InvictaMoto's On The Road Again!

I have just finished working on the daily routes for my part of the trip. I am only away five days and have split Neill's routes down by the day. They are already on the TomTom. The first day is quite long and takes in several Dambusters crash sites and memorials ending in Posterholt and the Hotel Restaurant Roerdalen. Day 2 takes up north towards Assen and our hotel for the GP weekend in Emmen. The Stads Hotel Boerland. Days 3 and 4 are at the circuit. Day 5 is my day to leave the BMW Amigos and head home via Irish Ferries from Calais to Dover.  The Amigos continue the Dambusters theme and the next MotoGP at the Sachsenring. Day 1 Day 2 Day 5

I usually do Monday and Thursday mornings but recently we have had more pressing things that needed Monday's attention and so I am now doing Tuesdays instead. Today there were a couple of new dogs. Thankfully the lurchers gave gone to other fosters and we are now greyhounds only. Sadly the foster mother lost one of her own dogs last week. Miller was around 11 I think and had had a few medical problems.  Until Thursday. Paul out...

Once we leave Hawes I was looking for a stopover on the way home. I had thought about maybe retracing our steps and stopping again at Clumber. On the way up we'd arrive a little late to get a chance to visit the nearby Clumber Park National Trust site. The CAMC website is down after a cyber attack and so I can't book yet. The other idea was to go over to Ribblehead and see if we could get a park up in the Station Inn car park. It's on Search4sites and is free if you use the pub. My brother and I stopped off there in 2013 when we were en route from Manchester to Scotland. The view of the famous viaduct from the parking is spectacular.  Back then they sold the most fantastic pies. I hope they do again in 2024! If we have an overnight at the pub, we'll not be any nearer home so we'll probably still be looking for somewhere about half way back! To be continued.

We have three nights already booked in Norfolk. Two nights at the Caravan Club site at Seacroft near Cromer, and one night at Pinewoods at Wells next the Sea. So now I have added a fourth night. Another place we have seen on The Frenchies Motorhomes vlog.  It's called Nelson's Patch . All the 14 pitches are named after ships that fought under Admiral Lord Nelson at Trafalgar. The site is very recent and is still being developed. There are bushes planted  between each pitch that when they grow up should provide some privacy. So which ship did I choose?  Dreadnought . It's Pitch 13 in the corner. The road is the grey line at the bottom of the above site map and so I wanted to be as far away as possible.   There are walks nearby and once I get the confirmation through I can see when we can get in.  The night before we are at Wells and so it's only about an hour between sites. 

Yesterday, we had a short run to Dungeness.  The plan was to park up and walk Reggie over to the Polish War Memorial and around the shingle before returning to the van. At this time of year parking by the station and "End of the Line"  cafe had plenty of room. In the summer and when the trains are running it's not as easy in a large vehicle. After the walking bit the plan was to turn on the gas and boil the kettle for tea. In the end we decided to change the plan and go straight home. I took another quick snap before we set off. This should be easy enough for any "vanlifer" to understand! 😆 The drive back wasn't too bad. Molly drives well and has a reasonable amount of power.  There is sometimes a queue of cars behind us though!  😁 Back home. The range on the instruments always makes us laugh.  On Friday when we set off for Sissinghurst the range showed 206 miles.  Today after we get back and it's showing..... .... 193 miles. So two trips out and we...

After a few days of letting them sit in the box we finally got around to fitting them to Molly. Firstly the new short arm mirrors were cleaned. Already in barely a month the left side one has a few scrapes on the edge from bushes and trees!   Fistly we did the driver's side as it has the hole for the temperature gauge.  The instructions are to lubricate the edges of the cover's beading with washing up liquid to ease them into place. This I did and used quite a bit. Then we removed the sticky sided tape covering and pressed it into place. It took quite a lot of force to get the cover to fit anywhere near the right place.  It doesn't fit flush with the edge of the mirror as it is expected/supposed to. We pressed and pushed and this is as far as it would go!  We repeated the same procedure with the left/passenger side. About the same level of force was used with the same result.... I just hope that leaving the tape to "cure" is enough to ensure that they don't fa...

Why? I have two other mouse and other rodent repellants for the van, but after yesterday's drive to Sissinghurst, Claire moaned about the smell. Frankly, once the initial whiff I couldn't smell it any more.  So I have invested more of my hard earned cash on a sonic thing to drive the little critters away.  Fingers crossed 🤞🏻 it works....

After the first couple of nights at Regatón I have been checking the map to look for the green-lined roads that indicate "scenic" routes. There are so many roads leading into the Picos de Europa and so many of them green-lined it's difficult to make a decision. It looks as though the Potes Triangle will have to be fitted into the plan. How this will work without too much backtracking. No idea at the moment.

At least I am in good company. Even King Charles III is on the same road and went into hospital to have an operation on his enlarged prostrate. This should be a wake up call to all men over 55. Get in quick before it's too late. Get a blood test for PSA.

It's become an annual event, going to the LCH to watch the Illegal Eagles.  This tribute band are superb. Their vocal harmonies are a mirror for the original Eagles.  This year the ticket email arrived and by the time I got online the tickets were almost sold out.  Not wanting to miss out I ended up booking two tickets in the side block rather than our usual central seats. Must do better next time. The concert is always superb. This year they are later on April 5th rather than February. https://www.illegaleagles.com/

Today we took Molly out for a shortish trip to Sissinghurst. It's a few weeks since we last went out to JC at Rye and so it was time to get her out. I had already checked the fluids earlier in the week including the AdBlue.  Yesterday, I turned the gas on and tested that the hob, heating and fridge worked. They all worked fine on the gas system. The fridge took a little longer than I expected to fire up. Today I checked the tyres and they all needed a pound or two to get them back where they should be. It was a nice day and we parked in the coach park. This is hard standing (gravel) and almost flat. I parked on the end of the area to ensure that should any others turn up we wouldn't get blocked in. We stopped for a coffee and then walked around the estate and the lakes. It was a little muddy underfoot but nothing too much. Plenty of photo opportunities. When we got back to the van we had lunch, sandwiches we had brought with us, and then set off for home.  A good run out and M...

The camera on my phone even in macro can't do this little pencil topper the justice it deserves. It's better than those ugly little trolls that were popular with girls! Claire bought it for me before Christmas on a visit to a National Trust site.  I like a pencil and notepad/notebook when I am doing things as I like a written copy of what I am planning and notes to support anything I am working on. The plane is about one inch by one inch! At work we managed to order some better quality notebooks, and when I was banished (covid!)  to work from home I only managed to bring one home with me. I am about at the end of that one.   The first quarter or so are notes I made when working and then after that it's all my personal work.  I decided to that I like the notebook so much I'd buy one and after sme messing about I got two.  Very canny Amazon did charge me for two even though they "cancelled" my first order as it took about five weeks to...

Another planning tool for the summer holiday to Spain and maybe Portugal.  This copy is used and was formerly a library copy and so it isn't going to be up to date with the right kind of ballpark prices but I doubt historic places will have moved that much! For £4.04 including postage it will do!

After the successful trip to see Latics at Dorking, we signed up for a trip to Ebbsfleet. It's a 5.30pm kick off as it will be shown on BT Sports/TNT. I gave up on that subscription channel as I barely watched a game. For this one I can get the train. I doubt it will be warm enough to go on the bike in February. I will meet Neill my brother there. Feel a bit more confident after last night's 2-0 win over 2nd placed Barnet.

Mouse attacks are very common in motorhomes and campervans that aren't being used daily and moved around from place to place. We have already had a mouse chew its way through the under bonnet piping that feeds the windscreen washers. And then we found a nest, but no mouse in one of the kitchen cupboards - just a chewed up Jeyes cloth and a few droppings. To counter that we bought these mouse repellent balls to hang up inside. I have opened the cupboards and doors to try and give it a chance to permeate the entire interior of Molly. We are on the second ball, but wisdom from one of the forums suggests that using the a puddle of Big Cheese in a bowl and dropping in one of the used balls in it will re-energise it. The spray itself was bought to spray under the bonnet and around the numerous air vents and other places where the mice could be getting in. The van has plenty of air holes that all seem to be covered with wire mesh, but the little bugger still got in and made a...

The RSPCA is the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals . Some countries around the world have been looking a vapes and their health implications to humans, and especially children. In many the sale to under age kids is banned but we see more and more kids "smoking" these things as the flavours are very enticing to the developing mind.  "Candy Cane", "Strawberry & Cream" to name but two that I have seen kids using. They sound great. The problem the RSPCA is trying to highlight is what happens to them after the have finished. They are often discarded in the streets and parks where they add to the litter and detritus the local authority has to clear up. The RSPCA Campaign is to get disposable vapes banned. Not just for kids. For everyone. If you live in the UK, you can get involved. Read the webpage and see if your MP will do something. https://www.rspca.org.uk/getinvolved/campaign/vaping I have done it and got a long winded letter back f...

After a few hours going around in circles I managed to find a page where I could bring up the subject of the "missing" 64gb micro-SD card.  I filled in a form on Amazon as the email address support@wolfang.co didn't work and the website was throwing up DNS errors. Today, despite me imagining I had bought the camera from the screenshot (in the previous post), I had in fact bought the basic package and that doesn't come with a "free" or "included" micro-sd card. My fault.  Odd that the screenshot I took was of the screen I click "buy now"!  Oh well. Checking back I see I was charged less than the price on there.  How does that happen on a website like Amazon?   So it's lucky that I had a 64gb card in the Sony DSC that I could swap out and replace with a 8gb memory stick.

Rather than spend less on the Milenco mirror protectors that we had before, and that proved useless when the left one took a bang, we have opted for Mirrorguard . Since fitting the new short arm mirrors we decided to save the cost of new ones, should we have a bang, and we would get the more expensive covers. These look much better quality than the Milenco ones. Inside they are lined with foam, "like a motorcycle helmet".  I certainly wouldn't wear one made and lined with this stuff when on the bike! Fitting looks straightforward and unlike the Milenco there's no little plastic bar screwed on to hold them in place. Instead there's sticky tape... I have to admit that this looks a little worrying to me! These also have a thick edge trim. They do look way more substantial than the Milenco covers. Time will tell. We opted for white as well that matches the body colour better than black. For the same price I could have bought silver/chrome.

There comes a time when the action camera you bought 15 years ago and the one you bought 10 years ago either stop working or are no longer supported by the manufacturer. The first happened to the later buy. It was very cheap but recently the internal battery no longer charges. It not removable and therefore not replaceable. The latter applies to the Denver camera . Somewhere on this blog will be are review. Instead of leaving the app to operate it on the Google Play Store it was deleted. So much for supporting consumers. Buying a new phone means getting shafted. So after borrowing my brother's GoPro Hero I though maybe delving into the budget camera market again. This one can be used with the frame and unlike the borrowed GoPro. The borrowed one only came with the waterproof case. The problem with this is there is no access to the power input. I decided to give it a try. There was even a discount as per Amazon as above. It arrived yesterday. A quick read of the quick st...

Grimm with two-mm's. This is based on a series of books set in the Yorkshire Dales known as the "Yorkshire Murder Mysteries". The main character is called Detective Chief Inspector Harry Grimm.  The police station they work out of is in the market town of Hawes. What luck that the Caravan Club has a site on the edge of Hawes. I have been looking for a long weekend getaway in July before the school holidays.  Unfortunately the nearer the date is to the schools finishing for the simmer, the less chance of getting pitch becomes. It seems those without kids like to live on the edge of the rugrat invasion. So what better than combining a trip in Molly, to a picturesque place and walk the paths in the Dales., but earlier in the month!!  At the moment I have a provisional booking for two nights at the Hawes CAMC site in early July.  It's a fair way to drive in one day so I am considering a stop.on the way up and of course, extending the trip after Hawes. More to...

As I get over the pains from the biopsy, walking is becoming a bit better. So today, I ventured out with Reggie along the canal path. My phone was showing the temperature to be -1C. It was bloody cold. The problem with this country is that it's a damp cold that unlike more northern countries where the cold can be far deeper,  but crisp and dry.  Having lived in the Czech Republic (and above 500m altitude for a year) where it snowed in November and it lay until February, it was far less bone chilling than here. Anyway. We had a walk of about a mile and a half. Reggie was in his coat as he is a little bald underneath and needs something to stop his belly getting cold. Palmarsh Bridge Reggie in his warm coat! The Royal Military Canal  iced at the edges The clock was wrong on the Sony camera as it was last used in Belgium and I frgot to reset the time.  The walk was actually an hour earlier than on the photos!