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!!!!

Second trip.

For our second trip out in Baby we booked a site about 25 miles away for a long weekend. The object was to find a nice site where we could take a Saturday to Tuesday break on Steve's Sunday off. It would mean that we could go away even if Steve has to go into work on the Monday as the travelling would be equal to the distance from home.

Well all was looking good for the weekend .. we'd left Baby in storage and were going from there. I'd gone up and put the food and clothes in ready for the off as soon as Steve got home from work. The weather forecast was good ..showers for the Saturday then sunny but cool. Barney and I were ready to go when Steve got in from work at 4.20, but as he arrived the rain shower which had started at 4 o'clock was starting to turn to sleet .. then snow!!!! Within 20 mins of the snow starting there was over an inch of snow and it was still coming down so we had to take the decision to postpone till the next morning. It was at this point we realised that all the fresh food including milk was in the caravan which was a mile away, I'd even out Barney's food in!! The annoying thing about this freaky weather was that it was very localised, half a mile out of the village there was nothing!

Just before we postponed...


We finally managed to get away on Sunday morning about 10 o'clock. It took a good half hour to get the frozen snow off Baby's roof, we thought it rather dangerous to try and tow with it still on, given the curved roof of the orion it wouldn't have been on there long.

It didn't take long to get to our site and we were pitched by 11am. It is a really beautiful site with very friendly wardens and we will definately be using it again .. http://www.riverviewtouringpark.co.uk/


As you can see there weren't many others who braved the weather ..pity really as it turned out to be very pleasant. :-))))

Mystery solved.

Whilst we were away in February we spotted a trickle of water running down the wall in the washroom .. now as we had water ingress in our old van it was disconcerting to say the least. So much so, that we took Baby back to the dealers on the way home. Now we hadn't had any rain for a good while so it was puzzling. The dealer took off the trim in the washroom and found quite a bit of moisture, so he took photos and sent them off to Baileys. Well it appears that Baileys have made the caravan so well insulated that the only cold spots are the metal fixings that bolt the caravan together. The moisture was simply condensation forming on the metal fixings. There has apparently been a few caravanners experiencing this .. well the few who use their caravans on frosty nights that is!!! Anyway, Baileys are going to insulate the metal fixings for us with some sort of compound .. so we shouldn't have any more problems on frosty nights.