And when I say the Lakes, I really mean Coniston. The next trip up was a quick jaunt up there the week following our trip to see Metallica at Twickenham, after some plans with Ginger Mat changed at the last minute. Despite the ridiculous humidity I made it to the top of the Old Man, so naturally had to revive myself with plenty of cool refreshing beverages at the Black Bull. They’ve done quite nicely out of me this year! It’s pretty rare for me to be up there alone, so it was nice to be free of the admin of the awning and extra bits and pieces that company usually requires. Ginger Mat and I did make it up there a few weeks later, and yet again I ended up in the Black Bull having been over the top of the Old Man.

The weather on top of that hill has not been kind to me all year, and it started to rain as soon as we got to the summit. Because we’re not stupid, we were prepared for this, having checked the weather forecast and packed the appropriate clothing. Some of the people we saw on the way down, however, were clearly stupid. It’s not fair that Mountain Rescue teams should put themselves at risk for people like that – hopefully they didn’t have to that day. The weather also wasn’t hugely kind to Spicey Matt and I when we were up there in August. After a promising start – a day later than planned due to Matt’s motorbike breaking on the way up – the rain came again.

We’d decided to try somewhere new for our longer break up there after the August bank holiday so had plumped for a couple of nights at Gillside Farm before heading over to Pier Cottage at Coniston. Clarence absolutely bossed the Kirkstone Pass twice in two days, which brought back some distant memories from my D of E days. An RAF training jet flying up the valley was reminiscent of, if not as cool as, the Tornado that flew under us all those years ago. I doubt we’ll be in a massive hurry to head back that way, although if we’re going to have a crack at Helvellyn we may have to. Ullswater is beautiful, there’s no doubt about that, but I don’t think either of us were hugely impressed with the facilities at the site or the local hostelries! It was lovely to be back at Pier Cottage for a few nights, although I can’t help but think it would be much lovelier with a bit of sunshine around. I really wish they would update the shower and toilet block because that’s the one thing that rather lets the place down.

Despite the wind and the low cloud, Matt and I got to the top of the Old Man (that’s number four for me this year) and having got down out of the weather enjoyed the company of the Paynes for a couple of hours at the Black Bull. Brad finally got to find out what all the oatmeal stout related fuss was all about, but unfortunately had to leave relatively early as the kids were in tow. Naturally it hammered it down with rain for the rest of our stay! So that pretty much covers the Lakes – unless I have a run up there in the bug for the day I think that’s probably it until next spring now.

The only other camping trip I managed to squeeze in was back in September with Darryl and Jo. The Caravan Club had given them a free night, so we decided we would check out their site at Buxton. I really like the fact that it’s set in a former quarry, but it did feel as though some of the pitches were a little crammed in – especially in comparison to Park Coppice. The facilities were, as they always are at the Caravan Club sites, top notch and with a discount deal with a local pub we had a very pleasant weekend that included a walk along the Roaches and through Lud’s Church.

As far as the bug is concerned, she’s not been out of the garage as much as I’d have liked since the Stanford Hall weekend. I still haven’t managed to get her through an MOT first time, but there wasn’t too much needed. With the Herbie Hospital having moved out towards Wetherby, that will be the last time either of the dubs will be tested at Discount Dave’s, and to be honest I don’t have too many issues with that!

Interspersed throughout, I’ve been honing my brewing skills. Some brews have turned out better than others but the last couple of batches – an English bitter and an oatmeal stout – are pretty bloody excellent! The first OP style that I brewed tasted nothing like OP, but version 2 is currently fermenting away behind the sofa. Fingers crossed for a good result on that! (Update – it turned out pretty well!) Other than a trip to the Great British Beer Festival, a day at the Headingley test match against Australia, a visit to the new Spurs stadium to see the Bears against the Raiders and a double Therapy? gig, I think that’s about that for the last few months!

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A few days prior to the last post, I’d bottled the latest batch of beer I’d made but hadn’t tasted it at the time of writing. Because it’s a wheat beer, I called it Double Digit in honour of the legendary night at the Schwarzwaldstuben in Berlin. And you know what? It was really, really good! I can’t think of too many things that I’m genuinely proud of, but producing that is definitely one of them. So much so that there’s another batch of it currently bottle conditioning behind the sofa!

Admittedly it’s not quite the standard of the beer on offer at the Black Bull in Coniston, but then the guys at the Coniston Brewing Co have been doing it for slightly longer than I have! But it was off to Coniston that Clarence and I headed the week before Easter. I’ve been chewing over the idea of buying one of those event shelters for when I’m away in the bus on my own, but figured that it would be worth seeing just how difficult it would be to put the awning up on my own before committing to another couple of hundered quid on that.

Darryl used to have the same awning and reckoned it would be a bit of a handful to put up with only one pair of hands. So I thought I would have a play with my thoroughly underused GoPro and try out a timelapse video, just to see how cross I would get with it. Remarkably, I didn’t get cross at all! I’d like to think that’s down to my excellent planning!

4th Time Lucky

Sunday saw me finally make it to the top of the Old Man of Coniston for the first time since I was a teenager, but by jingo it was windy up there! I’d originally planned to wander across the tops to Wetherlam – a hill that kicked my ass 25 years ago – but I was genuinely struggling to stay on my feet at times so beat a retreat down to the Black Bull via Levers Water, the home of the Asrai.

Whilst having a couple of restorative pints of stout and enjoying listening in on the conversation of the group at the table next to me (“Sue and I are on the verge of turning vegan….”) I was given a lovely surprise when a certain Oliver Sloman wandered into the pub 24 hours earlier than expected!

As there was more wind forecast the following day, we stayed pretty low and enjoyed a very pleasant walk to Tarn Hows and back. Whilst it was dry and the sun was out for a good portion of the day, it certainly wasn’t warm enough to barbecue so we ate at the Black Bull again. And Oli managed to knock over almost an entire pint of stout……

Tuesday saw us pootle across to Wasdale, which was certainly an interesting drive! I can see why the view down Wastwater is apparently one of the nation’s favourites because it’s stunning. The National Trust site there is in a great location and once the renovation work on the shower block is complete it will be a smashing little site. My only issue is that the campervan pitches aren’t necessarily that well suited to erecting an awning in terms of their shape (although we did manage).

The Highest Mountain in England

The walk up Scafell Pike is not fun. Not because it’s paticularly difficult, but it’s downright dull. The views are great, but there’s a mile and a half stretch that is pretty much just like climbing stairs. Anyway, we made it to the top and it was cool to look across at the summit that I’d stood on a few days previously. It was also good to see the Langdale Pikes from a different angle. If I ever go up that hill again I think it will need to be on the route across from the Langdale valley, just because I think it’s a more interesting walk.

And that pretty much takes care of the trip to the Lakes. I chilled out in the sun on the Thursday as Oli headed home (there may have been a touch of sunstroke) and then tootled home myself on Good Friday. Some of the queues coming into the Lakes as I was going in the opposite direction were mental! The rest of the Easter weekend was spent finishing up some of the paintwork I’d started to sort out on the bug’s wing a few weeks earlier. Having left that a week or so to harden, that then got a good cut and polish last weekend. For a rattle can job I am super pleased with it – although we’ll see just how it looks in the daylight when we head down to Stanford Hall this weekend…….

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Violated – and not in a good way

One of my achievements this summer has been to climb all three of the Yorkshire Three Peaks, admittedly not all in one go! Frankly it has been far too hot and I’m not sure that I would enjoy it. Doing them individually however, was a lot of fun. Unfortunately, the morning before we conquered Whernside (the biggest hill in Yorkshire), I went down to the underground car park at the flat to retrieve my hat only to find that both the bug and the bus had been broken into.

The only damage done was to the bug’s paintwork and the only things they stole were of minimal financial value. Annoyingly they did have my old headtorch from my D of E days and also the storage bag for my old tent – again something I’d had for over 25 years. W*ankers. Because I’m planning on having a go at some of the surface rust that seems to be coming through in a few areas, I did have a go at repairing the damage and I don’t think I did a bad job at all. Just need to put a couple of days aside to deal with the bigger paint issues now.

With the heatwave over the summer the flat has been horrifyingly hot so I took every opportunity to get out in the evening for a bit of a pootle and found a couple of nice loops into the countryside north of Leeds.  And now that the bug has had its wheel alignment sorted out and the bus has a fresh anti-roll bar fitted, the pair of them are probably driving the best they ever have. The bug only needed a new pair of front tyres for its MoT, thanks to the wonky wheel alignment, and the only other physical changes I’ve made is to add a shift extender and to replace the locking fuel cap with a non-locking version on the bus. That locking fuel cap was, without doubt, the most irritating piece of cr*p I have ever come across.

Big hills denied

We’ve also had a couple of weekends away in the bus in the latter half of August, up to the Lakes and Masham. The original plan was to head up the National Trust site at Wasdale so that we could have a go at Scafell Pike but the forecast was for such torrential rain that we decided to relocate to Coniston (obviously) to potentially have another go at the Old Man. We would then have the option of taking refuge in a certain hostelry if the weather put pay to our efforts.

Putting up the awning in the rain sucks. Especially after the summer we’d had up to that point. Not only that but we pretty much had to run the mile from the Park Coppice site to the Black Bull so we could get there in time to order food (and enjoy a good few pints). The following day the weather wasn’t a whole lot better so we decided to stay relatively low rather than try to get to the top of the Old Man. In doing so we worked up a decent thirst, having had a really good walk up to Levers Water through the old copper mines. Scafell Pike and the Old Man are peaks that still elude me – one of these days!

The bank holiday weekend that immediately followed saw us meet up at Masham with the Frenchs and the Pageant 7, with Matt driving up from Kent. The grass pitches at the Old Station are so much easier to get the awning pegs in than those at Park Coppice in Coniston! The sun made an appearance on the Saturday so we did a nice 8.5 mile loop finishing up at the White Bear Hotel in Masham to enjoy some of Theakston’s finest. With the weather taking a turn the next day the decision was made to do the brewery tour on the Sunday. Naturally we had a terrible time…….

And that pretty much brings you up to date. The wind is howling outside and summer feels like forever ago. That’s probably not been aided by the lack of time off work, but that is nonsense best forgotten.

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The middle of the month saw us head back to Cooper’s campsite in Edale to meet up with Darryl and Jo and the Pageant 7. Now I haven’t actually seen the place in decent weather, so was thoroughly looking forward to it. Clarence had even had a decent clean and wax the weekend before in anticipation of some sunshine. Mr Cooper was actually in pretty chatty form when I arrived, although I’m really not that interested in the price of red diesel or the availability of whatever gas he keeps on site.

Darryl and Jo weren’t scheduled to arrive until later that evening and so I had planned to try to get to the top of Mam Tor and back before they landed. It is so much easier getting up there in the dry and as such I was back at the site with plenty of time, having done a solid 5 miles and had a quick Farmer’s Blonde.

The following day was an absolute scorcher and we had a thoroughly lovely time getting to the top of Kinder Scout, even if it was hot work scrambling in the mid day sun. Still, I’d rather have the heat – I bet it’s pretty bleak up there when the weather’s bad.

Another bus joins the family

Fast forward a week and my plans for a nice quiet bank holiday weekend were thrown into pleasant disarray when my old buddy Oli announced that after some to-ing and fro-ing he was back in the market for a T4. I spotted one in Kendal on eBay which looked a decent buy and within the space of a couple of days the decision was made that we would go and take a look at it. Even if he didn’t buy it, we would have a good day out, having not seen each other since last September. As it turned out, the van turned out to be pretty much spot on so a deal was struck and we agreed to pick it up later that day as the seller had to go out for the afternoon.

The Lakes didn’t seem as busy as you would expect for a bank holiday in May, although all the places we fancied staying at were full. So, as we had some time to kill (and following a very agreeable luncheon and sticker purchase at the Hawkshead brewery), we decided to have a run over to Langdale and see whether we could find anywhere to pitch up for the night. Most conveniently the National Trust had a car park just by the Old Dungeon Ghyll hotel so we decided that we’d head back there once we’d picked the van up.

Obviously we had to stop and take some snaps of both vans at the lay by that has views down the valley on our way back and after having been driving for most of the day I was more than ready for a pint of OP or six at the ODG walker’s bar that evening. There was also tequila involved later in the evening thanks to the guys who were sitting on the same table as us (a couple of bikers who worked in the oil industry and a girl called Clare who worked for the National Trust and who had spent the last 26 days riding around the Lakes with just her horse and dog for company), and I have very vague recollections of us being in a scouse couple’s motorhome and that’s about it!

I must admit that my head was a touch sore the next morning, which was another beautiful day. A roast beef dinner over at the Black Bull may have helped on that front and having loaded up with oatmeal stout we had a quick wander down to the water’s edge before heading home. I think that’s where my legs got bitten to buggery because up to that point I’d been fine. They really went to town on me and Sunday night was agony. Oli made it back the almost 300 miles just fine and I don’t think he was actually in too much trouble when he revealed his purchase to Zinnia!

In a weird (and fairly tenuous) coincidence Facebook reminded me, just yesterday I think it was, that it was 6 years ago to the day that I’d first camped in Clarence down in Salisbury.  Fortunately that was also the last time we came home on the back of a recovery truck! I think the photos are over on the Autumnal Update post. I’ve certainly refined the whole camping experience in that time – I’m not sure I was quite as well prepared as I thought on that occasion!

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From reading back through the site, I think we left off our general musings having just replaced the floor in the bus. Matt was up from Kent in June to celebrate his birthday and we tried a new site – Masham Old Station. Admittedly the main reason we were in Masham was to sample the wares of their two breweries, but we were really impressed with this site. The facilities are great, the pitches are flat, a decent size and for once we weren’t struggling to peg the awning out with lakeland rocks under the grass! The owners seemed very pleasant – although there must be something wrong with their judgement as they thought we were hilarious! It’s not a site where you want to go around contravening the site rules though – I get the feeling you might be subjected to a stern talking to if you do! And obviously, we had an awful time at the breweries (Theakston is still the best).

Good evening Berlin!

Ah, Berlin. Without doubt my favorite city. Brad and I were back there in June to see Depeche Mode at Olympiastadion for the third time. It was my 10th DM gig and there’s just something special about seeing them in Berlin. It seems everyone you speak to is going to the gig including the chaps at Trabi Safari. We’d done one of their tours last time we were over there in 2013 but had driven in separate cars. This time we’d decided to share the driving, partly because it would be more fun to share the experience, but also because Brad needed the moral support to get the Trabi out of second gear this time around – something he’d failed to manage four years previously! With the GoPro on board, what could go wrong in a car made out of recycled cotton and resin?!

In retrospect, August was a pretty busy (if a little chilly) month, kicking off with a trip up to the National Trust site at Great Langdale in the Lakes with Ginger Mat and Frenchy. Mat is not what you would call a fan of camping so the hope was that we could persuade him to change his mind. I’m not sure that happened, but it was a fun weekend all the same. The three of us had been at Headingley the night before to expose Frenchy to her first game of cricket (much gallic shrugging) and the plan was to head to Langdale via the Windermere ferry (another first for me), with a stop for lunch at the Black Bull in Coniston (therefore no stout for Jonny!). Everything was going fine until we were about to get on the Windermere ferry. It seems there is some kind of short in the ignition circuit because when I went to switch Clarence on before we boarded, the horn went off. No starting of the motor, just the horn going off. Which was more than a little embarrassing! The great thing with old Volkswagens in these circumstances is that occasionally a bit of logic pays off. I wondered whether disconnecting the horn might solve the problem – and it did! Which reminds me I need to get that fixed ahead of MOT time. The ferry was an interesting experience, although I’m not sure I’d be in a massive rush to do it again. Mainly because I love the road from Ambleside to Coniston so much! After a cracking lunch at the Black Bull (god that shepherd’s pie was good), we pitched up over at Langdale. At least I could have stout whilst we did that! Aside from the hike up to Stickle Tarn, which is always worth the pain, the highlight of the weekend could well have been beating the French One at pétanque, following a comeback of epic proportions. I am never going to let her forget that! It was also great to see my old Vango Hurricane Alpha in action again, even if it did scare me a little that it was 25 years since I had first slept in it at that very same campsite!

A couple of weeks later Clarence and I were back down at Edale in the Peak District catching up with Darryl and Jo and the Pageant 7. One of these days we’ll go there and it won’t hammer it down with rain the whole weekend! Mr Cooper was his usual lighthearted self of course……… Comedy highlight of the weekend was listening to a very middle class dad trying to explain to his young daughter what the “no sheep til Buxton” graffiti on the toilet door meant!

Mid-life crisis? What mid-life crisis?

If some people are to be believed, my mid-life crisis began around 6 or 7 years ago. The truth is I’m just a bit odd. Anyway, I always wanted to get tattooed, but the pain was always the issue. That was primarily as a result of an interview I ready with the boxer Nigel Benn 20ish years ago. When asked about the enormous sun he’d had done on his back he added that he had planned to get it coloured in but the pain from the line work was so bad that he didn’t bother. And this was a man that got punched very hard in the face for a living! In addition to the pain thing I was acutely aware that a tattoo is permanent, so subject matter was super important. The other key thing in all this was to find the right person to take my tattoo cherry. So back in August, I hired myself a Ford Fiesta for a couple of days (it was really very good) and headed down to Brighton to put myself in the hands of Lou at Death’s Door Tattoos. Moderation being my middle name, I hadn’t just decided to get my first tattoo, but my first three tattoos! We kicked off with the Violator rose at the top of my left arm (I’ve been listening to that album for over 20 years so I’m hardly going to go off it, am I?) and the pain wasn’t actually that bad. The same couldn’t be said about the Heartskull I was having on my chest however. Whilst we’d been chatting away during the rose (Lou and her other half have a bus) – I went rather quiet during this one. Let’s just say I won’t be in a huge rush to have another tattoo on my chest! And not just because shaving your chest is weird (which it is). A quick break for lunch and then it was time for the Metallica ninja star on my right arm before heading back up north.

I’d taken the week off work for the trip to Brighton and it was only a few days after that that Clarence and I were heading back down south for Lizzie’s christening near Cambridge. Having spent the Friday night at my old buddy Oli’s in Soham, the following day we tootled across to IWM Duxford before pitching up for the night at a site just outside of Melbourn. Duxford is awesome, with the highlights being a wander through a Concorde and watching an old Spitfire flying across the summer skies. The site we stayed at was actually in an orchard behind a garden centre! My only issue with it was the lack of hot water in the washing up area, but other than that it was great, with decent size pitches and for very little money.

Clarence had seen a fair bit of use over the summer so it was only right that I took the bug up to the Lakes a few weeks later for a 4 night stay at the Black Bull in Coniston. We certainly had a better run up there than the folks, but that’s another story. I’m fairly confident that the soundtrack in the bug was significantly better than whatever they were listening to! It was great to get the chance to meet Ian Bradley, the brains behind the Coniston Brewing Company. He’s a super bloke and he seemed to take a shine to the bug. I can’t wait to get back there in February to celebrate my birthday with the two Matts. January has been booze free thus far, so I am going to be very thirsty by the time we get up there!

Like August, October was a busy month. Not only was there the trip to Coniston, Darryl and Jo popped up to Leeds and then there was the NFL. I don’t remember much of the latter half of the first game I went to with Oli, but at the end of the month I was back at the Woodley Waldorf visiting the Paynes for another trip to Twickenham. But first, there was the matter of a run out in our old pal Carlos to enjoy. The video speaks a thousand words about what it’s like living with a seriously low Volkswagen! He might have taken a whack on the undercarriage (not a euphemism) but at least I managed to emotionally blackmail Brad into giving him a wash and a buff.

We managed to get the bus through its MOT with the old steering box again, but I don’t think we’ll be so lucky this year. So back in November I took advantage of VW Heritage’s Black Friday deal and ordered myself a new box with a healthy 24% off. Sadly it was, and still is at the time of writing, out of stock so Clarence is still waiting for play free steering. LHD steering boxes for early bays are like hen’s teeth so we had to go for a later box and the lads at the Herbie Hospital will need to do a slight amount of fabrication work to get that to fit. Ideally that needs to happen before the beginning of March. Talking of bits and pieces getting fixed, throughout this year I’ve had to buy a new headlamp for the bug (the other one fell out on a roundabout!) and I’ve added some LED lighting in Clarence. I’m rather pleased how that turned out. I think the only other bits we’ve done are to rewire the front speakers on the bug and the rears on the bus. That was a job I really should have done when I had everything out to relay the floor, but hey, you know how it is.

That brings us into December. I couldn’t face walking to the dentist through Briggate on a Saturday two weeks before Christmas so decided I’d take the bug. The lovely Dr Katie worked her magic and whilst I couldn’t feel half of the front of my face I figured it would be a nice quick run home. Sadly I was wrong. It was freezing that day and I guessed that the reason that the battery was flat was because it had been out in sub zero temperatures for almost two hours. It was an old battery after all, and the bug had started immediately once the recovery dude had attached a battery pack to it. So I bought myself a lovely new Bosch battery to replace it – the same as the one I stuck in the bus last year in fact. Now you might think that that would be the end of it – I certainly did. As we know though, things are never straightforward with an old Volkswagen! Jim was up for New Year and the forecast was good for New Year’s Eve so we thought it would be fun to have a run out together – the first time we’d been in convoy for best part of twenty years. And we had a smashing time! At least we did until we stopped to get him some fuel at a petrol station not too far from his mum and dad’s when, you guessed it, Betty wouldn’t start because her battery was flat! After a call to the main man Ron, we had some jump leads in hand and were soon back up an running. The irony of having to get a jump start from a car that’s been in the garage for the last twenty years was not lost on me………

So early in the New Year the bug was back at the Herbie Hospital. It turns out that the problem was caused by the generator light having popped out of the back of the speedo. As that’s part of the charging circuit itself, it meant that the circuit was broken and therefore there was no charging foing on. Nor would the light come on to indicate there was no charge. So as it was a nice cheap fix she was treated to a well overdue service and a few days later we did a good 130 mile round trip up to Filey for the afternoon. It’s been a while since I’ve been up to the coast and it was a perfect day for it. Good for the soul, as they say.

And talking of things being good for the soul it’s only two weeks until we head back to the Lakes on my birthday, which also happens to be the anniversary of picking Clarence up. We’ll be doing part of that same journey in reverse as I think it might be slightly faster to take the motorway rather than the scenic route. Great beer, great company, and a spot of rambling – I cannot wait!

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Clarence was a popular little dude and had clearly caught a few people’s eye. Not least the couple who were sitting next to us at dinner who were about to spend their first night in a bus (a fully restored late bay) that they had picked up from Newcastle earlier in the day and were driving back to London. All I can remember other than that is that he was a barrister called Keith. I’d love to have found out how they got on but sadly they left very early the next morning so we didn’t get the chance to find out!

So, the floor. As I may have mentioned before, it occasionally takes me a little while to get around to dealing with some jobs. In the case of Clarence’s flooring, it has taken 5 years to get rid of the awful dark laminate flooring and replace it with some lovely grey and white checkered lino. The original plan was to deal with it whilst I was over at the folks’ for lunch on Easter Sunday. Fortunately the weather wasn’t great, so decided against it. As it turns out, that was a great call because it turned into a real pig of a job. It’s an old Volkswagen so I guess that shouldn’t come as a huge surprise! And anyway, it meant I got to spend some time with my sister and her kids which isn’t something that happens every day. Plus they got to go for a run in the bus – something that had never previously happened!

Anyhoo, the following weekend the forecast was significantly better, so we headed back over to Wakefield to bosh it out in a day. Or at least that was the plan, anyway. It turns out that the laminate flooring was stuck down with some sort of diamond/titanium hybrid concrete that meant that any hopes of saving the original ply underneath went right out of the window. That meant an unscheduled trip to B&Q was on the cards and of course I couldn’t get the size I needed in a single piece, so had to buy 3 lengths. Awesome. Getting the bed out was proving somewhat impossible and after a couple of sheared screws I decided to call it a day and return the following morning.

Which I did with my pal Mat in tow. It’s amazing the difference another pair of hands can make on occasion and the bed was out in no time. It clearly hadn’t been out for a good few years and there was a fair amount of detritus under there. Nothing particularly interesting other than a handful of american coins. Once the bed was out and we’d put the hoover round, the actual laying of the floor was a breeze. And how good does it look?

It’s nice to have done a job like that before the camping season really gets under way and we do have a couple of trips lined up already. You’ll recall that I spent my birthday weekend up at Masham sampling their breweries’ finest wares. Well today I booked the campsite for Matt’s birthday weekend in June. So that won’t be a boozy one….. I’ll also be making a return to Langdale at the beginning of August with Mat and Cycy. It’s hard (terrifying?) to believe that I first visited there 25 years ago this year. Let’s hope the weather’s a little better than it was when Matt and I visited a couple of years ago when it rained non-stop the entire time we were there!! Hopefully we’ll squeeze a couple of other impromptu trips in here and there too.

Finally, it’s also taken me five years, but it looks as though I have found a handbook and Campmobile instruction manual for a 71 bus, I won the eBay auction a couple of nights ago so it’s a nervous wait until it arrives!

The post Flooring It appeared first on 72bug.com.

All in all we covered over 1300 miles without a recovery truck in sight! I did have to change a brake light bulb but, other than that and the obligatory topping up of his oil, Clarence didn’t miss a beat.

A few weeks prior to heading to France, I’d caught up with Darryl and Jo down in the Peaks for our first get together of the year. I’d taken the day off so I could get a couple of new rear tyres fitted that morning before leaving for Edale, a new spot that we’d not previously visited. The forecast wasn’t great but, for once, was quite accurate and the rain started just as I was leaving ATS. The decent satnav was the only thing that the scumbag car thief helped himself to so I had updated my old TomTom – what a waste of time that was! Fortunately Google maps came to the rescue on what had turned into a particularly filthy afternoon.

I’m guessing that on a good day it must be a stunning drive but I certainly didn’t see a great deal of it. Finally I landed in Edale, checking in at Coopers Campsite. The site has mixed reviews online, which mainly appear to be a review of the farmer whose site it is rather than the site itself and I can understand how some people might not warm to him. It’s a nice enough site although the washroom facilities could probably do with hitting with the jetwash and a lick of paint. As far as caravans and campervans are concerned there don’t seem to be clearly defined pitches so your neighbours can be a little too close for comfort. Which is great when they have a couple of dogs who insist on permanently fighting in their cages in the builder’s van! It’s on a fair old slope too, so chocks are essential.

In a nutshell we had a lovely, if very wet, weekend. The inclement weather didn’t stop us from having a wander up to the top of Mam Tor – I’m sure the views from up there are rather special on a decent day. Sadly for us it was far from decent and by the time we’d made it back to the pub we were seriously drenched.

Anyway, back to the French Road Trip Part Deux. Clarence has still got a niggling ignition issue that I had hoped the new battery would fix – it didn’t. Admittedly the one in there was the 10 year old one he came across from the States with. And i might have slightly creased his rear bumper after a slight misjudgment when reversing near (into) a tree, And yes, the window lifter on the passenger side did give up the ghost when we landed back in the UK. But those are all very minor details. He covered a heck of a lot of miles in a short period of time, and made a load of friends along the way.

Day 1 – Leeds to Ashurst. 6 hours – thanks to people driving like morons and causing 4 accidents.

Day 2 – Early start – Ashurst to Folkestone to jump on the Eurotunnel (a breeze). Calais to Luc sur Mer – a long old way. Super smooth motorways and 2 ridiculously steep bridges near Le Havre. May have failed to fully disengage the handbrake causing the rear drums to overheat 25 miles from our destination. After cooling them down they seem to work ok and we make it to the site just fine. Upon arrival it starts to rain.

Days 2 – 5 – Luc sur Mer – campsite (Camping De la Capricieuse) is 50 yards from Sword Beach and is nicely arranged. It’s very warm. There’s a skeleton of a 19m whale. We ate some big ass ice creams and I made some big ass burgers (beef and chorizo stuffed with Tomme de Savoie and Port Salut wrapped in parma ham). We visited Arromanches, site of the Mulberry harbours and Longue sur Mer – site of some old German concrete (love a good bunker) and big ass cannon. Much BBQing takes place. The first couple of nights my lower legs got bitten pretty badly but fortunately the chemist at the Hyper U sorted me out with some hydrocortisone cream which provided some welcome relief.

Days 5 – 8 – Luc sur Mer to Albert. Large bridges avoided en route but a loss of sense of humour with Google maps with silly directions at Rouen. Driving into Albert we saw the only other old UK bus – sadly he was on the back of a recovery truck! On the 15th September we met my folks at the cemetery on Guillemont Road to lay a wreath at my great grandfather’s grave to mark the centenary of him having been killed in action. This was, in essence, the main purpose of the trip. From there we headed to Beaumont Hamel where the landscape is still showing its scars of 100 years ago. The following day we visited the Lochnagar crater, the Thiepval monument and the museum at Péronne. The site at Albert is very pleasant, but has a weird rubbish disposal policy. Still not sure I understand it now. Also, there were no draining boards in the washing up area. The weather wasn’t great so we ate out a couple of times, including the most overpriced bourguignon and dauphinoise you’re ever come across.

Day 8 – Back to Blighty. No migrant issues, but a moment of panic when exiting Carrefour we think the bus has been stolen. It hasn’t. Much confit of duck, wine etc purchased from Carrefour. Due to technical issues the Eurotunnel was delayed for a couple of hours and, even with an enormous Burger King in his tum, Matt was getting a little grumpy. The dude in front of us on the tunnel was very odd and claimed to be related to Tom Jones. Not sure I believed a single one of his claims other than that he had hand painted his T4 – it looked crap. In comparison to the French motorways the M20 is like the surface of the moon – it’s embarrassing to think that this is the one of the first impression that foreign visitors have when they arrive on our shores. Drop Matt off and head up to Newmarket to visit Oli and Zinnia.

Day 9 – Newmarket to Leeds via Wakefield for lunch with the folks, my sister and niece and nephew.

While we were away, it was a certain little orange car’s 45th birthday, having been built in September ’71. So the other weekend she got treated to a little birthday pampering in the shape of half the Autoglym catalogue!

We got back from France less than a month ago and it feels like an eternity since we were there. So I’m thinking that, since Clarence has proved his capability, it’s maybe time to start thinking about the next European jaunt. Perhaps involving a car train? Perhaps involving some Alps…….

Links

De la Capricieuse
Camping le Vélodrome
Musée du débarquement
Longues sur Mer Battery
Beaumont Hamel Newfoundland Memorial
Commonwealth War Graves Commission

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Aaaaanyhoo, what’s been going on over the last few months? Well Clarence has eventually had his new steering wheel fitted (it’s lovely), the new aerial (and 76 ball) has been fitted (slight bit of grumpiness that John had incorrectly fitted a T25 aerial previously), the tinware issue has been fixed and hopefully the oil leak has been fixed by those nice chaps at the Herbie Hospital. He seems to be running really well at the moment and let’s face it, after that bill he bloody well should be! I think I had a spot of flu too. We’d originally planned to be meeting Darryl and Nick for a boys’ weekend in the Peaks back in April. Events conspired against that trip – Darryl has sold his bus to buy a caravan – so me and Matt headed up to the Lakes instead.

Sadly Pier Cottage was full that weekend so we booked into the Caravan Club’s Park Coppice site. Whilst it’s a very pleasant place to stay (the bathrooms are pretty special), in terms of location and views etc I don’t think it gets close to Pier Cottage. It’s a relatively short walk into Coniston and the legendary Black Bull pub. Which is where we spent the bulk of the weekend. Difficult not to when you take into account the quality of the food and drink on offer (go there – drink lots of oatmeal stout). It was awfully chilly up there – fortunately Matt didn’t freeze to death overnight in the awning!

We had a bit of a play with the GoPro on the journey to and from the Lakes and there is some video of us singing along to Black Stone Cherry’s The Rambler. We’re not very good. Awful in fact. I’ve eventually managed to finish playing with the video we shot through the windscreen. With it being HD it’s a little processor heavy for my ancient laptop to deal with, but I got there in the end. I’m not sure it makes for the most exciting viewing but was an interesting experiment all the same.

Unfortunately, only a few days after returning from Coniston, both VWs were broken into in the underground car park at the flat, losing the satnav in the process. It seems that the police have got their man however and that’s the subject of an ongoing prosecution. The silver lining to this cloud is that there was no damage done to either of them. You could go one step further and say that the fact they were both still there is the silver lining. Either way, I’m very lucky to have got off so lightly.

As far as the trip to France in September is concerned, we’re still on, but it looks as though we might be taking a slightly different approach. Looking at the ferry times etc, it’s just going to be too much of a pain to do the Portsmouth to Cherbourg ferry (and therefore the Normandy beaches) and there is no way I am spending any length of time on a ferry. So we’re going to do the tunnel both ways (that’s what she said?). There’s a very good chance that we might head into Belgium and check out some breweries – best pack the ibuprofen then!

The diary is looking pretty empty at the moment. Maybe that’s adding to my general chagrin. I haven’t been to a single VW show yet this year either – there aren’t even any pencilled into the diary! Won’t be able to make VW Festival this year as it clashes with the Great British Beer Festival at Olympia, Tatton Park is the same weekend as we’re at the test match and VW Field of Dreams clashes with mine and Matt’s trip to France. Which makes it sound as though the diary is actually pretty full. It really isn’t. Nothing scheduled for June and I don’t think there’s a fat lot going on in July either.

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As the sale of Beetle People looked to be going through, I decided I’d give the guys at the Herbie Hospital a go. It’s changed hands since I used to use them, and it’s only a 5 – 10 minute walk from the flat so it’s super handy. Having spent a while chatting with them, the guys there seem like a sound couple of fellas and I think both the bug and the bus will be in good hands.

Only a couple of days later, Matt and I headed up to the Lakes for a well earned holiday. The plan was to have three nights at the National Trust campsite at Great Langdale followed by another three nights at Pier Cottage at Coniston. I’ve been to the Langdale site countless times, but Pier Cottage wasn’t somewhere I’d stayed before and was really interested to see how we’d get on at a motorhome/campervan only site.

Sadly we didn’t get the weather we were hoping for at Langdale, and it pretty much rained solidly the whole time we were there. Perfect conditions for the inaugural construction of the awning I bought earlier in the year, and hadn’t even opened prior to the trip! And the instructions were so helpful…….. That said, we must have done a reasonable job in putting it up, because Matt didn’t end up in the next valley after the storm we had on the second night we were there! All this meant that we had to take shelter in the various hostelries, the Sticklebarn Tavern and Old and New Dungeon Ghyll hotel bars.

Happily the sun decided to put in an appearance by the time we’d pootled across to Coniston. The combination of sunshine, a cracking pitch at the site and numerous samples of the Coniston Brewing Company’s wares at the Black Bull (I could marry the Special Oatmeal Sout) resulted in a couple of greatly restored campers! Pier Cottage is a fantastic little site run by the lovely Fay and her family and I have no doubt we’ll be returning at some point. I think I was sold the minute I parked up – the view down Coniston Water was simply stunning. Not only is it a great value place to stay, but as we learned a couple of days later at the Ruskin Museum in Coniston, it was also the point where Bluebird was launched from for its ill-fated record attempt in January 1967. It’s weird, I think both of us felt that little bit more connected to the place after finding that out. I’m not sure why. The private beach probably helped too!

Clarence behaved perfectly the whole time we were away, and I think the awning is going to be a great addition – I’m going to have to figure out how to put it up without having a second pair of hands to help out though. Not having leaking seals is pretty good too and hopefully the weather’s going to stay dry for August so we can get some more shows in…….

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In more interesting news, I’ve just got back from a lovely weekend camping with Mr and Mrs French at the Waterloo Inn at Biggin. I think my legs have just about recovered from the 13 mile walk we did on Saturday! Of course, we did have a couple of refreshment stops, just to make sure we were properly hydrated…….

Clarence behaved impeccably, and the new seals did a great job keeping out the downpour we had on the Saturday night. It’s a cracking little site in a beautiful part of the Peak District, and we always get a super warm welcome from Bridget and Gary. The food and beer was top notch as always, and of course we managed to squeeze in a visit to the Old Cheese Shop at Hartington. Looking at what I wrote back at the beginning of March, that’s almost a direct quote from our February trip! At least the temperature was a little more civilised on this occasion.

So since our trip to Sandown Park back in March, what’s been going on? Well, Clarence’s windscreen work got completed (eventually), although I’m still not 100% convinced about that. I’m not going to go into detail on that here though. I’ve also ended up fitting a number of the replacement seals myself and, with the exception of the rear light seals which were a royal pain in the ass, that’s gone pretty well. I also got a bit tired of the static seatbelts so have replaced those with some inertia reel belts which are a vast improvement. We’ve also got cupholders now! And a spare ashtray bracket, but that’s another story altogether!

After months of procrastination I think I’ve now reached a decision on the curtains, but they probably won’t get ordered before me and Matt head up to the Lakes in a couple of weeks. He (Clarence, not Matt) is looking a little shinier than he had been thanks to a few evening Autoglym sessions, and is generally looking pretty good all round these days. He does need a new petrol cap though, which should arrive any day now thanks to the chaps at VW Heritage, but he’s eventually got his badge on his rump and I fitted the jailbars the other weekend too so he looks great from the back now.

Having booked our trip back to the Premier Ski Resort in the Alps, me and Oli took Clarence for a run over to Xscape in April for our first ski in a good few years – fortunately no snow was consumed on this occasion! Being back on snow, even if it was man made, was just so good. Felt like home.

Last weekend we were down south for Matt’s 40th birthday party, and because I’d taken a slightly circuitous route to Tunbridge Wells (it was weird being back – seriously not sure how you can still miss someone after all that time, but there you go) via Reading, I got the chance to go for a run out to the Siren Brewery in a freshly MOT’d Carlos before heading across to Kent. Thoroughly enjoyable it was too, unlike Siren’s Berliner Weisse…….

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