Swanage - 12th August ‘25

Four months since Brunnehilda had an outing and this one didn’t start well!!

It’s the annual Brunnehilda trip with my grandsons. Quite surprisingly Charlie (aged 17 yrs 11 mths) wanted to go with his old grandad and young brothers! It was an especially difficult day for Charlie as he started it off at 9am by failing his driving test! So it didn’t bode well for a good day!!

While Charlie was getting his 3 majors and 4 minors, I was shopping at Tescos and getting to the van nice and early to do a bit of gardening! Like Sleeping Beauty’s castle, Brunnehilda was entwined in weeds and brambles. I took an axe and lopper to these in the seering heat and soon got her free. Then it was checking tyres and putting on the new plate. It took me ages to hook her up. I won’t bore you with how, but it definitely fits in the user error category. The first of at least 3 this first day! I think a gap of 4 months is enough for my caravan muscle memory to turn completely to flubber! 

I met Laura with the boys at midday and we hit the road. The 3.5 hour journey to Swanage ended up taking 5.5 hours. Thats with a 30 minute stop at Sutton Scotney where we used Charlie’s Roadchef discount card to get £36 of McDonalds for £12. Result - although this is where the day / journey started its descent into chaos.

The traffic was bad! Roadworks or the slightest misnomer meant there were lots of little queues. As soon as you cleared one you hit another. So all these little queues turned into one big one lasting about 40 miles. This is where I made my second unforced error - I let the sat nav take over. Like an excited puppy dog, it kept on pulling me off in a different direction to try and beat the jams. It didn’t work! Although we did see some nice countryside. All the stress may have saved me 45 seconds and used an extra gallon or two of fuel!

We arrived at the Haycraft Caravan Club site at 5.30. Pleasant enough check in lady and a nice clean busy little site. Only about 50 vans but very nice modern facilities. I filled her up with water and headed for the pitch. It was too challenging an angle for me to attempt to back her on. It was completely full, apart from my pitch and there was the usual audience of critical caravan owners (always male!!). I thought “sod it”, I’m going to swallow my Alpha male pride and motor move her.

This would have worked if the motor movers had worked. They sparked up a bit and then stopped. I changed the battery in the remote a couple of times before concluding that the problem was the main caravan battery. Problem is I now couldn’t disengage them . I tried to find the tool to manually do this but couldn’t! Meantime there were a couple of motor homes waiting to get by! They had to drive all over the busy pitches opposite to do so! I felt the laser light of a dozen critical eyes on the back of my head as I realised I couldn’t find the tool to take off the mover manually! While starting to despair I thought I’d try once more - it wouldn’t move but I did manage to disengage so at least we could push her on manually. That wasn’t going to work - you had to push up hill to get on the pitch - with just me, Charlie and Twinnies! Luckily 3 of my neighbours took pity on me / us and, after a lot of huffing and puffing we got her big German backside onto the pitch! I thanked my neighbours profusely and sent the kids to play football while I completed the set up.

Then we had user error number 3! I had her plugged in but couldn't make any of the electrics work! I stripped the wardrobe floor to find the fuses and electrical override- all ok. I dug out the user manual to seek help - none was forthcoming! I concluded that it must be somehow linked to my motor mover battery issue but then I realised … I hadn’t turned the main electric switch on at the door!! Something you always do first on a set up - muscle memory to flab! A very panicky 20 mins was over- just before I grabbed the phone to book a hotel!

The boys got back from their football playing as I finished a very long, stressful, hot and frustrating set up!

After a snack of chocolate and lucazade (the food of Champions!!) we headed out to Swanage for the evening.

Parked up FOC right by the beach - you wouldn’t get that in Cornwall!? The boys had a paddle and I sussed out Laura’s recommendation on local chip shops.

After drying Twinnies feet and squeezing out their soaking shorts (of course they got them wet!) we walked the 200 yards to the Fish Plaice. I remember going there before with Kimbo and all the family on one of our many August BH trips to Poole.

We ate it on the little square over looking the sea. Encouraging the seagulls to move on was an important element of our eating experience but the food was ok and most was finished. Although, I’ve noticed that no matter how few chips you order, there is always some thrown away! The seagulls eventually moved on.

Even though an ice cream was offered, we decided to get back to the car.

Charlie had another shower when we got back - he has 2 a day! Ironically the same number the Twinnies have in a month - between them!!

We played a couple of games of cards before transforming Brunnehilda into her overnight state. We were all knackered so went to sleep very quickly. A long and challenging day but happy to say we still managed to consume kilos of rubbish food! Oh, and the flush in the toilet isn’t working. Bring on day 2!