On the Road Again... Again

Day 2 is Monday 1st December.  It was raining again and so we togged up with our waterproof trousers as well as wellies for Claire,  and walking boots for me. Reggie was wearing his overcoat that looks like a mini horse blanket. It was a little muddy at first but the massive parking area is actually sheets of metal laid out to make a massive floor. The walkways threaded along the roadways and the same stuff as the parking. The market is quite phenomenal with so many stands. Selling all kinds of baubles and things, as well as food! We invested in a bratwurst for lunch. It's de rigeur at a Christmas Market.  We also bought some pies from an artisan bakers. These lasted two days. The Bakewell pudding we bought in the site reception. Lovely. Did two days (only) as well. Day 3.  Much the same as the day before except it wasn't raining!  Again we walked from the site using the "secret door" into the park. This time we on...

Getting from Ashridge Farm site shouldn't have taken too long as the TomTom said it was around 125 miles to Chatsworth Caravan Club site.  After TomTom chose the weird route to Ashridge it seemed that at some stage we'd end up on some narrow shitty roads again. As we needed some shopping, we dialled in a stop at Tesco at Sandy on the A1. It is a little way off the main road. So we went across country rather than the more direct A507! This meant going south on the A1 instead of north as it's a dual carriageway.  It was only one junction. Which happened to be the A507!! Then we did a 180° turn northwards! In the end we went into the Sainsbury's at Biggleswade.  From here it expected to carry on north on the A1 to the A14. Oh no... TomTom decided to go across to Bedford and then the A421 to the M1. What joy.  At least we saw the massive airship sheds at Cardington to the left as we approached Bedford.  Things have changed greatly since I worked at SIMS and the Capi...

Sunday December 14th. All tickets are sold out now.

The last fill was back in Spain at the Bonarea petrol station on the road towards the N340 in Peñiscola.  The odometer was showing 14462 miles. The reason is simply that the AdBlue warning light came on. In the year we have had the Malibu this has never happened before. I usually top up from bottles more often. Checking back, that fill at the Bonarea station was on October 9th and we have done 1752 miles since then.  Maybe that's why the warning light came on? We found the Coop garage in Framlingham and bought a 5 litre container of it. It actually costs more than diesel per litre. In Peñiscola on the pump is about 35p a litre. Here it was £14 for the 5 litres. That went in at 16214 miles on the odometer. I need to get that in my notebook!  Incidentally,  the station in Framlingham also had an LPG pump.

Today was the first leg of the journey to Chatsworth House for the Christmas Market. Rather than do it in one day to Derbyshire, we decided to break the journey roughly in halves. So tonight we will stay at Ashridge Farm Caravan Club site. It's in Hertfordshire near Royston.  Everything was going well until the M25 ground to a halt at Waltham Abbey junction. We crawled to the A10 junction and headed north. The first few miles weren't that good as many others had the same idea.  Then TomTom took us from the A10 across country from Buntingford. We eventually popped out onto the A505 add off again. In hindsight we would have probably been better off going to Stevenage and onto the A1M!! At least we arrived here around 2pm. The rain that had dogged us most of the way had finally stopped. There's no 4G signal on O2 here and so we are able to use the free club WiFi. Every hour you have to re-login. However,  we couldn't get the Firestick to connect. Tomorrow we he...

We saw this small power bank on a vlog being tested and it looks a much easier for use than the bigger Bluetti AC70. It's also a lot cheaper for the power available. It's much lighter as well. It was Claire's purchase and it arrived today.  When I got back from dogs today, she had it unpacked and charging. It took around an hour to charge at about 350w on mains. It seems a little low. Since then I have been charging things up to see how it performs. In the photo it was charging Claire's Kindle. It comes only with a mains power lead. It can be charged from a 12v system with the same plug as a solar panel, but they don't supply one! There is also a wireless charger on the top. Both our Samsung phones have the capability, but I couldn't get either of them to charge. The instruction booklet doesn't mention any way to turn the functionality on or off. I'll do a follow up review when we have been using it a while.

Before we go away for the the trip to Chatsworth House for the Christmas Market, we needed to get the van tidied. One of the jobs was to remove all the stuff we wouldn't need from the garage and then remove the "mezzanine" floor. Removing the mezz means I can access the Truma hatch. I had to check. The frost protection valve is supposed to open automatically at 3°C to empty the water out. When the blue button (at the top) has popped out and the blue "tap" is like the above, the valve is open. Except, despite several days where the thermometer in the Nissan showing 1° or 2°, it was still closed. I opened and shut it a few times and then closed the hatch...

It's eleven and a half years since I bought one of these Samsung digital cameras. It's been retired for a few years. In the interim since I wrote the original blog, linked below, Samsung discontinued the app that links the camera to the phone. Why they simply didn't leave it on the Google Play Store instead of screwing over their camera owners. B*starts. https://invictamoto.blogspot.com/2014/03/samsung-wb30f.html I got it out today and charged the batteries.  It works really well and the different modes were pretty advanced when it came out. The local WiFi zone was very different.  My Road Angel Halo Ignite does that nowadays, in 2025. 

I gave up using this small laptop years so. We only really used it when away on the bike as it fitted easily into a top box. By today's standards it's underpowered, the hard drive is too small, the processor is too slow.  It's also Windows 7. I found it stashed away under the settee in the living room. I logged in and let it charge for a while. Looking at the C-drive shows the last things in "downloads" are photos from 2015. The earliest are documents and photos from 2006. It's put away again. At least it's there in case of emergencies....