Month: July 2018

July 31st 2018.

Since our return from Lake Vyrnwy we emptied out Homer and reassessed the contents and in some cases, where things were stored, some items have been put in the garage as we only need them in the winter, whilst a few extras have been loaded aboard as we hope to be away for 7 weeks. One extra is a Remorska cooker which I have read about in other blogs and heard good things about, after losing out on two attempts to buy one on ebay I got a refurbished one directly from Lakeland at a price less than one on ebay and it comes with a twelve month guarantee. On a trial run I successfully cooked a cake and a loaf of bread.

Prior to this I had replaced the seals on the toilet as I believe they were the originals and I also installed a valve between the gas bottles to enable the swap over to be easier, hopefully bringing an end to trying to attach a new bottle in lashing rain or in pitch darkness holding a torch between my teeth. We have aboard two UK gas bottles, calor light, and also a french gas bottle known as “a cube” this is also a lightweight bottle and as its name implies is a cube shape. This is useful as it means we can change it in France when it runs out and only use the UK ones as back up.

We left home this morning accompanied by my 95 year old mother, we are comfortably but not excessively laden for our first stage of our trip down to the Dordogne. We travelled here via the Cotswolds including driving up Fish Hill near Broadway, last time with a defunct turbo I struggled in 2nd today we flew up in 3rd.

We are tonight on a CL site at Lindfield near Hayward’s Heath West Sussex. My sister lives in the area and we have used this site as a stopover on our way to Dover, the site isn’t easy to find but is in a pleasant location with friendly owners. My sister and brother in law collected us from the site and provided us with a meal and a drink or two and we caught up on family gossip before returning for the night leaving my mother with them for a short break.

Tomorrow we head to Dover and France and then will find somewhere to stay tomorrow night.

July 23rd 2018

Our daughter Steph and her partner Will plus Poppy the dog are holidaying in the area and they came to collect us from our site so we could spend the day together. I suggested visiting Pistyll Rhaeadr waterfall with its 73m fall is the highest in England and Wales and wasn’t too far from the site.

A swift journey there, the latter part being on a single track road with passing places bought us to the head of the valley and the waterfall. Here is situated a lovely cafe/ tea room that produces reasonably priced meals in an old stone building that also provides b and b, it is literally 30m from the foot of the falls, it is all private land here and you have to pay £5 for the privilege of parking next to the cafe but that is for a day. Many people use it as a base for walks in the nearby mountains. There is also a basic camp site here.

We spent a quite some time marvelling at the falls even though there has been very little rain recently they were still something to marvel at, some brave souls even swam in the pool at the base of the falls, in our party it was only the dogs that did. Quite a few people were visiting and there were tourists of many nationalities that had made the journey to discover the waterfall.

We had lunch in the cafe and afterwards took the long and in places steep walk up to the head of the falls, approx 20 mins if you are fit, the view from the top is spectacular and if you were brave or foolhardy enough I’m sure you could lie right on the edge of the falls and take a photo looking down, I’m not, so my photo is a little tame. There’s loads of pools at the top and the dogs enjoyed playing in them, Steph got her foot stuck in the mud and lost her trainer so had spend some time paddling to clean herself up. After making our way back down again we treated ourselves to an ice cream.

Michelle and I enjoyed the visit as the last time we had been here was on New Year’s Day in 2008 before we were married, we took a selfie that day which we had printed and is displayed on the wall in our house, today we took the opportunity to repeat the photo shoot and will put the photo with the original one.

Check out this image I made using Diptic!

July 22nd 2018.

Today we drove from Hope in Derbyshire to tonight’s small site called Wern Oleu nr Llanfechain in Powys. We are here because tomorrow we are meeting up with our youngest daughter and her partner who are holidaying in the area.

It was only a 100 mile journey today but like many journeys in the UK if you want to go from West to East or vice versa it is never easy, Thankfully for a Sunday in July when the children are on holiday the roads weren’t too busy, one stretch of road the A54 from Buxton to Congleton was quite a challenging drive. It was very up hill and down dale with many twists and turns and most of it we completed driving through thick cloud.

Apart from one part of the journey where they had closed the main A road and we had to find a detour the sat nav managed the route quite well taking us to within metres of the site. You couldn’t have a greater contrast between last nights site and tonight’s, the Derbyshire one was large with probably approx 150 units ranging from small tents to static caravans. Tonight on site there is a car and caravan plus us in Homer and all we can hear is the bleating of sheep and mooing of some calves in an adjacent field. We’ve walked into Llanfechain which has little to hold our interest and enjoyed a ramble around the narrow lanes now time for a glass of red.

July 21st 2018.

After 5 or 6 weeks of almost continuous sunshine and dry weather we had a shower of rain last evening and today is a little cooler and clouds have built up slowly during the afternoon.

This morning we decided to walk to Castleton which is just over 2 miles away.

We walked there via a footpath across the fields from Hope, it was a pleasant walk with an interesting variety of stiles, gates, stone steps built into the dry stone walls etc to obstruct our way.

Castleton is situated at the head of the Hope Valley just before the limestone gorge of Winnats Pass which is definitely not motor home friendly. Towering above the village is Mam Tor at 517m high.

The area was first settled by the Celts although there has been evidence of earlier civilisations, they were superseded by the Romans who discovered and mined lead in the area. Overlooking the town is Peveril Castle bequeathed to William Peveril in 1086 by William the Conqueror.

Castleton is also known for the four underground caverns that surround the town that you can pay to visit, they are Blue John Cavern, Treak Cliff Cavern, Speedwell Cavern and Peak Cavern.

BlueJohn and Treak Cliff caverns are famous for their mining of the semi precious stone a yellow and blue fluorspar called Blue John which is unique to this one place in the world and is made into jewellery and decorative items.

After we returned to the site we had a relaxing afternoon whilst Alison and Peter went off to ride their bikes on the Monsal Trail a eight and a half mile stretch of former railway line between Bakewell and Blackwell Junction near Buxton. It has several tunnels where lighting has been installed and the route resurfaced making it ideal for cycling.

Saturday night is chip van night on the site so we indulged ourselves in its wares instead of cooking an evening meal.

July 20th 2018.

We drove from last nights stop the short distance to Buxton where we managed to squeeze Homer into a small car park below the railway station.

Unfortunately due to parking restrictions I wasn’t able to give the time to take many photos of this beautiful spa town which is about 1000ft above sea level and is renowned for its Georgian and Victorian architecture. Much of its splendour is attributed to the Duke of Devonshire who wanted Buxton to rival Bath as a spa town.

Buxton has natural thermal springs at a constant temperature of 28 degrees and their properties have been in use since Roman times. Amongst its architectural gems are the Devonshire Dome on what is now the university and it has a larger span than St. paul’s cathedral, it also has an exquisite Opera House which each year hosts performances of many different genre.

Our time here was limited so we mainly made use of its shopping facilities to restock with a few food items, dog treats for Layla and a pair of shorts for me, sale item of course.

From Buxton we drove the short distance to the site we are staying on for the weekend, Laneside Caravan Park near Hope. It’s a largish commercial site providing pitches for tents, caravans and motorhomes on a mixture of grass and hardstandings. We have met up here with Alison and Peter who are becoming regular motorhome buddies.

After consuming several teas and coffees and putting the world to rights plus catching up on gossip since we last met, we went for a walk on a public footpath across fields to the village of Hope. This is a small village in the Derbyshire Peak District and is situated at the point where the River Noe and Peakhole Water meet.

It has a few shops and cafes plus pub and a Chinese an Indian takeaway so enough to provide for a stay on the camp site.

Thursday 19th July 2018

This evening we are camped up at Whitehouse Farm Barn CL site in Derbyshire at the princely sum of £14 for the night including electric hookup. It’s situated close to the famous Tissington Trail, a quiet site with good walks for Layla who is currently panting under the table after having a 20 min stick chasing session.

On the way here today we stopped for an hour in Ashbourne, a place we have visited many times and enjoy returning to. It’s a market town in the Derbyshire Dales and contains many historical buildings, it’s also famous for its historic Shrovetide football match which resembles nothing like any football you would pay to see and more resembles a free for all rugby game.

One butchers shop had some amazing eggs.

Other historical interests.

Check out this image I made using Diptic!

Sat 7th July 2018.

For some reason this post got lost in the time travel to and fro satellites and has only just re-appeared! So is published out of order.

Slowly during the day more family members drifted in to the site until we totalled 20, which was about 10 less than last year.

A quick trip to Tesco’s procured the necessary food for the afternoons get together and at 1pm we fired up the bbq, we had the pressure of a 3pm kick off for England v Sweden World Cup match so the demand was for all to be fed and settled down in time.

Thankfully we managed this and half the throng sat down in front of the tv whilst the others continued to talk non stop which is the norm for the weekend, thankfully England won the match and are through to the semi finals, it was great to hear the roars echo around the campsite as England scored their two goals and an extra loud one when they won, there is definitely a party atmosphere here. One couple at the Bash were celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary and another member his 50th birthday so there was cake a plenty and bottles of fizzy popped for a while.

The end of the afternoon culminated in the tradition of a group photo.

July 9th 2018

Following the departure this morning of the last of the weekend participants we said farewell to my cousin who organises the annual event and motored off to Stamford a short distance away, even though we had programmed the sat nav to avoid the A1 it still took us on that route, I’m sure we are supposed to be in charge of these instruments!

Finding parking in Stamford isn’t easy I use Parkopedia as my guide it didn’t show a great deal of hope as most car parks had height barriers, there were road works and diversions in town and luckily they sent us on a route which passed Morrison’s with their large car park which we took advantage of.

We spent an hour in Stamford and could easily have spent at least double that but conscious of where we had parked we limited our time. It’s a beautiful unspoilt town and even buildings such as an unused church have sympathetically been converted into other use. It has a long history from Roman through Boudicca , Anglo Saxons, Danes to the Normans who built a castle there about 1075. Stamford stands on an ancient Roman Road which centuries later became a coaching road, the Burghley family, commencing with Sir William Cecil later Lord Burghley first minister of Queen Elizabeth 1st, having huge influence over its development across centuries.

When we left Stamford we motored a short distance into Rutland county and on to Rutland Water Campsite adjacent to the sailing club on the edge of Rutland Water.

Rutland is the smallest county in England and is another one I can tick off my list of counties stayed in, Rutland Water is a man made reservoir built during 1971-1975 and opened in 1976 as a water source for Anglia Water. The area provides a variety of water sports and it’s possible to cycle or walk around the perimeter of the reservoir.

The site has a number of touring caravans around the edges of the field that are obviously permanently sited here, there is no site hut and no one here to greet us and tell us where to park ( so different to the little Hitler rule enforcers on Caravan and Motorhome sites) speaking to one of the occupants of a caravan we discovered the owner of the site was away and we were expected to put the camping fee in a provided envelope and post it in the honesty box. What a difference.

The site is basic providing only water and a toilet emptying point but is in a good location and at the moment certainly quiet, we’ve had a good chat and swapped visits and information re solar panels, layouts etc with a neighbouring motor-homer.