Although what a bloody day. Lots of mistakes (maybe the 4 months break had coddled my brain), a huge long journey and plenty of weather!
George brought the boys around at 9.15 and that’s when the troubles started - although this time nothing to do with the terrible Twinnies! Yesterday I had put (with Bobby’s help) Brunnehilda out of the front garden and into the church car park. So my plan was just to hook her up and go ... yeh sure?!
It took an age to hook her up - don’t know why - but once we had I couldn’t get her through the church gates very easily. So we un-hitched again and man handled her around the corner. Hitched her back up, or so I thought, and started up Brington Road. And then it happened... crash bang, and all I saw in the rear view mirror was Brunnehilda getting further away! I had not hitched her on properly and she had slipped off. In doing so the emergency brake had come on (which is a good thing) but of course this meant the emergency brake cable had broken!
So we hitched her back up (correctly this tine) and headed of to Venture Caravans to buy a new one. It wasn’t easy to fit (well for me it wasn’t!) but 30 mins and lots of rude words later we were off. So the departure time, which should have been 9.15 was gone 10.30!
We arrived at Damage Barton Caravan Club site, Woolacombe at nearly 7 o'clock - over 8 hours travelling time. 240 miles in 8 hours with 2 short stops - you can do the maths! The Saturday traffic was awful. We stupidly went on the A303 which for about 50 miles was traffic jam after traffic jam. We got a nice view of Stonehenge though - in the pouring rain.
And by this time it was raining! I don’t think I’ve every seen rain like that outside of the US. We struggled to go over 30 for several miles - which was ironic as 10 mins before and 10 mins after we were stuck fast in a jam!
We stopped at MacDonalds at Newbury and Taunton Dene services. Both stops were a little depressing as the world of queuing to get in, one way traffic inside buildings and face masks is well and truly with us ... uck!
I have to say, the boys were brilliantly behaved. Considering they had been in the car for nearly 10 hours, there wasn’t even a cross word let alone any fisty cuffs!
When we arrived at Damage Barton we took on water and then went to our pitch. It has a lovely sea view but has an alarming slope to contend with. After a lot of fiddling around we got her level - although pitching on a slope like this is going to make getting Isabella up a bit of a challenge in the morning!? One of our neighbours was so alarmed by the angle we were pitching at, he came over to see if we were OK?
Once I got all the services sent up the boys and I went for a stroll while Kim sorted out the inside of Brunnehilda.
A bite to eat (purchased from the onsite shop), some gaming, and then off to bed to watch a DVD (Rio 2).
We are due rain tomorrow but we’re hoping for a better day than today. That said, it felt nice to be snuggling down in Brunnehilda’s giant Teutonic bed - although fidgety Finners will be joining us later!!
No comments:
Post a Comment