It's a date

It may have taken a while and a lot of chasing our tails but we have finally
made a decision on when we are going to cross the channel back into Europe.
We are aiming to do the tunnel mid December, 13th or 14th, and then head
south to Italy eventually aiming for Sicily. If we can we will try to be in
Sicily for Christmas. So unless we change our minds in the next week or two,
well you never know, we will be enjoying some Mediterranean sunshine for the
festive season.
Once the cold snap is over we will make our way back to the UK aiming to
return in April or May, or perhaps even June if we get waylaid somewhere
nice.
Cheers for now.
M&S

Global warming? My feet are freezing!

Well it sure was chilly down Exmoor way. We spent a lovely if not icy week
at Dulverton on the southern edge of the moor. The small town is sat in a
valley in the surrounding hills and does not get too many hours of sunshine
at this time of the year. The days were bright and sunny and the nights were
below freezing. Thankfully Noddy has been keeping us nice and warm during
the chilly periods, and as a reward we treated him to some nice insulation
on some external pipe work. Well we don't want his waterworks freezing do
we!
We enjoyed some very nice walks and cycles around and about in the sunshine,
but on the day we went up to the coast at Lynmouth we got fogged in. Up on
the moor it was warm and sunny, but we could see the cloud rolling in below
us where the coast should have been. Lynmouth was fairly deserted,
unsurprisingly, but we found a fudge shop that was open and sampled the
local produce, yum.
The best day out was our trip to Honiton and our afternoon at the Land Rover
Experience centre. We had a great time putting a new 110 Defender Station
Wagon through its paces both on and off road, very addictive stuff! Since
the drive we have been heavy into reading up on Land Rovers and getting
further along the road of planning our future 'dream' trips around the
world, by road. Watch this space!
After Dulverton we ventured down to Looe for a few days. The weather got a
bit warmer, but it also got a lot wetter. We managed to cycle into Looe on
our first day, all down hill on the way, all uphill on the way back. Sadly
after that most of our time was spent sheltering in Noddy from the heavy
horizontal drizzle, not nice.
The weather followed us back east to Wareham where it changed, but for the
worst. We had some very heavy rain and blustery gale force winds. We did
manage an outing into Bournemouth to meet up with some old friends, which
was great.
We are now back at Broadway as Noddy had to go back to his makers again to
have the final work done on him. I hope that we wont have to make any more
visits especially as our warranty has now expired and we will not get any
more freebies.
From here we head back to Gatwick for a week or so, and then probably back
into Europe sometime in December. Well that is we can ever make our mind up
on where we want to head for!

Cheers for now

M&S

Winter is a coming

We are well into our mini tour of the west and it was good to back on the
open road after a few static weeks in Sussex. It has been quite a whistle
stop trip so far with our first stop at Woodstock, a few miles west of
Oxford. It was a very nice site on the edge of the Blenheim Estate, and in
easy reach of Oxford by bus. I won't dwell on the price of buses too long,
but it cost £4.20 each for a return to cover the 7-mile trip. If we had
however used the park and ride it would have been considerably cheaper. The
only problem being that out of about 7 park and ride sites around the city,
only one has spaces for motorhomes and then only a measly 5 spaces. However,
Oxford was delightful, and very busy. Woodstock is a very pretty village,
but we chose against a visit into Blenheim as they charge the princely sum
of £14 each, not on our budget they don't!
After Woodstock it was only a few miles down the road to our next stop,
Burford. The site was situated a few miles out of town next to the Cotswold
Wildlife Park. In the evenings if we stood outside Noddy and closed our eyes
we almost imagined that we were back in the Kruger Park thanks to the
occasional roar of the lions. Feeling energetic we ventured out on the
bicycles, ashamedly the first time since being back in the UK, and had a
very pleasant ride via the country lanes into Burford. Burford is, like
Woodstock, a very pretty small town and was incredibly busy that afternoon.
The next small hop we took was to Cheltenham, and a site in the grounds of
the racecourse. Sadly there was no racing that weekend, but Elaine Page was
playing on the Sunday night, fitting location, no comment. Thankfully the
town centre is only 20 minutes walk from the racecourse so we were able to
stroll in and take in the sights. We spent the daily mainly touring the
shops on the high street as we had been there previously.
Noddy dictated our next point of call, Broadway, as he had an appointment at
the manufacturers in Willersey just down the road. We had a short list of
things that needed attention before the warranty ran out. Some were done but
we have got a return trip booked for later in the month to have the work in
the bathroom to be carried out. We were hoping to get it all done at once,
but as we had discovered additional problems we had to book in again.
Turning south we aimed for Cirencester and a site in walking distance of the
town in Cirencester Park. Since we have been here winter has started
knocking on the door. It was down to 1C outside, only 5C in Noddy, last
night and is only getting up to about 7C or 8C in the day. We have wandered
into town the last two mornings through the park. The park and the town are
very picturesque especially with the clear, sunny if cold days. We have been
at Cirencester now for a couple of days and head off tomorrow to Exmoor.
Should be nice and warm there!
Our main highlight coming up is on the 9th, a half day Land Rover Experience
at Honiton. We get our hands on a Defender for the afternoon for some off
road fun, can't wait.

Cheers for now
M&S