InvictaMoto's On The Road Again!

I have been very poor over the winter and maybe pat of that is the diagnosis of prostate cancer.  On top of that a month or so ago I slipped off the edge of a kerb hurrying to football and have injured my right foot. I sort of folded my foot in half and as a result I don't have to walk far for it to be very painful.  It's a problem with the third and fourth metatarsal. How to fix it? Rest!  Imagine not being able to walk for months!!! I have managed to rides up to London to Arsenal and to Dagenham and Redbridge, blogged elsewhere. On both rides I wore the Alpinestars boots and these are a tight fit and this seem to help on the bike, but they aren't really made for walking.  So when I got home on both occasions I was in some pain.   Anyway. Today I posted my first mileage to Kilometerfresser  for months.  I will see where I have sunk to in the league tables. I am expecting to find myself bottom of those that have sent in at least one mileage for th...

Each time you go to a game you earn points that can be spent on  shop items online (not the main club shops though!!)  or entering draws to win tickets.   We had 1400 points that basically could only afford either beanie hat or a foam hand!  I used a 1000 points on the beanie. We currently have 745 left and bugger all to spend it on. So who would have it?  Phil and I share my membership 50/50. So I created a random name picker from the internet and here is the result!

After the shock that we have damp all over sections of the van, today might have been a little brighter. With JC Leisure no longer being Elddis dealers and therefore not a able to do warranty work to fix the damp, we felt let down by them.  What's the point of warranty that's simply worthless? I emailed Elddis to ask what to do in this case. I can't say they were that helpful as they basically said to look at their website and search for a local dealer. It took them over a week to reply! I had already done that and found Marquis at Gomshall in Surrey.  From home it's about 85 miles. On their website it says that they will undertake warranty work for owners that bought elsewhere. There is a cost though. Today, we went across there for a 2pm appointment for a damp check. It cost £120.  Whilst they did the job we had a walk Round the "for sales" area. Loads of motorhomes and van conversions.  This was my favourite but way outside my price range until I win the lo...

The least said about the game the better. Both sides poor in the first half. Both tried a bit harder in the second half  They had a shot that hit the post and pinged across the goal to safety. We had a header palmed off the line by the keeper and then in the death throes a shot from a corner was blocked on the line... I decided to ride up as the train and tube was a hassle. I dressed for the worst weather. Three pairs of gloves, two winter and one summery. Waterproof trousers and of course, the old Frank Thomas jacket was brought out of wardrobe. Like a lot of my gear it's getting old. At least the waterproofness is still good.  It was sunny when I set off and I decided to fill up the tank in Hythe. Then off into the wind on the M20. By Ashford it clouded over.  Operation Brock ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Brock ) is on and so we crawl along at 50 on the motorway. Brock isn't needed this weekend, but deploying it during last weekend is ready for Easter! It...

  Valerie the puppy LtoR: Tyrone, Oscar & Valerie Oscar Oscar! Boo

With the Norfolking About trip over I am now starting to look at the main summer holiday trip to Spain and France. Altogether we are away for 22 nights. The first two will be spent on the ocean wave going to Bilbao. I have the next two nights booked in a site on the coast at Laredo. This will give Reggie a chance to recover from the trip. He has been on a ferry before but only for a couple of hours. This crossing looks to be more like 30!  What then? I have been looking at the "scenic" routes on the map book. These are lined with a green line. In particular the routes through the mountains taking in viewpoints and places of interest. What looks to be long distances in the "AA Road Atlas Spain & Portugal" is in fact around 60 miles. The scenic routes criss-cross the mountains and the Picos d'Europa.   I am using Park4night and Search4Sites to get an idea where there are parkups and camp sites. It does look like that area is well served with both. After that? ...

After a quiet night at Nelson's Patch we set off.  We were going to meet Claire's sister, Sally, at  Snape Maltings for lunch, and to have a look around the craft shops and art galleries.  Well, they were. Reggie and I were having lunch and then would have a mooch around the site.  The cafe was dog friendly but few of the other places were. Maybe the pub? The drive down would take about an hour and forty minutes according to Ohrex! And it was pretty much spot on. We did overshoot the entrance to the car parking as I thought from the view on Google maps that it would be on the right and not the left. In the end we got parked right at the back in the overflow car park. Parking that was almost empty when we arrived. Lunch over they went to look around the aforementioned establishments and we had a walk around. My phone ran out of battery and so we returned to the van to put it on charge and to  get the Canon DSLR out!   (Photos to follow) Then it was time...

Monday. With the weather continuing to be good we set off from Wells. Pretty much backtracking along the A149 to Sheringham.  We once again had hours to cover 30 or so miles. So we decided to stop off at another National Trust site at Fellbrigg Hall. We have been here before. I set the satnav to take us there when we were half way along the road.  We had thought to simply use Google Maps but one of the turns looked too iffy for the van. In the end the Ohrex took us on a weird square trip off the main road down the muddiest single track road. We encountered a 4x4 coming the other way with just enough room to squeeze past each other.  Then we were back onto the same main road around 200 yards from where it made us turn off! It hasn't ballsed up like that before. The right turn into the hall's long driveway was only about 400 yards further up! We parked up by backing into a space, separated from an Autoquest 185 by a fence. He had been luckier than us and avoided muddy lanes...

A little rain in the morning and we were late setting off. we had over two hours to do about 30 miles and so we needed somewhere to stop on the way.   The National Trust gardens at Sheringham Park was almost on the way. So once we had done the chores etc, I set that into the satnav and off we went.  This part of the journey was pretty much straightforward and we easily found the place and parked in the coach parking area.  There seemed to be space for two coaches next to the electric car hookup spaces. As usual, there were cars parked in the coach spaces! Why?  The car-park was about 50% empty but there were few spaces to accommodate a 7m long van. As is our habit we tried out the cafe first and were lucky enough to get a seat under cover as it was still drizzling. There were plenty of people there as it was a weekend and also lots of dogs. Reggie ignored them all..... We decided as it was drizzling to do the shorter "yellow" walk. The park is full of rhododend...

Before we set off, the weather forecast for the weekend wasn't looking too good. On the way up it had rained until we left Essex and had brightened up. A little spit of rain as we approached Cromer but that was all. This morning after breakfast we got our gear on, walking boots, and set off to find the beach.  It was much easier than we had made it the evening before.  Part of the route goes between two static caravan parks and there is no traffic, but eventually there's a 50m section of so that meant Reggie had to put up with the cars and buses!  There are bus stops right outside the site entrance and so with our senior citizens bus passes we could have used the bus for free. East Runton has some shops and the de rigeur fish and chip shop and a cafe.  Ideal for the holiday maker staying a little nearer than we were. From the road there's a hill past the car park. Half of which has a height barrier (at the back) and the front half withou...

Friday.  We finished loading the van up and set off about 1030 or so.  We had to navigate the Dartford Crossing and given that it was Friday, we were expecting a tough crossing.   For some reason there are four lanes of traffic that approach from both sides. The Bridge coming south and the tunnels going north are also four lanes.  So why doesn't the traffic simply get in lane and drive through without miles of tailbacks on both sides?  There's a 50mph limit and that shouldn't cause any problems, but it does.   Maybe the drivers that use it are too stupid for their own good! Anyway although there was some traffic building up it wasn't as bad as we have seen it in previous occasions and we were through reasonably quickly. We usually stop at the services at Thurrock just after the Crossing but we had already planned a farm shop stop at one that had been recommended by  The FrenchiesMotorhomies on YouTube . To get th...

Saturday. Next up on my Oldham Athletic away days in the south are Dagenham and Redbridge. A trip to east London. Another new ground for me.  It's international week for the big clubs, and even if it wasn't, it would probably be Phil's game at the Emirates. Looks like another outing for Vera. Route already entered into the TomTom. The TomTom maps update went off smoothly today. The first time for years that it downloaded and installed the maps without failing and generally a bloody hassle. Fingers crossed it doesn't pee down.

I was a bit late seeing the advert for the group's annual visit to Folkestone and so the seats we have aren't as good as previous years. Which is a shame. But the show will be as good as ever I expect.  Date for the diary April 5th.

Fack me! The wallet took a bashing a week ago with the services and checks and today it's another wallet smasher! Today it's taxing the vehicle.  I have done it for six months so that in September we can do the year and move it to a different time of the year to avoid this year's big bill!   There's not much we can do about the insurance as it will always need renewing on April 1st! As with all insurance it seems the UK motorist is being fleeced right, left and centre.  The renewal with Lexham had gone up around £100 over last year.  Last year they were the cheapest cover I could find for me with only one year's no claims in a motorhome.   The fact that I have over 20 years as a named driver on Claire's car, plus have ten years on my own cars, the Punto and Insignia, of accident and CLAIM free motoring has no effect.  It seems that two years without a single claim,  since I first insured Suki, has little or no effect either! Still, hopefully ...

Well. That was a shock. Molly passed her MoT test on Thursday afternoon. No advisories. No problems. Good for another year on the road. The engine service was done and there were no problems found.  I did find it a little annoying to find that when I checked the AdBlue level, by adding more to the tank, that it took over a litre to fill it to the top. Surely as AdBlue is necessary in Euro 6 diesel engines it should have been done. I had already filled the wash/wipe bottle so that it would get through the MoT. Where the shock came in was with the habitation check showed we have relatively high levels of damp in three places.  One each side of the moho roughly where the Peugeot cab is joined to the Elddis body. The other between the habitation door and the rear bumper around where the gas locker is.  These are all around 25% damp. The problem is that JC are no longer Elddis dealers, even though Molly was sold new by them in 2019 and again to us in 2023, They are unable to d...

After the trials and tribulations of the first ride on Thursday I decided to give Vera a longer run. For TV the Arsenal game against Brentford was moved from 3pm kick off to 5.30pm.  This meant I felt more like riding up to my usual parking place at the church at St Joan of Arc. In the past when I worked for Islington, the school next door was a regular stopping off point to support their IT systems. I set off around 2.30pm, about the time I would have left for the train. All went well until the A13 after the Dartford Crossing. Amazingly the crossing was free running and it was easy going. Then we hit the traffic. Barely half a mile after the Crossing and it was solid. I split the second and third lanes and eventually reached the front of the queues almost by Ford at Dagenham.  The problem? A multi-car accident complete with fire engines and ambulances. The police were letting one lane get past.  Once through we had to contend with the changing speed limits! It's 40mph, t...

There is one space in Waitrose.  The spaces in the main public car park in Hythe are either at an angle or right behind a car space. In Sainsbury's we campaigned for a space and they agreed. So they put it as far from the store and it's basically a square lined on two sides with the fence and the other two with car spaces. It seems the dumping area for any car owners rubbish. So today I had to use a car space in Waitrose as once again despite there being a dozen, yes sad bastard I counted them, spaces empty and nearer the entrance (!) this clown couldn't read the sign.... Surely anyone looking forward could see that big green sign? If not, god help us when they are on the road....

I have had a long and deep interaction with the support team for this camera and asked for a photo of the two Micro SD cards I had been using and getting all the problems. They are generic 8gb and 64gb versions.  After a few days they got back and said these aren't suitable for  their camera and that I should buy a "branded" version, e.g. Sandisk.  Or they could send me one. They also dismissed the fact that both these cards work in the Sony Cybershot (with suitable adapter) and in my Canon 1100D. I, of course, opted for the option of them sending me one. After all I have had it almost 6 weeks and been unable to use it! Plus the time limit for sending back via Amazon past weeks and weeks ago. So if it doesn't work, I am stuck with it! Okay it's only £40.......  :) In the meantime I had a hunt around the drawers as I was certain in one of the DSLR's we actually have a Sandisk one. Could I find it, could I buggery. So whilst I wait for the Wolfang compatible one...

Restoring the older (Ohrex 2 - see explanation at the foot of the page) unit with the backup taken on the 4th March at the start of all this, the 2023Q1 maps, worked a treat. It fired up immediately and worked. This model was superseded over a year ago when it came up with several faults. Oddly it works now! So I repeated the trick with the latest unit, Ohrex 3 (!), and  of course works with the last year's maps and exe. So now I have two functioning satnavs with early last year's maps etc. I updated my call to Ohrex Support to tell them what had happened. The reply was quite long winded and assumes that the 7gb download that took hours and a few WIN10 "resumes" has worked. 1. Go to NaviConfig . If not visible on start-up screen go into Settings and scroll right once and select NaviConfig there. 2. Tap in the box with 3 dots and screen should show a box with Resident Flash 3. Tap the Resident Flash box twice you should see a new box called NAVI 4. Tap NAVI box twice y...

After a total of five hours of copying the current 2023Q1 files to the hard drive on the laptop.  Then following the instructions to download the latest 2023Q2 zip file and then extract it.  Again I have formatted the unit and then another few hours of it slowly copying the zipped folders to the unit. Usually all it needs is for the unit to be powered off and an one it's sorted.  This time it was knackered. It was a total of over five hours to go from the last year's upgrade to a non working sat nav! I have reported the problem to the support at Ohrex.  See what they have to say.  In the meantime I have dug out one of the satnavs that was failing and have tried again. This time to I have formatted it and have copied the 2023Q1 folder. It might work. Currently it's taking taken half an hour at at 27%! More later!

It's Monday. It's #kentgreyhoundrescue day. To we have six ex racers in the foster home and two permanent residents. Plenty of food and exercise for them. On the left is Tyrone, he is a permanent resident.  On the right is Boo. She is a smaller female greyhound and she is looking for a forever home. Kent Greyhound Rescue

What bullshit is this? The hotel under new management and so they delete old reviews.  Wouldn't it simply be kinder to update the hotel info and say that new management/ownership took over on a specific date? Not #Tripadvisor.  They allow trolling reviews that are obviously based on personal animosity though.... ;)