On the Road Again!

Today's jaunt for Molly was to the BP petrol station by Dover Western Docks. Essentially to fill the LPG bottles and maybe a snifter of diesel. But also to give MyRouteApp Navigation one last chance. I set a route and it worked. We had sound.  We are off the Spain in just over a week and have been seeing Facebook and YouTube posts about how cheap diesel is on Spain. Plus that it's getting more difficult to get LPG due to some change on Spanish or EU law. Whatever! Hence the massive 98p spent on LPG today.  As for diesel. It was 159.9 per litre so I decided to make sure we had enough in the tank for the drive to Portsmouth and the Brittany Ferries shop, and enough to find some cheap diesel ⛽ in Spain! As usual the pump clocks over the amount you want. Trying to stop firstly at £30, then £35 led to £40... Eventually I stopped at £42.02. Add the 98p and it's a round £43!!!! So today we have managed around 30 miles. As it was a part fill the Fuelly app won't give a miles pe...

Today we had a run to Rye to pickup Suki from storage to bring her home.  It's a bit early for our trip next week but we have a few things to do. We have to clean and purify the fresh water tank. I have a neutral chemical to do that. So today the drive to Rye took about 50 minutes. We discussed the problem we are having with the replacement left side mirror. The original was broken when we hit a piece of wood jutting out of a hedge. That was three days before we went to France last June. The cheap replacement works but there is a problem with the indicator when turning left. The system comes up with an error. The mirror indicator does flash okay though. Hopefully they will have better luck than us in getting a genuine Peugeot version. Amazingly after about a month or six weeks since she was parked up after the warranty work had been done on the leaky kitchen tap, she started first time. I had taken the dbPower unit with me to give the battery a boost if needed. She ran well after I...

Had a drive down to Dover to the garage by the Western Docks to fill the LPG tanks with gas. It's 0.99p a litre. After many YouTube videos I had a good idea how to do it and had the nozzle in. The pump didn't zero. Luckily another motorhome pulled in and the guy had a look.  Admitting you are a newbie helps as people are helpful.  Once checked we waited and waited for someone to come over and see why the pumps wouldn't reset. In the end it started to work and we filled with 22 litres. I also filled the diesel as well. Last time as it was almost empty we had only managed to fill to the £99 pump limit.  This time 24 litres. As we haven't done more than about 80 miles I guess the last time it wasn't quite full.   I entered it all into Fuelly  and the calculation only comes out at 28mpg. Over time it will start to level out. So we are ready for the trips we have away in May. In future we'll fill the tanks at shorter intervals!!

On Facebook there is a local residents group for where I live and at the top is a pinned post about where petrol is available!  You'd think we were a small town in the middle of the desert rather than an affluent town in England, Western Europe. I saw a post from only 4 minutes before I viewed it and it said the station in Hythe town centre (the only petrol station in the area!) had both unleaded and diesel. It's the "good stuff" and BP. I togged up and hauled firstly the Kettle from the garage. Six or seven kicks and after a month of inactivity she burst into life. Suzy Triplo was awake.  I made the short trip into Hythe and queued behind a couple of cars before my turn.  Bugger. I was going to be one of those pillocks that fills up and already full tank! I had forgotten on the way back from Rye in September that I had in fact filled the tank on the way back!  So I was only able to squeeze (and almost overfill!)  in 2.38 litres!  Oh well. Now I know I have...

I saw on the local residents group on Facebook that BP Seabrook Garage along the coast from here had a delivery. With about an 8th of a tank left we were off like scalded cats. A short queue for petrol. No Super Unleaded and no Super Diesel. Both regular grades were open. Bish bosh. Tank full. Hopefully this will last us a month as usual. Maybe get the bike topped up at sometime.  The Kettle has about 25 miles left in the tank and with another Rye Kettle Meet on Saturday that won't get me there and back. Vera has about 80 miles to empty and so I can maybe get a local ride or two on that.

So today the Juke was showing 80 miles to empty and so that we can go out somewhere tomorrow I decided maybe we fill the tank today so that we are free to go, In the end we went to the BP garage in Seabrook and the tank took a little over 38 litres to full. I didn't brim it this time.  Preferring to let it click the pump to a stop. Once home I put the odometer reading into Fuelly and got 41.8mpg. A little better than last time. This maybe because we did a couple of longer journeys to some stately homes since the last fill-up and not just around town on the "urban" cycle. I was still expecting more. We'll have to see how it goes once we start going further afield.