Saturday, 2 April 2011

Solar so good

Yesterday we had a visit from Chase RV Electricals to have our new Solar panel fitted. It would have been nice if the sun had made an appearance as predicted by the weather girl, but sadly it was overcast and very, very windy, which doesn’t help when you’re trying to install a large solar panel on an RV’s roof. The thing quite literally has a life of its own with a force eight gale blowing around your ears.

It took quite a while for the chap to fit the 125 watt Panel and the Sunsaver solar controller with the Fox D-1 display unit which now gives us a steady reading as to the state of the batteries charge. So with luck this will also help when we attend some rally’s later on in the year where there will be no electric hook up for a couple of nights. At least it should help power the 12 volt TV and the Led lights.

controller
Fox D-1










Kay had made a visit to the tea rooms earlier and had purchased a large walnut cake which due to our involvement with the fitting of the panel saved our stomachs (including the man from Chase RV) as lunch went past without being noticed. The chap fitting the panel had thirty years of RV electrical knowledge under his belt and soon spotted some areas that we needed to investigate further before setting off on our long trips abroad.

Having missed lunch we decided to head out to Gnosal for tea after the chap left, as we had spotted a good old Fish & Chip shop there on an earlier visit. On arrival the queue for food was huge, now I know its Friday evening, but this was ridiculous the place must be the only chippie for miles around. So we about turned the toad and headed off for Stafford only there was a problem with this plan, neither of us knew where the chip shop was in Stafford. Fortunately we were passing Tesco’s at the time, so the next thing we did was to get Britons favourite dish, Good old Curry in a bag.
We had just finished downing said curry (with a bottle of Red wine naturally) when we had a knock on the door, our friends Phil and Zita had popped over with you guessed it, with another bottle of Red in hand.

Today the weather started off miserable but soon changed to a glorious sunny day which was great as we had a visit from my brother and his wife, (secretly I think my brothers reliving the days of his youth with all these farm animals about).
We called over to the tea rooms with them and enjoyed a nice lunch followed by some of the farms excellent ice creams. I know its food again and I think I’m going to have to curtail all these visits to the tea rooms as the trousers are definitely getting a bit tighter around the midriff.

I never knew you could get so attached to animals on a farm; we get concerned when we see the gander wandering about squawking for its mate thinking has a fox attacked. The large Shire horse and the two smaller mares have become good friends often staring into the RV’s windows waiting for me to pop out with a carrot. The Guiney fowl running around comically like little old ladies with big bustles, as though desperate to not miss out on the gossip.
And a family of wild rabbits that have a warren right next to the RV who often pop out to play right under our noses.
So life on the Red Lion Farm is quite idyllic when the suns out, Kay sits in her chair in the conservatory (her term for the front passenger seat with all that glass about) knitting or reading.
And yours truly on the dinette either updating the blog or working on my three novels.

More Anon

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