Bloody British Weather

Afternoon all, just a quick pop in to let you know where I am at. First of all, yes I know I had said that I was going to try and do daily blogs but hey ho, I also knew that was never going to happen! I do have a good excuse though. We were away. No internet access.

Do you know, it's actually a funny thing about internet access. We went away in February and were staying at Wareham Forest. It is a rural area in Dorset, but that said it is also just a few miles from a very busy, urban, tourist area.

On our van Tallulah, we had between us, 2 smart phones. 2 Ipads, a very expensive Snooper GPS unit, all singing and dancing with internet, plus our own MI-Fi hotspot. Could we get on the internet? Not on your Nelly. Could we get a phone signal? Absolutely no chance. Somehow, I thought things were better than that nowadays. Obviously not.

Anyway, we were away with no internet. As some of you know we should still be away. We had planned to be way until Eater Monday. We were going to travel the North Norfolk coast and then go to Verity's for Easter.

We managed just one night. We went on Monday to Brancaster and had quite a nice day despite it being very cold.  A few photos:

Things started to go wrong around dinner time when we visited 2 dog friendly pubs where we thought we could have a nice meal out. What we hadn't thought about was that “dog friendly” means the world and his wife are there complete with their family of dogs! This is therefore not going to work for us as Beanie is nervous of other dogs. So it was a long walk in the wind and rain back to the van for pasties and beans.

Earlier in the day Simon had attempted to put up our Drive Away awning, despite the wind! He has only ever tested it once before, last summer when we purchased it. Of course by now he has forgotten how to do it and has lost the instructions. He did get it up but it didn't actually look quite right. The wind did not help and in fact it proved impossible to attach to the van mostly because of the wind. I kept telling him it was way too windy, but men always know best until the wife proves to be right!

So, we went to bed. It wasn't pleasant and the wind was picking up more and more and the rain was torrential. After about a quarter of an hour I got up. It was bloody scary. The wind was rocking the van quite violently and actually making me feel sick. Imagine being on a boat in really rough sea or on a plane with the worst turbulence ever. You have some idea.

Long story short, I spent the night sitting in the drivers seat with my feet propped on the seats opposite, trying to console Beanie who wasn’t entirely happy with this new experience. Simon of course stayed in the bed although he didn’t sleep much.

After a very long night where I was checking my watch about every 20 minutes, just longing for dawn to come, Simon finally got up. I was able to inform him that our lovely new awning which we have yet to use was now lying in a tangled, muddy mess on the ground. I watched it gradually go down over the course of the night. Nothing I could do. I have no idea at the moment if it is salvageable or not. It is currently in a heap in the back of the van waiting for a dry, non windy day so we can get it out in the garden and survey the damage.

With rain and strong winds forecast to go on until today we decided that after just one night it was best to head for home. I could barely move. A night spent sitting upright had made me very stiff and set off my lower back pain again. Just when I thought I had got rid of it. I also had the beginnings of a migraine almost certainly due to the stress of it all.

And so we are at home. Feeling pretty fed up. We had been looking forward so much to our first, longer foray. Right now, I am seriously considering if “motor-homing” is really for me. Something always seems to go tits up. (For my Merikan friends, who may not know that expression; it means gone wrong!).

JILLY