(Not) Travelling Nightmare!

Did I say that we were heading 'up north' to explore the coast...

1. Well, a major leak from a split panoramic window in the 'van has grounded us for a while.... That's a major expense that Swift say is not covered by their 10 year body warranty.
2. The Touareg has been off the road for two weeks with an electrical fault that Southend VW can't fix. They've put in around £1000 worth of bits so far to no avail... The software won't let the key out or  allow the car to be locked because it doesn't recognise that the gear selector is in Park. Obviously we can't leave it on the drive unlocked with the key in. Thankfully, at the second attempt, VW Southend were really helpful and locked it in their compound while they attempted to fix it; pity they can't, really.
3. On the day the Touareg malfunctioned the sidewall of our little DS3's rear tyre was destroyed by a screw and it proved impossible to locate another Michelin Sport 3... That meant TWO Pilot Sport 4 tyres for the rear and three days off the road over the weekend.

That's three vehicles effectively off the road at once. 

I heard someone say that these things come in threes. Let's hope so.

Update#1

I've completed a temporary repair on the 'van with sealer and gaffa tape, ready for coastal adventures. The 'van is booked into WKD Caravan Services in October for replacement panoramic window.

Update#2

Looks like the earliest VW can get the required selector unit from VW Germany is at the end of the first week in September. That's 2 months off the road... No caravanning, then. Still doing some limited coastal adventures though.

Update#3

An early return of the Touareg enables us to spend a week or so heading north to add a little more to our coastal adventure from Scarborough up to Whitby. 

Travelling - but not as we know it

 We are, of course, still in the UK. It's been a salutary experience spending the winter here and now it's the second hay fever season that I'm living through. It's good for the soul. 

There's quite a lot to do in our new home as we're extending it so the lack of living in Spain and travelling hasn't been the major issue for us it might of been but we're missing planning adventures and, of course, our Spanish life. New normal. Leigh on Sea's great, though, as are the opportunities for family BBQ's in our new small garden and walks with friends. 

Lunching in nearby Maldon, this chap wanted to share my chips: cheeky young starling! Are the 'lockdown generation' of birds getting more tame?!

Anyway, this is the usual update post in the main blog, logging what we're up to and the adventures that we're planning. Not a lot, you might say,..... but we are filling in gaps in our coastal tour coverage and, this week, we set off  'up North' to spend time exploring the coast north of Scarborough and Whitby. It's proving to be quite difficult because so many people are trying out motorhoming or caravanning for the first time as well as the usual crew..... and they're all in the UK campsites so we can't find places to stay. We've managed to book a couple of weeks and we'll spend longer if we can find more pitches for our faithful outfit. Oh, we're spending a few days in York, too. 

It's all in our coastal tour tab for 2021.

In addition to our coastal mini adventures we hopped on the train from Leigh station to meet up with our daughters in London for Fathers Day. Brilliant time. We ended up eating Spanish tapas with some nice Spanish wine which was a bit of a bonus. The whole thing felt like another mini adventure as such trips do these days. It was interesting to see the scale of building in the city given the economic uncertainty. Someone knows more than I do, that's for sure.

No other plans...yet.

Stay Safe.

Travelling 2021 (Sort of)

 Well, It's coming up to one year since the UK locked down for the first Covid wave and here we are in our second lockdown - at least with a plan to relax restrictions a little. 😷 The UK might have been late in locking down but they've certainly got vaccination supply and delivery right. It's extremely impressive and we each have an armfull of good old Astra Zeneca.

As mentioned earlier in the blog our life living between two countries and travelling in the EU has come to an end - in the short term through COVID and in the long term because of BREXIT. We can now only spend 90 days in any 180 days in the Schengen Zone so, if we want to spend only half of our usual winter time in our Spanish home, we can't travel in Schengen countries until the summer. Then if we do that, we can't spend long in our home. So basically, the life that we have worked so hard for for is screwed; I appreciate that we've been fortunate, perhaps privileged, to make it all happen in the first place but we haven't got that much active life remaining and it's a bitter pill indeed... it's really no consolation that there thousands of others in the same boat. At least we've had the tremendous benefit of living and travelling with our fellow Europeans for over ten years and we should be very thankful for that. OK let's be positive from now on and readjust our horizon to the new reality.

............................................

So Updates so far for 2021:

Permanent travelling event: we move house to buzzy Leigh on Sea next Monday. It's a major downsize, leaving our family home of 20 years on Fenn Creek; this, we think, will replace the buzz of tapas bars and Nerja society to some extent. Excitement and sadness and a new life.

Goodbye, Fenn Creek:

We have our caravan back from the Swift Group factory in Hull - and a great job it is too: new back, properly fixed and a number of other changes and fixes. Well done guys, it's good for another few thousand miles. We'll likely be staying in the UK this year for reasons explained above and I'll log the trips in the coastal tour tab (HERE). We've wrapped it up in a nice cover as it won't fit on our new drive to clean it so all that happens in storage from now on.

We plan to head to Nerja in late summer/early autumn for a visit. We've had one Astra Zeneca Vaccination so far and hope that flying out then will be possible, new Covid variants here and in Spain permitting. We're, of course, missing friends and the life out there.

So there we are; vague plans and nothing particularly adventurous but, there again, just popping out to the supermarket is an adventure these days is it not?.. and, anyway, we are planning to extend our little hundred year old house in Leigh... 

End of Travelling Year - and How!

 Well, here we are again - back to lockdown....

So that's the end of travelling for 2020, I fear. We look forward to our trips to the local supermarket. At least we managed to complete the intended parts of our UK coastal tour, which turned out brilliantly - now the 'van gets a wash and polish before it goes back into storage. We've got to completely empty it, too, because it's going back to the Swift factory in Hull over Christmas to have another replacement rear panel after their (ex)dealer-who-shall-be-unmentionable messed up with the last one. 

Oops, that's not how you do it....

Good for Swift, though, because, after reviewing photographs and a report from WKD Caravan Services (Thanks), Swift's engineer gave the OK to sort the problem. The timing of all this is not too great because we're downsizing our house in a very big way and we'll have to take all the gear, cushions and mattress out; goodness knows where we're going to put it all.

So no posts from Spain, no Malaga Lights 😢. We'll be in the UK sorting out our house stuff ready to move to Leigh-on-Sea in the early New Year: fun of a different kind.

 See you in 2021.

A Different Sort of Travelling

 So...

😥Our Scandinavian caravan tour is cancelled.

😢Our motorhome tour of China is cancelled

😢We can't go to Nerja; infection rates are going up.

😞Our coastal tour is problematic because of Covid and the caravan sites we need are all booked with staycationers.

 OK, lets move house; it's a kind of travelling, after all, it's just a bit more permanent and dear Rishi has driven the housing market into a frenzy with his stamp duty holiday. LET'S DO IT.

A big decision

We resolved to consider the big decision of downsizing at the next big birthday (which is just around the corner) but COVID lock-downs, quarantining plus the house purchase stamp duty holiday presents the opportunity to do so without sacrificing a major travelling trip or so. We want somewhere a little more manageable, within striking distance of London and family and within walking distance of a vibrant cafe culture street: looks like here, then.

This decision is not without anguish; our current home has been extended and designed by us to some extent and has been a wonderful family home for some 22 years - but now it's time to move. It's oddly exciting to house-hunt again, although the chances of joining all this up to get the kind of house we want in the location we want feels a little remote at times. Time will tell.

Venturing out again

We've had a couple of trips out; how exciting is that, these days!

Our youngest daughter treated us to a trip around Kew Gardens for our birthdays. We drove, parked easily and met her and boyfriend complete with picnic gear: a wonderful day.

A nostalgic trip to Clacton and Jaywick was fun with our middle daughter; nostalgic because I lived in Jaywick as a student, taking my physics degree at Essex University in the late sixties; don't ask! Jaywick is listed as one of the most deprived areas in the country and little had changed since my period of residence - which is quite amazing if  you think about it. 

Beach is still great though.

An enjoyable and fascinating day out with friends at the Henry Moore sculpture park and gardens distracted us from the stresses of house selling and buying. Highly recommended if you like sculpture. Picnic again!

Enough!

Let's escape to Herne Bay in the 'van; it's coastal tour time.

Can we Should we

Well, we're booked into the Caravan and Motorhome Club's site in Brighton next week and all set to complete a part of our coastal tour of the UK down there - not amongst the potential crowds in Brighton but along the coast travelling east towards Eastbourne, an interesting section that we somehow missed on earlier tours. We also hope to meet up with friends, suitably socially distanced, of course, and walk the seven sisters path. We'll see!

We're used to being self sufficient in the 'van with its on-board shower and suchlike so we don't recon that we're neither posing significant risk to locals or, indeed, to ourselves, fingers crossed. We have a suitable stock of gloves, masks and sanitiser so we feel as prepared as we can be.

Yes, we're prepared:

Given that, before Covid-19, we would have been travelling through Sweden and Finland at this time, this is a very small trip in comparison but we feel as if it's a major adventure. Who'd have thought...

Anyway, our 2020 coastal tour starts HERE

Just Saying

London Protests: Black Lives Matter

Rosie Smith & Jim Curran from Twitter post by Rosie Smith