windy with last night’s flags being fairly ripped off their poles. So we popped out to Hanley to do a bit of retail therapy and had a nice midday lunch a Trentham Gardens before returning back to the RV.

So now we have the two warning triangles that we need for use on the continent and a large map of Spain and four packs of factor thirty sun tan lotion (we live in hope).

More Anon

The royal WEE—K End

Last night the caravans arrived in their droves as the site filled up for the royal wedding weekend. A caravan club had arrived complete with marquee, flashing lights and bunting. Not to be out done, the owner added yet more union jacks to the site and trimmed all the grass. So to enter into the spirit of the royal occasion, down came our Help the Hero’s flag which was replaced with the cross of St George surmounted by the Welsh Dragon.

The owner’s son Graham is a really nice guy with a very dry sense of humour. After he’d replaced the flags I asked him what else they were doing to celebrate the day, he replied that they would be supplying Royal tea from the tea rooms. I asked what the difference was with normal tea and he replied none, but we charge 20p more pre cup.

The TV this morning is full of all the very minute details of the wedding to the point where I’m expecting a reporter to ask the road sweeper in the Mall if he was a personal friend of the couple!!!! 

We said goodbye to a young family we had got to know, they were one of the super bikes team (Team SGR Racing) as they left for a racing event nearby. Steve Kinghorn a nice Geordie boy with his wife and daughter Georgina who rescued an elderly chap from disaster last night as the driver tried in vain to reverse his caravan into its position. He jumped into the driving seat and in one swift movement had it straight into position.

Steve's drivers

Chrissy Rousse and Karl Corbett
with TT legend John McGuinness

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A quiet few days

Monday was a time to relax after the hectic weekend and we were pleased to see our friends Cedric and Dot arrive back in their huge Monaco Dynasty. There’s no comparison between the two RV’s Cedric’s is akin to a Rolls Royce where ours is more akin to a Ford Escort. Though size doesn’t matter does it girls?

Monaco Dynasty

We've been in touch with some of the members on the ARVE (American Recreational Vehicles Enthusiasts) forum as we needed to get some information on our intended drive to Southern Spain for the winter months and we've had some very helpful advice on where the best sites are for your Euro.
But getting sites in this country that are (A) easy to get to and (B) not ridiculously expensive for what they offer is much harder to find than we realised.

I don’t know what it is with the UK? (RIP OFF BRITAIN!) but the owners of some sites expect you to hand over a lot of cash and in turn offer you very little, and that includes the major camping clubs like Caravan Club and the Camping & Caravan Club.
The one we're on at the moment is a gem of a site, we've found the owners to be very accommodating and friendly, and this site is I’m glad to say an exception to the ones above.

Today Garry from Chase RV has called back to fit the eight external locker plunger switches (that he ran out of time to complete on Saturday due to the problems he encountered on the other jobs) so our security is back up to full scratch, as the old plastic switches were disintegrating and they kept giving us false alarms.
Another good job done by Garry we can't recommend him highly enough as he has done years of work on these machines so he really knows his stuff. Gradually all the things we planned to do are all coming together and once the MOT is done next month we will be safe and ready to motor on down the road.

We've waved Bye, Bye, to Cedric and Dott as they hit the road this morning as they are heading up to North Wales (make sure your passport’s up to date Cedric or the locals will lock you up with a flock of sheep and force feed you green Lava bread).

Two large Motorhome/ Vans have arrived on the site last night, (something to do with the Super Bikes as they are on their way to a meet locally) so the site is still quite busy even though the Easter break has finished.

Kay and I sat down and planned our coming stops and booked our next few sites, so far we're now booked up right through to the Western Motor home show in the Malvern's three counties show ground at the end of August.

More Anon

Busy Easter Saturday

Garry from Chase RV called over at 10.30 in the morning to remove the Maxview manual Satellite dish and fit the new Camos series 4 Auto seek Satellite dome and afterwards to redo the transformer to convert it to an automatic step up / step down change over system.

The sun beat down mercilessly on our heads as we both balanced precariously on the RV’s roof and alas the job turned out to be far more hard work and time consuming than either of us had planned. The existing Maxview unit was fixed into place with a square aluminium base sheet with no less than thirty two screws. These had to be removed as the new dome needed to be fairly flat with the roof. We would have liked to have removed the sheet altogether but this proved to be impractical, as the sheet was too well bonded with the roof and removing it would have caused a lot of damage.

The problem was that the bonding mastic was weathering, so most of the external mastic needed to be removed and the protruding four bolts cut flat then ground down to the roof level. After that new mastic was used to seal all the edges and any holes, including the centre 1” hole (that was also sealed with a plastic disk and plenty of mastic) as that hole went right through the roof for the internal controls.

Then the new dome was eventually fitted and new cabling put through for the Camos controller, all of which took most of the morning and well into the afternoon to complete. When we tried to locate the Astra 2 Satellite we had no signal as unfortunately a huge tree blocked the line of the satellite.

So we packed up the RV, moved the trailer and both the cars and then repositioned the RV. Success we now had a good signal and the TV burst into life, first job done.

Camos series 4

Fitted

The Old system

Now for job two, the Transformer !!!!!

Nothing ever goes as planned and after the mauling we had with the dome we should have expected it. Firstly the 2Kva Inverter had to be removed, that came out without too much hassle and boy did it weigh a ton!!! One benefit from the loss of that piece of equipment is that I now have enough spare weight to add my Cadac BBQ to the summer list that’s to be collected from storage.

Everything looked to be going fine with the Auto change over unit that was now fitted into the transformer's housing, I nipped inside and turned on the Onan 4Kva generator and the microwave inside worked a treat. So we now had 240 volt mains power automatically from the generator / transformer when not on mains hook-up without the need for me to go out a switch cables over etc.

Then we switched back to the mains hook-up and BOOM we blew the sites RCD’s and all the caravans on our side of the caravan site lost their electric (needless to say they were not happy with us).

Garry soon found out the problem who ever had done the original conversion had wired it in such a way as to confound even the most competent electrician, so he had to rewire part of the RV’s internal electric’s to get everything to work correctly!!!!  by now it was seven o’clock and we were gradually losing the daylight and the will to live….

Completed Transformer

We didn’t get round to replacing the locker plunger switches (all eight of them) but that we decided would be done later. Rhys kept asking every few minutes ‘whens the electric back on, whens the electric back on’ and sadly I got a bit short with him as I was getting quite tired, the girls who had been sitting outside in the sun wanted me to reposition the wind break as the wind direction had changed and they were getting cold (Ahh poor dabs, they never thought of doing it themselves of course.)

When Garry had departed and I struggled with aching back to get everything stored back into the RV’s lockers and singlehandedly drag a three hundred Kg trailer back for repositioning behind the RV, the girls  (with Rhys in tow) did disappear and return some time later with a bottle of much needed red wine and a KFC chicken meal that didn’t touch the sides going down.

On the plus side the chap next door gave me a tenner for the now redundant Inverter, which was now useless to me and just so much extra weight that I didn’t need, all I have to dispose of now is the old Maxview Satellite dish.

Sleep came easily last night and this morning the old back still hurts a bit, so with grey leaden skies we said our goodbyes to our daughter and grandson as they headed back to South Wales, and even though I was constantly pestered by the little monster, I do love him and will miss him a lot. But it’s great to not to have to trip over him every five minutes as he tries to (and successfully in most cases) wind me up, as there’s not a lot of room for one active seven year old and three adults in an RV of this size.

More Anon

A seven year old monster,

What fantastic weather! It would be nice to just put up our feet and sun bathe, but we have our seven year old grandson Rhys to entertain and sitting still is not one of his favourite pastimes unless of course he’s plugged into his DS Lite.

We had promised him a trip to the Bliss hill Victorian Museum in Iron Bridge, as he was doing this era as part of his school work so in a way it was an educational trip, Hmm you try telling that to a seven year old. ‘Can I play on this, can I play with that and I’m bored what’s next?’

He enjoyed the ride on the merry go round and the coconut shy but the Victorian School experience filled him with dread as he found it far to strict, ‘bring back the bad old days’ says I.

Victorian Museum

Ye Olde Merry go Round

Coconut Shy

The mine experience 

The Victorian School

drunken Recruiting Sergeant

After the museum we went to the Iron Bridge Gorge hoping it would entertain, well we enjoyed it anyway. To be fair it was a long day for him and he handled all the walking without any grumbling and that night, he was out for the count.

Iron Bridge

Nana & Pest on the bridge

Over the past two days another RV has arrived on site a huge Monaco Dynasty driven by Cedric and Dorothy. Cedric helped me with replacing the external Drive lights with LED’s as he had a large ladder that enabled me to get at the units easily and when one of the units had a faulty connector Cedric had the part and tools to hand. The one thing I’ve discovered about the RV community they are always ready to help if you get stuck.

So apart from the drive lights and rear cluster all the external lights are now LED’s my next job are the two internal 12” neon strip lights, after that all internal lighting will be LED. In the bathroom I’ve now replaced the old yellow plastic shower head and hose with a new water saving model in chrome.

Gradually our little home on wheels is taking shape and I’ve just had a call from Chase RV that our Satellite dome has arrived so tomorrow it will be installed.

Ah well back to the sun lounger

More Anon

Sore Feet

What a day that was! We got up early at 0600 hrs on Friday morning and off we drove to the Motorhome show at Peterborough. The drive was great being early as it meant we missed all the usual motorway road blocks and traffic jams that you usually get around Birmingham and arrived well and in good time at the Peterborough show ground, on what turned out to be a gorgeous hot and sunny day. We spent the day visiting all the shows stands and were lucky to get all the things we had on our shopping list and more, which entailed several trips back and fore to the car.

We met loads of interesting people like Pete & Shirl at the ARVE compound who we’d only ever met online at the forums and Duncan from Star Spangled Spanner, but sadly we missed finding Dave and Pauline Storr that we met last year at Gloucester and who must have been there, but that show is so huge that trying to find someone in that crowd is impossible. The only thing we collected that we didn’t want, was a pair of sore feet, so with a boot full of goodies and sunburnt to boot we headed back to our RV site Nr Stafford as we were expecting a visit from our eldest daughter and grandson for the weekend who were arriving that evening.

Yesterday and today were mostly spent entertaining a seven year old who wanted to see and do everything like playing football, which meant a trip to buy him a football and with the help of the farms favourite football playing pet dog Buster, is now a sad looking ball of teeth marks and bitten chunks.

We also treated him to a new bike so that he can ride around the farm without the fear of him getting run over, as you can see from the photo it was someone’s job to accompany him at all times, and he did nothing but moan, he must be the world’s youngest constant winger!!!

Oh Yes you can now ride!

No I'm Not

See you can do it!!!

Then he wanted to go fishing, so off we went armed with rod net and bread, alas he had to cross a field full of Jersey cows that meant he had to dodge loads of cow pats and of course they tend to be very inquisitive, as soon as we sat down to fish they approached in a big group and with the cries of ‘Bampi, Bampi, they’re getting closer’, fishing went out of the window and we made a quick scarper back to the RV.

If I don’t post on here for a few days, fear not, it’s just that I’m up to my neck catering to the whims of a seven year old pester monster called Rhys.

I will have loads of interesting info for RV’ers soon when I go through the process of putting all of the items we purchased at the show onto the RV or replacing things.

More Anon