Wander lust

Hey everyone… Doubt you’ve even missed us but just in case & because I found a little time I thought I would update the blog and tell you all what we have been up to lately… I know I absolutely destroyed the blog before by taking everything down and felt bad, but maybe I’ll throw a few bits in here and there for reminders of our past travels…

Pete being the absolute genius he is (yes Pete you absolute beauty), built a small camper for us to take short trips away in, we’ve been away to a few places already now and I must admit for a tiny van & small amount of space Pete’s managed to cram a fair few bits in there along with leaving a little space for both ourselves & Toffi…

Our first trip or stop off was just to test everything & just after Pete had installed the Diesel heater we hadn’t really tried anything and thought, eh, what the heck just jump straight in… we’ll test it on the road… We racked our brains as to where might be a good adventure for the first trip… we wanted to be far enough away that it was out of town but not too far away that we couldn’t return home if need be…

After careful consideration we opted for a visit to King Arthur at Tintagel, here you can park up for a fee in either of two local car parks… one belonging to King Arthurs Arms pub which is a large tarmac carpark plenty big enough for you to find a quiet spot but a pretty busy carpark during waking hours… Or there’s the car park that we decided to stay in which is opposite the quaint old post masters house, this car park has one part tarmac for cars and standard traffic then for overnight campers through the gate there is a grassed area, the park up cost approx £8 per night please note there are no facilities provided in either of the carparks so you need to have onboard facilities of sorts (otherwise the pub is open till average closing times of an evening or there are public toilets nearby but you may need some spare change to use these)

Well our first night trying out the van was a funny experience… We took a quick walk, to re-aquaint ourselves with the area, then went for a meal and a pint in King Arthurs arms the public house in the centre of Tintagel, after eating some fairly mediocre food & supping on a pint or 2 in the pub we headed back to the van… it was the end of March and the weather wasn’t great at -2° and thats exactly when the diesel heater decided it didnt want to start up, it had an airlock so failed to run, we in our ultimate wisdom hadn’t thought of bringing any tools with us… so we suffered a very cold evening/night and vowed to ensure the heater was working and fully functioning before we left to go on our next trip…

The next chance we got to go away was a month later in late April, when we decided to go to The Minnows touring park, situated near Tiverton at Sampford Peverell upon the Grand Western canal… we paid £23.50 per night to stay here & we stayed for 5 nights…

We had a lovely tranquil time here & although it stayed dry the weather was still somewhat changeable in temperature with some days being cold, some days being warm… but the location more than made up for it, with the canal running adjacent to the campsite…

Canals I find are always lovely peaceful places and we made the most of it taking plenty of walks along this canal, I even managed to take a bike ride along it leaving Pete to babysit the dog and his new bird friend a Robin red breast who he almost had eating out of his hand… This part of the canal is not fully working, but it can can still be used for fishing, small boats or paddling on a paddleboard or canoe… but alas there were none of the beautiful long boats you get so often on fully functioning canals which is a real shame…

There’s a few pubs situated around with at least one of those being within reasonable walking distance along the canal although the choices of lager here were a little disappointing for my tastes at least (shock horror… no beloved Carlsberg & only offering me Carling as an alternative!!!) there was no available sloe gin either so I opted for a soft drink, we ordered food while there but to be honest it also wasn’t great but edible, so I would probably give that pub a miss if coming this way again…

The campsite itself was a lovely looking site, the staff friendly, with clean, tidy facilities & lovely warm showers, but be aware we and others had issues getting any TV signal here, the campsite internet is also £5 per day (luckily I had come prepared and had downloaded some films to entertain us) poor Toffi wasn’t too happy about all the loose gravel under foot, she’s elderly and sensitive in her old age now so it was a bit painful for her to walk upon but when the staff saw & heard of her woes they were wonderful and allowed us to move closer to the walk entrance so she didn’t have to suffer walking over too much more gravel on here way around.

Our next trip was mid June for a week to a campsite called Veryan which is near Truro, at approx £23 per night… We arrived on the day of the Queens Platinum Jubilee & as we arrived we noticed other holiday makers enjoying a cream tea together on the green which was lovely, we got allocated our pitch, which was in a lovely quiet area of the site & just as we were getting set up a warden brought us down some scones, cream & jam to make sure we didn’t miss out on having a cream tea this was a really nice touch, the sites facilities were clean & they had several activities if you wanted to join in going on over the week that we stayed.

On site there’s a great meadow to walk the dog around and also a small fishing lake, although we were promised that free wifi existed and was available all over the camp we found as usual this wasn’t exactly the case even though we had been parked right beside the wifi it was faulty and there was no wifi unless you were right up at the office area… Luckily again I had learnt enough from experiences of dodgy campsite wifi over the yrs to have downloaded some entertainment for quiet evenings…

While here we enjoyed chilling out at the camp… Pete had purchased a drive away awning which he was eager to try out, it was a great success and meant we had extra space while also being able to leave stuff on the pitch & drive away in the van for various days out… we took full advantage of this taking a couple of trips out where we visited Trelissick Gardens a National Trust property nearby, this place has some wonderful woodland walks and estate land to explore plus some vibrant grasslands overlooking a Channals creek…

Finally we catch up to our latest trip away which was just this week, where we decided to go to a tiny inconspicuous village called Widdecombe in the Moor you may know it more for the renowned Uncle Tom Cobbly & Widdecombe fair… We again had a couple of options for our stay in this area… for the first night we stayed in the carpark of the Rugglestone pub which they allow only if you eat an evening meal at the pub and in return they also leave the toilets open over night for your use, if you haven’t been to this pub it’s actually worth a visit to this small & cute pub that sits on the outskirts of this rather small village… The food was good & the beer was also good… We left the carpark early in the morning and spent the day parked up on Dartmoor National Park where we managed to get internet and phone signal while trying to stay cool in this years July heatwave (Please note that both internet & phone signal are non existent while in Widdecombe)…

The second night we spent in a private car park at Widdecombe, here you pay £5 at either the kiosk if open or just put it through the letterbox of the village shop called “shop in the green” there are also at least two pubs that serve food, public toilets and a cafe for breakfast all just a short walk away which is handy, now this might not sound ideal or even rather awful to some but bare with, because as it turned out, is was rather a good camp spot, we parked in the corner of the carpark near the stream where a wooden table was situated which we faced our campervans sliding door towards and by 6pm we were the only ones there and got to enjoy a warm quiet safe evening… enjoying the peace and tranquility of of the little stream winding its way through Widdecombe village…. oh and almost forgot Pete made some birdie friwnds again and a mother bird brought her fledgling down to meet us feeding it the food we gave it, it was very cute to watch…

This area is also a good venture point for visitors to this area to get to explore other destinations from, its central location makes it a superb option, you could explore places from here such as Bovey Tracey, Ashburton, Becky Falls, Dartmeet or even visit cities such as Exeter or Plymouth, or to go trekking over multiple Dartmoor Tors and then return to Widdecombe to rest & overnight in these park ups & at just £5 a night, its great value for the tourist buck, camping & over night parking are very much restricted over Dartmoor National Park so this provides a great alternative to sometimes over crowded and rather expensive campsites…

Anyway I’m sure I have bored you all plenty enough for this one blog post so until next time take good care, enjoy & have fun, and if any of you have any suggestions of where we should try next feel free to get in contact…

Bye for now

Donna x

New Beginnings

For those of you who do not know us allow me to give you a little introduction, there’s my husband, myself and our dog.  My name is Donna, my husband’s name is Pete and our mad Staffordshire bull terrier is Toffi… (names/descriptions may change dependant thoroughly upon how the mood takes).

In 2014 Pete had the idea of buying a campervan so we could “up and go” whenever we liked.   I recall thinking yep, ok, I’m up for that, having had some experience in the past, I was well aware of the advantages and was quite open to the idea of going off on little excursions… We had limited funds for the plan at the time as the idea was all new to us & we really hadn’t planned on buying anything of the sorts until then.  So, off Pete set, making it his all encumbering job to find the perfect campervan to suit our needs and budget… “Oh boy, was I in for a surprise!”

Now this is where the fun begins.  He’d found what I could only describe as a “right ole banger” of a campervan. I actually named it “The Beast”.  I’ve got to admit every time I think of this van I still shudder… Pete being Pete talked me round to viewing this van…

The day came to go see the camper, I’ve got to tell you I was less than impressed, Pete however was all so eager to explore, thought it was the dogs whatsits & even though I nagged him to go home & really think about it, much to my utter disappointment he purchased it right there & then, Sighing I resigned myself to the idea of living for weekends away in this damp smelly old van.

I am reliably informed it was a Talbot Express.  I’d never even heard of them before, but it turns out they are pretty popular, some even call them “iconic”… Personally I think that descriptions definitely over egging things.  But we spruced it up as best we could, made it all comfy (or as comfy as a Talbot express could get & trust me they are not comfy) and off we set.

It turned out we kept “the Beast” for about a year, tidied it up inside & out, had in all fairness some amazing short trips away in it, locally & all around the Devon and Cornwall regions.

The Talbot did us well, but it soon became tedious with having to make up the multi-cushioned seats into a bed every evening & then struggling to drive uphill at more than 10mph also became somewhat annoying, to top it all the thing leaked like a sieve every time it rained.  Going down the steep hill at Lynmouth with failing brakes was a pretty entertaining experience too!… In spite of all this we’d now caught a travelling bug & soon we were thinking about selling the Talbot (that is after we’d had the brakes repaired of course!) & were thinking of getting something a little bit more comfortable.

Our next Van was a converted LWB Iveco Daily (with a fixed bed).  How amazing after long walks & a few cheeky ones to be able to just fall into bed without having to mess around for 30 mins making the bed up.

The importance of van layout is extremely dependant on your own individual  likes/dislikes, its amazing how much of a difference not having to spend 30 mins making up a bed makes to life & this layout then obviously also gained Pete bonus points on keeping the wife happy too.

Again many a happy trip was taken in this converted van.  We nicknamed her “Scampervan”. We travelled locally of course in Devon and Cornwall on shorter trips &  further when time permitted, touring Dorset & Somerset, Wales, Yorkshire and the Lake district, again having some fantastic trips and breaks away.

We then started getting ideas about travelling further away, for longer periods & perhaps to touring other countries.  It’d been years since we had been abroad on any  holiday, the more we thought & discussed things the more ideas we came up with.

Pete was considering early retirement.  All this thinking had started giving us more & more incentive, before we knew it we had practically settled on doing something along the lines of buying a suitable Motorhome & travelling around Europe.

We started working out our finances & purchased our next home on wheels, a RT 265 Granduca.  We had the RT Granduca fitted with a solar panel and had a Gaslow system installed so that we could use LPG instead of having to swap gas bottles.  When the gas ran out we could just top up at any LPG petrol station…

Pete took early retirement in August 2017 and I applied for a sabbatical from work of which, surprisingly, they agreed to, starting beginning of Sept 2017 for 12 months.  The house was rented out and we began our travels on 31st August 2017… little did I know at the time I wouldn’t be returning to work for the company I took the sabbatical from as we would end up staying on the road travelling for a much longer period than we had at first ever envisioned.

We then felt that we were somehow missing out we so sold the motorhome after 18 months & we changed to a caravan & car.  We were finding, that with such a large motorhome once parked up we felt trapped, sometimes we would find ourselves to be in the middle of nowhere without the freedom to leave, it’s the downside of having such a large motorhome, it was getting harder to go explore, we also found in some countries you were forbidden to take specific larger breeds of dogs on public transport too hence even less freedom again, plus it was almost impossible to take the motorhome to & through some smaller towns & villages too…

The caravan was plenty comfortable & warm inside to be fair & although we had towed a trailer around with us on the back of the motorhome, towing a caravan is a totally different experience and although it was ok I was never truly comfortable with it.  However the best part of the setting the caravan up when you got to a destination was getting to use the motor mover,  what a great piece of kit they are, it allows you to move the whole caravan via a remote control no awkward reversing in… how easy it was to position into tight squeezes, I felt like a kid with a remote control car… Pete very rarely got a look in…

We were forced to return home to bricks and mortar in May 2020 after spending the best part of 3 years fulltime on the road, when we found we needed to re-evaluate our lifestyle urgently due to the Cov19 pandemic, my mothers failing health & finally due to Brexit & the loss of our freedom of movement within the EU.

Now some of you will recall I’d blogged religiously throughout our trip, all about what we were getting up too on our travels & giving useful info along the route of our travels throughout the EU & in the UK, I’d decided to remove all the original blog posts from the internet once we got home due to several reasons, but it also gave me more room on the website without having to pay for more expansion to the site, & for me to continue blogging if I felt the urge, but fear not I did save the blog posts to a hard drive so I may re-use snippets from the past blogs from time to time in the future…

Fast forward to present day Jan/Feb 2022 The pandemic had put a halt to a lot of travelling for most over the last 2 years & Brexit has certainly put a spanner in the works for any future free movement plus any ease of taking pets travelling via the pet passport scheme as that simply went out the window also, so we have had to seriously re-evaluate our travelling to accommodate our new restrictions, but what the future brings who knows…

We remained busy during the COV19 pandemic & during each of the major lockdowns, refreshing our house & gardens, while at the same time also looking out for our elderly neighbour and being bubbled in with my mother whose health was failing, during this time we also moved my mother into a bungalow and had decorated that throughout too, but as much as we did all this my mothers health suddenly worsened & sadly it broke my heart when she passed away late last year.

I tried to keep myself busy while my heart broke in half, it took months to sort out the official stuff as it often does when people pass, during that time I found I couldn’t rest easy, so I found myself a part time job too, we also started thinking of perhaps getting another small van again to go away in, so in January Pete started working on converting a small van just to accommodate us for short breaks away again, I may have to start updating and blogging about how things are going & what we are up too.

Well fast forward to April 2022 & Pete has done it… he’s converted a Vauxhall Vivaro and we have just returned from our first couple of trips away.  I will tell you further about how our trips went in a blog post…  I have aptly named the newest van “Steptoe”.

I hope to start making blog posts again soon but until then take good care & look after each other.

Donna