On the Road Again!

Today's jobs in between rain showers was to get down to Dover and fill the LPG tanks before we start the holiday.   Dover BP by the entrance to the Western Docks, where the cruise ships dock, was £1.199 per litre. Luckily they had plenty but I had phoned up before we made the trip. I took photos of both gauges before we went. Right bottle Left bottle We tend to use the right side bottle more than the left as it is easier to access the tap to turn the gas on. When we got home I filled the AdBlue up from the containers in the garage. It used all of the 4 litre Redex branded AdBlue, plus another 1½ to 2 litres from the huge 10 litre bottle from Aldi.  For good measure I emptied in a full bottle of Wynn's Crystal Clear and Protect anti crystallisation liquid in with the new fill.  This should see us through the entire holiday trip. If there's any on the pump in Spain I might top up there as it is much cheaper than here. That's another pre-trip job dealt with. Whilst I wa...

Monday We had to be off site no later than midday and so we had started packing away the night before.  Reggie was up and out several times from before 7am and I was feeling tired by the time I got up and joined Claire for breakfast.   I took him out as she was washing and getting ready. As we were in a large field with fences all round, I let him wander off lead.  The van next to us had a young small cockapoo that was a little timid. Behind them was a nice couple with a very friendly, and again young, poodle.  Reggie and it got on, sniffing etc.  As we were talking one of the marshals came over to say there was an accident on the M4 and no one could get off the site.  In the end that was later amended to a person jumping from a bridge onto the road. Under cover of all this Reggie went and ate the poodles breakfast out of its bowl! Whilst I was apologising he went next doo...

"Whaaaat!!" After three days of "off grid" living the new setup has worked quite well.  We have used the kettle quite a lot and the air fryer. The air fryer peaks at around 1800 watts. The kettle around 1000w. Getting up on the morning of the fourth day, the battery is showing at 81%! To be fair the weather has been very overcast and raining at times since we arrived. So we aren't getting a lot of solar energy through the panels on the roof. 

It's something I have been thinking about for a while; off grid or wild camping abity. Currently Molly is fitted with a single 100 watt solar panel on the roof between the front window and the first (and largest) roof light. It's connected up so that it can charge the leisure battery and contribute to the engine battery.  After a few weeks of non use both were showing on the battery levels at around 12 volts. The sun came out for a few days and the leisure battery went up to the max on the Malibu display, equating to about 13.5 volts. The engine battery pretty much unchanged. The problem we find is, that even with the power banks, we simply don't have enough power to stay in aires that don't have access to electricity for more than a day or two.  We have just about managed when away on rallies with our motor caravanners' club and generally we only have two nights away. We have gas for cooking and heating  Once parked up we run the fridge in gas. All the full time va...