On the Road Again... Again

We are members of both of the two biggest caravan and motorhome clubs in the country, but neither has a site open in the Tamworth or Lichfield areas! Why the Caravan & Motorhome Club's nearest site closes on October 21st, when that is a traditional time when schools in England are on half-term, is a mystery. The Camping and Caravan Club sites in the area are showing only grass pitches no electricity available. Maybe that tells them something? They do have hardstanding but it's not available or sold out. One site has 150 pitches. The drive up is around 200 miles. Easily achievable on a Saturday. Not so achievable on a Sunday after the event at the National Memorial Arboretum (NMA) on the Sunday. So in the end I went on pitchup.com and did a search. I found a site between the convoy meet-up in Tamworth, and the NMA, and booked it. It's Kings Orchard Marina . I have booked one night before the Convoy and depending on how busy it is, we could stay afterwards as well.

Very quick delivery. They look good and are a better size than the old grey/black ones. There's 50 of them that will probably be more than we'll ever need!! They were made by a company called Sticker App and came from Sweden care of FedEx.

From Ayamonte I have planned a route up through Spain to the French border.  It's only an idea. It's only rough. The chances of it happening are probably not 75%. The 2 waypoint is Tarifa.  It's a place I went to about 35 years ago! I was on the Cavalcade! The 3 waypoint is the marina at La Linea. It would give us a chance to get across to Gibraltar even for an afternoon.

With there still being 4 months until we set off for Plymouth and the long ferry to Spain, I have been thinking about some more routes and places to visit. The first two nights after arrival are booked at Caravanning Oyambre and then we start the touring part of the trip. I don't want to be driving everyday nor do I want to be doing huge mileages each day. I have a rough plan to take in some of the Roman places etc between León and the coast. Letting Google Maps plan a route from Oyambre to Potes and then Ayamonte on the Mediterranean. From Zamora it zig zagged into Portugal and then back into Spain. A bit of tweaking, adding a few places of interest and it came up with this. Why Ayamonte? We have seen it a few times in vlogs and it looks a nice place to have a few days rest and recuperation. This will be the end of the first part of the trip. Between C and D there are other places to see.  It's only an idea though.

Since moving to this Blogger template it isn't as obvious to display various information, such as a blog list of this followed  Clicking on the three lines on the top left? I tend to follow other motorcycle and campervan bloggers. If you are one, then let me know.

Quite often when we are away we don't want or need a lot of water in the fresh water tank. So I use a watering can. The can is kept in the van and only ever used for  potable water. The idea of this funnel is to make it easier to fill and have less water running down the outside of the van. Does it work. Yes. It has three lugs on the back to lock into the filler hole, in the same way the cap fits. From new it was very tight and wouldn't fit until one of the lugs sheered off. Then it fitted and locks into place. Was it worth the money from a UK eBay seller? Probably. It will make the job easier as long as no other lugs break off!!

I opted for the blue one in the end. It looks good on the phone. Hopefully it will look good when 50 of them arrive..... They are made in Sweden!

Dell Latitude 5400 After the last 15 years of the old Dell I have finally decided to invest some of my pension in a new laptop. The old one was originally made for Windows 7 and when it started to wheeze we threw some RAM at it and the techs at work installed Windows 10.  But once again it's decided to slow down and become unreliable. Luckily, I was able to get it to work and backup everything to a 500gb Samsung portable hard drive.  It was a surprise that the iTunes folder was 60gb alone! The drive has been used a few times and I simply create a folder with the date and then copy what I need into sub folders. So, the new one. Another Dell. Another Latitude. This time with Windows 11 Pro.  I opted for 32gb RAM and a 1TB hard drive. Hopefully a little future proof.  Before making up my mind I asked both Gemini and ChatGPT on my phone to suggest the best option with Windows 11 Pro, large amount of RAM and hard drive. Perhaps a little oddly, or not, they both came up wi...

In the four years since we became "Vanners" we have been to some interesting places. I prefer the monicker to some of the others we get called. We have seen some of Europe's beauty and made some exciting purchases... We have met a lot of nice people that share a common interest.  Be they full time "vanlifers" or like us, "weekend warriors", as a vanlifer called us,  that live in a house or apartment, and travel when possible. But. Whether you are Vanlifer or Vanner. There's always that not "amazing" or "stunning"* stopover or purchase. This week mine has been.... It's an essential at some aires. Not all come with a threaded tap. We have been caught out a couple of times only, but for a few pounds this is a solution. It's not "stunning" but useful. * stunning - a very over used descriptor on vanlife and vanner vlogs.