Long time, no ketchup

Well it’s been a while! I’m glad to say Vince is back on his travels at last, on a little UK trip next weekend, then later in October he’ll be getting his feet wet crossing the channel for a short break in Normandy & Brittany yay! We’ve been missing Vince, you, and life on the road so we’re looking forward to a little fix before we sort out another long adventure, hopefully in 2017.

So what’s been happening? I’m back at work teaching the cream of Telford’s youth how to drive; tearing out what little remaining hair I have whilst preparing them for the horrors of UK traffic. My lovely business partner had filled my diary for my return from our big trip so it’s been fun meeting a new bunch of keen learners. After such a long break I must confess I have all my enthusiasm back and have been having a lot of fun. As one of my former learners said – ‘We spend a couple of hours laughing & gossiping every week and somehow at the end of it I can drive!’ I’m trying to keep that freshness by not working all the hours I used to, so we’re trying three days a week for now which leaves long weekends free for Vince travels. Gill has been back & forward to her old school, preparing for a new part-time role tutoring pupils in Literacy & Numeracy, which hopefully kicks off next week – doing the same days as me to allow for those Vince weekends.

Having said all that, we haven’t yet managed another weekend away in the van as firstly we did a grand tour to visit all the family and bombard them with the 2000+ photos we took on our trip. We did a few indoor DIY bits & pieces, then – oh my goodness – the garden… Our wonderful neighbours had been kind enough to keep the lawn trimmed but everything else had gone feral! By the time we’d hired a van, hacked our way into the jungle and cleared all the growth we ended up taking five loads of vegetation to the dump. There’s still tons to do but we’re pacing ourselves now doing a little bit at a time while my back returns to its normal shape. Somewhere along the line I managed to take part in a Guinness World Record attempt – no, not for long-windedness – for the largest ever moving procession of Triumph Motorcycles which closed down Mansfield on a Sunday morning!

Poor old Vince has had a good seeing to over the last few weeks. He was cleaned & polished within an inch of his life – including – ahem – a long session with the T-Cut to remove the paint left behind by a petrol-pump in Andorra.  As our trip went on over the summer, a few niggles cropped up so we sent a big list to our dealer, and to be fair they’ve been brilliant. They’ve agreed to fix almost everything under our sales warranty despite us adding six and a half thousand to Vince’s mileage. We had to dip into our after-market warranty for the awning repairs, but they kindly agreed to a complete replacement at over £1000 eek! The faults ranged from the very silly; the towel rail kept falling off – to the annoying; the waste tank full alarm went off every time we turned a tap on, even when it was empty – to the weird; electricity turning itself off when the sun came out! (That one turned out to be the solar panel controller). Well-versed as we are now in Motorhome matters, none of this is too unusual. Motorhomes are complicated beasts so we didn’t stress ourselves unduly. None of the issues seriously impacted on our enjoyment of the trip but it’ll be nice to know they’re all repaired for our next jolly. I’m off to pick him up in an hour or so – can’t wait!

We’ll update again during next weekend’s little run to Brighton – see you then 🙂