Getting Steamboats…

I take it back. It seems that some of that tropical English weather has actually made it all the way up here to Scotland. We’ve been basking this afternoon in ooh, at least 15°, wow!

We had a quiet night last night in Glencaple, sleeping like logs after our walk along the estuary, although the beer might have helped a bit too. After I’d uploaded last night’s post, the sailing boat in the harbour made a fine photo against the sunset so I’ve added it here. After all, readers who’ve been following our travels for a while might have spotted a bit of a trend for sunset pics.

Our morning, rather annoyingly, was spent resolving issues around our building project. Somebody has come along at the last minute and said we have to move the planned driveway along the road a bit – which would be fine but it seems we have to move all the connections to the gas, electric, phone and water as well d’oh! But enough of that; let’s just say a few terse emails were sent and we’ll see what happens.

Our stop for this evening involved going north to cross the River Nith before heading south down the Solway again to Carsethorn. As we had to go via Dumfries we decided to top up with gas. There’s only one LPG garage in the area, but all winter whenever we stopped off there their pump was out of order so we had to go miles out of our way to make sure we had enough gas for heating and hot water. No big surprise, we pulled up beside the pump today to find it’s still out of order. I drove Vince out in a bit of a strop, which wasn’t helped by having to go the wrong way – a right turn out of the garage would have taken all day as it was really busy. We found a place to turn round in an industrial estate and headed back past the garage, where I spotted from the corner of my eye that there was no out of order sign on the other side of the pump. We turned at the roundabout and went back to find that all we needed to do was pull the hose round from the ‘wrong’ side of the pump and we could help ourselves to lots of lovely lpg. I have a horrible feeling that this would have worked all winter. Shoot me now.

It’ll be a long walk back from the pub tonight!

Glossing over my complete stupidity we are now parked outside the Steamboat Inn by a rocky beach in glorious sunshine. There’s a quaint Scottish expression about going to the pub and getting absolutely steamboats, but we’ll be on our best behaviour, honest. Yeah who needs to go to the pub..? We have plenty of booze on board. Kidding! Yes we really are going to the pub for dinner.

I think we deserve a treat as we had a good walk today. Well I say walk, it was more of an adventure. We inevitably missed the turn off for a gentle walk along the lanes to Powillimount Beach and found ourselves on the very rocky beach. More worrying was the fact that the tide was coming in and the beach was getting narrower and narrower forcing us up onto the large rocks at the foot of the steep banking up to the fields above.

The wiggly bit at the bottom was our trespassing escapade eek!

We clambered our way along, sometimes on the rocks, sometimes on the boggy briar-laden margin beyond until we saw what we hoped was a way back on to the path. We were slightly mistaken as we found ourselves trespassing in the magnificent gardens of a stately home. We crept along behind hedges, whispering as we decided which path to take, and expecting to hear the gamekeeper’s shotgun announce that we’d been spotted. Fortunately we escaped without being peppered with buckshot and wandered back along the lanes we should have taken in the first place. Never has Vince looked so welcoming when we finally made it back.

I’m off now for a quick wash and brush-up before dinner at the pub and we’re off home in the morning, so thanks for joining us on this quick trip. We aim to get away for short breaks as often as we can while we sort out our build, so keep an eye out for updates. We hope to head into Europe again when our planning application is submitted as the process can take months. That should give us enough Vince-memories to keep us going through the stress of the build.

As always – we’ll keep you posted!

Bye for now 🙂

xxx

They really move with the times…
…up here in Scotland
Rather worryingly the lower branches of this tree were adorned with seaweed
Isn’t he handsome 🙂
About Ken Tomlinson 217 Articles
Semi-retired biker, blogger and world’s best grandad. Doesn’t take life too seriously. Discovered motorhoming in 2015, sold up and downsized to fund more travels. Now with added Yorkshire.

6 Comments on Getting Steamboats…

  1. Look forward to seeing you head to Europe as council consents wend through the processes.
    We are collecting a new Rollerteam from the factory near Siena and taking 9 weeks to relocate it back to its rightful owner somewhere near Luton. Taking 9 weeks to do so and Greece is first on the menu. Three weeks to go. Currently staying beachfront in the Chausson enjoying autumn sunshine and fresh seafood (self caught)
    Jane and Stuart

    • Wow! Good to see you’ll shortly be back in Europe:) I hope you’ll be blogging the adventure again? And more importantly how did you manage to blag a trip like that???

  2. Hi, just found your blog and really enjoying it – not quite read it all yet but you can expect a UK spike in your analytics for this week! Your early van experiences are very like ours – all alarm and despondency each time something does not work. Which is quite often as it happens:-( But all the rest compensates for it! We bought in July 2015 but we’re lucky enough to be work-free in April 2016 so have been around Europe a bit by now. Our blog is snailtrails.co.uk if you want to compare and contrast! Best, Robina

    • Hi Robina thanks for your kind words! I shall check out & subscribe to your blog as soon as I finish this post I’m working on. And yes – more things went wrong sigh… It sounds as though we have much in common 😀

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