England and Wales - baby steps

Welsh camping spot

Holiday time in Tenby

Wheres Wally in Tenby

Cycle trail

The Chausson is a work in progress, we tried to think of a name and I suggested Claude, but it didn’t stick. Chausson means 'slipper' in French, which detracts from its image of an adventure-truck.

Howard and Hilda, the matching white bikes, are now up and running with cycle computers to record our distance and speed attained etc.
Howard is getting a water carrier today but Hilda is a different shape and might have to wait!

Initially we were camped outside my parents’ house in Ledbury, Herefordshire. Mum and Dad have been a big help with sorting out the necessities of life on the road. We were living on the street literally, their house is in a small cul de sac and I think every neighbour met us by the time we left.

The size of the vehicle is a bit daunting, not only is it a big brick but it has some 'danglers'. When reversing Stuart has to remember the grey waste  dangler doesn't clear the ground by much, the same for the diesel exhaust. I have been helping with reversing in the narrow English roads and parking lots.  

Supermarket carpark spaces are very tight and I encourage Stuart "yes, take up all 4 spaces in the far corner". I had a bit of a stand off with one man who was insisting on parking right next to us when we were manoevering in a 2 slot park. There were many similar spaces around us but he had his heart set on the one next to us. I did exaggerating motions with my arms of how the back of our truck would swing out and crush his car but he remained undeterred. Eventually a motorist behind tooted him into reality and he moved on.

On our second day we turned into 'Sandpit Lane', there is a warning in any road called 'lane' – don’t go there in this vehicle! We had hardly entered the lane to find two concrete bollards on sentry duty preventing anything larger than a Smartcar entering. We eventually extricated ourselves with me getting cars to back up so we could do a multi point turn. The spin off was a bit of gridlock onto the main road, we drove on, pretending we had no idea what caused it.

We have been spending our time in England and Wales familiarising ourselves with life on wheels. Wales has some lovely spots and the weather has been very favourable. We stayed a night at Tenby, something to do with Dylan Thomas? There were picturesque candy-coloured houses standing shoulder to shoulder looking out to the sea, less picturesque were the motley collection of holiday-makers. The only normal looking ones were the dogs.

We spent a night camping in Wales with our friends Phil and Jenny. We combined to create a memorable dinner, enjoying large succulent asparagus, meat bbqed by Stuart on our 'Easy Chef'. The Easy chef is a 3 burner that has a cast iron plate and it pulls out from the side of the truck. It acts as BBQ and cooker.We rounded the evening off with English strawberries, Belgium chocolate and the French 'sticky' and Calvados that had over-wintered in Phil and Jenny's truck.
I have never had strawberries so nice as these! I wanted to think they would pale in comparison to NZ ones but I was well wrong.

We are now in the Elan Valley in Wales, it is hot. We stayed here last night in an unofficial capacity as minder of the visitor centre. We had everything that we needed except water (forgot to fill before we left the camping ground. Never mind, Alan, the ranger pointed out the centre's
standpipe this morning and we filled up like a huge white camel. I checked at one stage to see that water was not gushing out of another orifice.

It is poetic really that this valley and national recreation area, is made of four water reservoirs. The water collected here supplies Birmingham with over
a million litres of water a day - and I had a bucket shower last night to conserve the stuff.

Learning, learning - it never stops