We didn’t manage to get to the Waterloo Inn last year and it took an inordinate amount of faff to get a date that we could all make but I finally got together with Nick and Darryl down in the Peaks at the end of March. We did well to get on the site as it was pretty much full, despite the crappy weather. Naturally there was a fair amount of beer consumed, aided by the fact it was the last weekend of the 6 Nations. England losing to the Irish didn’t dampen spirits in the pub that night though and we made a fair few new friends.
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!