Put to bed for the winter.

Yes, today we put our Baby into winter hibernation .. so sad.

She is now up on her tyre savers .. thoroughly cleaned inside and the seats pulled forward to let the air circulate. We have also blown all the pipes through with our Floe. She had a good shampooing last Tuesday so she she should see off the worst of the winter weather. Role on the new year and we can start looking forward to taking her out again.


In the meantime I wish you all A Very Happy Christmas.

Pembrey Country Park.

We spent last weekend with the family at the CC site in Pembrey .. it's a beautiful site right on the edge of the country park. The country park is a real asset. There is a dry ski slope, toboggan ride, pony trekking centre, 500 acres of parkland to explore and a beautiful beach for when the weather is good .. a bit cold this trip though, and there is the added bonus of no parking fees if you leave your car at your caravan.

This was an extended weekend, Thursday to Sunday, to celebrate two of our grandchildren's birthdays. So we had the company of both daughters and their families. The weather was pretty good during the day with some torrential hail storms in the night which, if you're going to have rain, is the best time to have it. :-)
The site was very quiet, we are in the far left of the picture across the road from the amenity block.

The weather was even good enough to cook and sit outside..

This was our last trip of the year which feels rather sad :-(( ..but what a year we have had!! .. every trip has given us good weather so we have been able to enjoy the great outdoors.

So Baby is unpacked of the bedding and linen and ready to be winterised .. a job for Sunday.

Then it will be time to sit down and start planning next years holidays. We have had nine trips this year which by a lot of standards is doing really well ..but!! it still doesn't feel like we have made the most of our lovely caravan. So next year we must try harder LOL ..

There's a storm brewing!!

The weather forecast for tonight is for a mega storm to hit Britain and we are right in it's path. I can't help but feel very anxious for Baby. She is sat in our friends yard with very little protection from the forecast 80 mile an hour winds. I have been thinking about her all day so I decided to take my mind of the weather forecast by carving my pumkins for halloween.

I don't think I managed it did I!! LOL.

Broadway in the Cotswolds.

Sunday 6th October saw us taking off for a week in the Cotswolds. The sun shone and the temperature reached a dizzy 20 degrees. The trip was an easy drive, though we would have liked to see a service station on the M5 to take a break. We were pretty desperate by the time we got to the A46 so we found a layby and used our own facilities.

We arrived at Broadway CC site about 12.15 and by 1pm we were all set up and having lunch. We were on pitch no 50 .. a lovely pitch with a hedge along side the awning and a wide grass area at the back, just right for Barney to have a lay down on. We had a quiet day with just s stroll around the site to get our bearings. Not a very big dog walk and the usual lazy owners leaving their dogs calling card for me to pick up on my boots ... what is wrong with people that they can't clear up after their dogs :-//

Monday morning was glorious so up early to explore Broadway.

A beautiful village that we revisited several times during our stay.

We also went to Broadway tower ..

Broadway Tower is one of England's outstanding viewpoints and at 1024 feet (312m) above sea level, it is the second highest point on the Cotswold escarpment. Unrivalled views survey an expanse of a 62 mile radius and as many as 16 Counties. After visiting the top of the tower we went back to the tea rooms where we met a lovely group of motor cyclists out on a regular jaunt. They were all aged 70 plus .. the oldest gent pictured here was 92!!!!!!

Bourton on the water is still a must visit destination in the Cotswolds if only to say hello to Brum in the motor museum.

One of the exhibits in the toy section of the museum really tickled me .. a child size real working lawnmower .. can you imagine giving one to a child these days, social services would have a field day .. excuse the pun lol.

Another little gem we found on a drive around was J M Barrie's ( author of Peter Pan) cricket pavilion at Stanway ..built on saddle stones.

It was truly a wonderful week and we are really looking forward to returning to Broadway as soon as we possibly can.

The Caravanning Bug.

I really don't know what it is about caravans? ..You either love them or hate them if you listen to populous. My theory is that you only hate them if you'd love to have one but can't, for whatever reason, have one LOL.

Take my husband for example, he hated caravans so I started talking about the lovely holidays I had when my children were young. We also talked about not seeing enough of this beautiful country we live in but I didn't like the idea of touring using bed and breakfasts. Now I'm not knocking all B&B establishments but I have stayed in some shockers in my time, so the thought of laying my head on any more pillows where a strangers head has been, be it with a clean pillow case,turns me off completely.

Anyway one day we had nothing planned so I said to Steve ..let's go to a local caravan dealer to have a look at the caravans, "ok" he said "only looking though" ;-)) Well by the time we left we had put a deposit on a 4 year old Avondale Dart 380/2. It was a lovely looking caravan and we both fell in love with it .. a fatal emotion as it turned out as the caravan leaked like a sieve! The only good thing about it was that by the time we had been away in it a few times and had come to the conclusion that we couldn't stop the leaks, Steve was hooked on caravanning!

So it was back to the dealer and a trade in for Baby.

Anyway, since we bought ours, my three children have also gone out and bought caravans .. we have turned into a touring family. I have just seen my eldest daughter off for their first weekend in their new (to them) Bailey Discovery 400, an ideal 5 berth caravan for them and my three grandchildren.

So I come back to my original question .. what is it about caravans? from the minute you step inside one (even if it's parked outside the house) you feel relaxed and at ease with the world, strange isn't it?.

Trip no 7. LLangorse Lake

This is a little belated but life is a bit hectic and I forget to update.. hence only trip no 7 in 10 months lol. I know we should be grateful but I would sooo like to get away more often.

Llangorse lake's Lakeside touring park is in a lovely spot near the lake for water sports. It needs a fair bit of updating as far as the amenity block are concerned ..they are all rather scruffy and uncared for, though clean enough especially as we only use our own facilities LOL.

The site itself is accessed via a rather busy and narrow couple of miles of road and more than once we found ourselves squeezed up against a hedge to allow a few cars to go past, not an ideal situation to find yourself in with your new 'pride and joy' in tow. :'-((

The pitches were on well maintained grass with a few short hardstandings. We had one of the hardstanding pitches next to our daughter. When we arrived there were a few BBQ's going on so I had quite an audience to reverse onto the pitch .. I had it right first time but Steve decided I should be more central on the hardstanding .. I pulled out and put the caravan where he asked me to, only to realise when we put the awning up that I was right first time grrrr!! we got around it by tying the back of the awning to the stays, that was ok as the weather was fabulous but would have been a nightmare if it had been windy.

The only downside of the holiday was the wasps .. what a nightmare!! .. my arms ached for a week from the constant swatting. A better waste management might have been beneficial as the bins were overflowing and swarming with the blighters. It made me do a bit of research when we got home and I came across the 'waspinator' http://www.waspinator.co.uk/ I have bought some (cheaper in Amazon)for our next trip in a couple of weeks, so will let you know if they work.

We had lots of fun though .. it was our first trip with daughter Claire and the family and their newly acquired caravan.

A beautiful day for a boat ride.



The end of a lovely day ..enjoying a drink as the sun goes down.



Next trip is to Broadway in the Cotswolds in a couple of weeks.. sooo excited, can't wait!!!!

Another trip to Dan yr Ogof

It's taken a while to update but we have had another short break at the touring site at Dan yr Ogof showcaves. We really should make more of this site as it's only about 15 mins drive from home. We arrived last Saturday and stayed till Tuesday.

So much has happened since that it seems like weeks ago, not least that I got bit by a spider!!!!! It was about 4am on Wednesday when I woke with a searing pain in my finger and within a short space of time the pain was travelling up my arm and I was feeling really ill. I didn't realise it was a spider bite until I had tried all the remedies for bee and wasp stings without success. It was then I spotted that there were 2 puncture marks.

Anyway to cut a long story short I am on course of antibiotics and will probably loose a small part of the end of my finger. I can't believe how ill I was from a spider bite in the uk. I have a suspicion that we brought the spider back from the caravan trip as I had put the holdall with the clothes we hadn't used on the bed, then emptied it and left the clothes on the bed whilst we went out to see family. Anyway I will be a little more careful what I put on the bed in future!!

Coed Y Llwyn, Gellilydan, North Wales

When the weather is good there is no better place to be on earth than Wales ..and for a base to tour North Wales there really is no place like Coed Y Llwyn caravan club site near Blaenau Ffestiniog. It's in a lovely sheltered valley surrounded by beautiful views. The facilities are what you would expect from the caravan club and the wardens are really nice helpful people, they even left the grass strip between pitches un-mown when I said I was enjoying watching the Bumble Bees on the wild flowers. The pitches are a really good size and we had a large grass area at the back of the pitch to enjoy too.

There is so much to do in North Wales that we have been back time and again but I have to say that having 'Baby' to come home to every day really made this trip special. One of the things that did worry us a little was the journey up. There is no easy way to get from South to North Wales without climbing at least one hill so we took the most straight forward route A465 - A470. The worst part being a couple of miles past Minllyn where there is a 20% gradient leading to a blind hairpin bend. But it turned out to be quite easy and as always Baby towed like a dream. :-))

We had a little drama whilst on a walk to visit the now mothballed Trawsfynydd Nuclear power station. We walked along the cycle route no 80 through a farm called Cae Eilion Allun and were about a mile and a half in when we spotted 3 horses, they looked friendly, but then we saw they were accompanied by a bull!!!!! He looked up from his grazing and then laid down so we quietly carried on. I jokingly remarked that he knew we'd be back so he'd have us then......Well I was right! There was no sign of him as we walked back past the horses ...then we saw him ..the same time that he saw us. The next gate was about 50 metres away but the bull, a welsh black, was determined we weren't going to reach it. He charged down from the field he was in, clearing a stone wall on his way and before we knew what was happening he was a few metres away. I waved my walking stick and shouted at him and he stopped, still snorting angrily. We managed to get Barney over the stone wall behind us then climbed over ourselves, but there was so many gaps we knew it wasn't going to protect us for long and somehow we would have to get over the barbed wire fence behind the wall. We were fortunate that the barbed wire fence hadn't been completed where the wall turned down to divide 2 fields so we scrambled between the wall and fence in the direction we had come and then climbed around the end of the fence over another stone wall and to safety. I really don't know how I got over the 2 walls and the fence and if I was asked to do it now I know I couldn't, the power of adrenalin is amazing.

We spent the rest of our adventurous day relaxing back at the caravan and for the first time took the front panels out of the awning and used it as a canopy.

Peak district Trip 4.

The furthest Baby has traveled and she handled like a dream. We did struggle with the nose weight when we loaded her but once we got it to 78 we were happy. Bailey really needs to get the unladen nose weights correct .. they quote the 400/2 at 78 when in fact it was nearer 100!!!!

Babies very first pit stop at a service station ..


Camped at Carsington Water .. Steve cooking Breckie. The Milenco leveler was was really easy to use and Baby was spot on level.



Whilst we were in the Peak District we visited Sherwood Forest to see The Major Oak, The Heights of Abraham for a ride on the cable cars and Hayfield where the BBC series 'The Village' was filmed. Here are some holiday snaps

Carsington Water CC site here we come!!

Four more sleeps and we're off on adventure number 4 to Carsington Water in the Peak District. We went there last year at the end of May so hoping a week or so earlier isn't going to jinx the weather as it was glorious last year.

Every adventure we've been on with Baby has seen us trying out something new, this trip will be no different as we've invested in a Millenco leveller..





Looks like it will save a lot of faffing around to get the caravan level .. so no more sinks that won't drain properly. ;-)

Dan yr Ogof Touring Site. Trip No 3.

Well we did it ..we defied the weather and have had a wonderful 3 night break at Dan yr Ogof touring site. The weather was atrocious, force 8 gales and torrential rain but we got there in one piece. We set the caravan up and settled in for a noisy evening and night. The bad weather continued through the next day, but we were pitched with the most wonderful view so it didn't seem to matter.

The view from the front window.. .. ..and the view from the side window



The whole idea of this trip though was to try out the new awning. We eventually managed it on Monday. It was still very windy but from start to finish the new awning went up in 10 mins.. absolutely brilliant..

This is it with the blinds still drawn.

The 2013 model of this awning..the Dorema Mistral Ripstop has had side windows put in and I have to say they make a big difference once sat inside.

Well we are thrilled to bits with our new purchase. It is quick and easy to erect and take down, and has plenty of room to relax and store our shoes and bits and pieces. But best of all it stood up to a return of Force 8 gales and torrential rain on it's first night up, and didn't let in a drop of rain.

It's chucking it down!!

Yes it's chucking it down with rain and blowing a hoolie... but as soon as Steve gets in from work we are off for a 3 night break to Dan-yr-Ogof touring site to try out our new awning. We have bought a Dorema Mistral Ripstop and are hoping to get it up this weekend. Can't see it going up tonight though!!! Hopefully if it suits we'll get rid of the big awning and use this for all our holidays, short and long. We have already given our porch awning away so there is no going back now ha ha !!!

Hopefully my next post will have photos and a positive feedback .. wish us luck!!!!

Winter catering in the caravan.

I thought I'd mention about the change in how we eat whilst away in the winter. The higher grade insulation in the Orion has lengthened our season as the van is a lot cosier inside, but that means it is still cold outside so to be honest the thought of standing or worst still sitting around outside BBQing doesn't really appeal, but then neither does preparing a cooked dinner. So, because we now have a much larger fridge and a microwave in Baby, I just prepare ahead. When I'm making things like Shepherds Pie or Lasagne I make double and freeze one.
The first trip I prepared veg and put in food bags and took a frozen Shepherds Pie out of the freezer in the morning. Because the Shepherds Pie acted like an ice pack and it was cold outside I didn't have to put the fridge on and by the time we arrived the Shepherds pie had defrosted enough to put in the oven to cook. I have a 3 tier steamer into which I put broccoli, peas and carrots and then we got on with setting up and putting up the awning. By the time we'd finished we had a lovely Sunday lunch to sit down to.


I plated up 4 meals and put two in the fridge ..so the next day we had another lovely meal using the microwave.

For our second trip I took a lasagne, again enough for 2 days, the first day it was put in the oven to cook and the second just heated up in the microwave .. served with crusty rolls (always got par-baked in van) delicious!!!!