On the Road Again!

A date! It took a few days for the bank to clear our deposit and the date has been set for April 27th.  I didn't want it any later as we will need time for any teething problems to arise and get fixed before we go to Spain in late May. It will be a solo trip. Apart from drives to the dealer's and the MoT garage, both in Canterbury, and to and from storage, I haven't had a solo trip. What will I do without my co-driver to give advice on the road?  Gulp.

Things have moved on a little since the last post.  I went through the invoice for the job and then googled all the parts and what they are for. Still have no idea what I would do with them. We decided to go ahead and I transferred the £500 deposit across via bank transfer to get the date set in concrete. As mentioned before it will be a solo trip as Claire doesn't want to drive three hours across country.  We will have had to find something to do on the day they do the work, and with an ageing dog, it was a challenge.  Currently, the estimated time for the job is a full day. I can stay overnight the night before onsite rather than find a campsite or pub stop. Once the company comes back to confirm the job is booked I can say who it is. In the meantime Claire has thought about some extra power points being fitted. Malibu were a little tight/stingy on the points around the van.  It's almost as if Cathargo had a socket shortage! Only one above the hob/sink and another ...

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...