On the Road Again... Again

So the first game back in League Two after too many seasons being "The first Premier League club to drop into the National League".....  Of course Luton Town did it the other way for one season and are now back in League One this season! Maybe they can emulate the great OAFC, and go straight through to the basement again. As I went to Wembley for the National League Promotion Final, I decided I just had to go to the first game back in the EFL.   Stadium MK is actually in Bletchley not Milton Keynes.  Let's make that distinction straight away. Although I used to live in Bedfordshire and visited friends in MK (worked and shopped too!) and Bletchley, I have never been to the football stadium. I plan to go on the bike as from home it would be a long journey on the train and even more tedious in the car.  Hopefully somewhere in the massive car parking that surrounds the stadium and all the shopping malls there will be space for one motorcycle. Kick-off is 3pm and it ...

Here we are just a few days from the end of this year's competition.  The table at the end of June shows that although I added a few miles I am still in 119th place! I have been very bad and I hope to get a few hundred miles in before the competition ends. Final scores have to be looked by the end of play on August 3rd.  I guess that will be 11pm UK time as they are on CET and not BST! Unless "shadowgirl" has suddenly got moving, I should at least not finish bottom! I will automatically be entered into the competition for 2025/26 and hope to do a little better!!! On the face of it. I couldn't so much worse...

Today, the first job was to roll out the awning to get it dried in the sun. After days of iffy weather and rain it was sunny for the first time today. Today's irritation was how to get the awning winding handle out of the winding mechanism.  On the Fiamma awnings we have had on the the other vans, the winder has a hook at the end that goes through a ring.  The Dometic has this affair..... I struggled to get the winding arm out and it suddenly popped out. Apparently the way to do it it it push in, then turn clockwise and voila! Next, we had friends coming to have a drive out in Molly.  It's the first time we had used the rear passenger seats. The seat belts needed sorting out first! We only went to Dungeness.  It's not far and it gave them an idea what it's like in the van. Our previous motorhomes had only 2 travel seats so we couldn't take passengers.  We managed to park after some messing about and had tea in the station buffet. It's called the End of the ...

Once we had decided that we couldn't or rather wouldn't hang about for the mass exodus along the runway we set off from Elvington.  We followed the same two vans for miles and miles as far as the M18 where we parted company. The TomTom took us this way rather than the alternative route to Leeds and then the M1 and it seemed pretty quick. It rained of course. In fact it lashed down at times. The windscreen wipers coped but only just. The weather forecast was for much of the same all the rest of the weekend until midweek. Once on the A630 towards Sheffield, we decided that instead of two nights we'd cut our losses and cancel and maybe head home and stop on the way back.  On the Caravan Club app it wouldn't let us cancel! Within two weeks of arrival you are supposed to be able to cancel and lose the deposit.  With each night coming out at around £45, cancelling and rebooking for one night would have saved us £40!  In the end we decided to persevere. ...

We have had Malibu Molly for around nine months and after we have been using it this long, we decided that we needed to clean the fresh water tank. Many vanlifers say they never drink water from their onboard water tank and so maybe they need to do this less cleaning. We do drink from ours, although we boil it first. Reggie drinks water from the tap.  We also carry bottled water in 5 litre containers.  Often filling empty ones from the mains water at home. Water in southern England is potable! 😉 So to cleaning. We usually do it using Puriclean in powder form mixed into a jug. This time we are using Puri Sol in liquid form. It's easier to deploy into the fresh water tank through the large red screw top. The instructions say three caps full per twenty five litres of water. That equated to 33ml.  With a hundred litre tank it's twelve caps. Easier to measure in a jug and pour in the tank. It's supposed to be in there for around 8 hours. After I put it in around 6pm on Friday...

Took Vera to Cheriton Motorcycles this morning for the annual MoT. Of course she passed without any problems.  The mileage this year is 18235. Last year it was 17845. A total of 390 miles in a year .. Pathetic. Since November I have done nearly 5000 in the van! So we are set for another...

Work started last Wednesday and after a week of rain and thunderstorms it's finally finished. Yesterday, as things started to dry out... Today, it's finished. What we need now is some more pea shingle to top up Reggie's pee gravel around the silver birch tree. Now we have to try and keep it clean!!!!

We arrived around 2pm and wound our way past the entrance to the air museum to what we thought was the entrance. In fact it was the entrance to the "holding area".  We weren't told anything more and so after a while things got a bit heated, especially as it was very hot and sunny. Our journey from our overnight stay at Cresslands near Bourne took longer than we anticipated as we chose to take a more eastley route over the  Humber Bridge . It's quite spectacular and only £1.50 for a car and van under 3.5 tonnes (3500kgs). It was worth the experience but if I had to do the journey again I'd go the quicker way via the A1! We seemed to be in the last of the holding area lanes and I had a walk to see as it looked as though the actual entrance was nearby. It was actually about a mile away. We were in the tenth lane.  Molly second van behind the blue car.... As the vans moved from lane 1 across to us, the area they had vacated was filled with those that arr...

It's not something I have thought about much.  So when the email arrived from Brittany Ferries this morning announcing the Spanish routes were online, I had to go and look. It would be silly not to look!! The French routes for next year were released last week. This week it's Spain's turn. The day dragged on as we drove north to our overnight at Cresslands, see the previous blog, and so it was gone 4pm before I could take a look. I like going away in May as soon as the football season for both Arsenal and Oldham Athletic is over. It means I have basically over three months to fit a holiday in before it all starts again... Arsenal's last game for me is 17th May. I looked online, and as expected with the bookings being open for some sixteen plus hours many crossings with pet friendly cabins were already sold out! With Reggie's rabies vaccine running out on the 20th of June I needed a crossing in good time to get him his booster before it runs out. It has ...

Today is the start of a long weekend away in Molly. Eventually we will be at Van Love Fest at Elvington Aerodrome near York. But firstly an overnight at Cresslands Campsite near Bourne in Lincolnshire. I saw the site recommended on one of the caravanning Facebook pages. It's very nice and all pitches are gravel hardstanding and fully serviced. And only about half the price of a Caravan Club site. We left home around 1015am and were here around 3pm.  That included a stop at Birchanger Services in the M11. Lunch and a coffee, and Reggie some treats and a walk around. We set up and found that in pitch 1 our longest ehu cable was only just long enough if I backed up as far as possible. The only drawback is that the campsite is very close to the A15 and the traffic noise is very intrusive. Hopefully it will die down in the evening. The 4G phone signal doesn't look very high so we might not get a chance to catch up on our favourite You Tubers. Tomorrow we com...

A few cartoons made from photos using this AI tool .. Claire not too happy with the Simpson style ones ..

Vehicle Tax Period: 12 months -  Vehicle Tax Amount Paid: GBP 121.00 Just taxed Vera Strom for another year from August 1st.  What a rip-off it is. Bikes pay more than a lot of cars that take up more space on the roads and cause more damage with their heavier weight and four bigger, fatter, tyres.

We decided to do this rally as soon as we saw it was published. Luckily it was the week before we were to go to Yorkshire for the Van Love Festival. It started on Thursday but we had other commitments and only signed up for two nights from Friday the 11th July and coming home on the 13th. What a great time we had.  We were on the third row of vans from the front and so didn't have an unrestricted view of the take off and landings of the aircraft. But it was a short walk to the runway fence to stand and watch the spectacle as it unfolds every hour or so in front of you.  It's so popular that on Saturday there were so many cars in the parking lot that shares the grass area we were in, that the cars were almost upto the MCC boundary.  It would have been nice had the site management put up a small barrier to show them where the extent of the public parking was.  The Rally was £15 per unit per night.  Day parking is £3.50 and p...