Category: UK 2017 – South West

It’s now 21.57 and we’re enjoying the perfect ending to our non too perfect first day of “Living The Dream”. Glass of red, risotto, favourite playlist, soulmate. (Obviously this list is in reverse order) And now comes the coffee and choco digestives.

Clear cold night outside, but we’re toasty having now mastered the heating system.

Earlier today, in fact 60 minutes short of our planned leave time, it almost seemed as if our dream had become the shortest in living history. The reason?   Brainless Bri had overlooked the fact that this beloved beast of our ours has a rear overhang longer than the bottom lip-plate of the average pouting Amazonian Chieftan.

Consequently, despite the fact that I’d removed both driveway gates and trimmed the overhanging branches, I overcompensated for the car parked opposite our drive, swung out too far right and proceeded to wedge the back end against the protruding gate bracket. It was at this point that I had hoped to awaken from this nightmare scenario and breathe a sigh of dawnbreaking relief. No chance!

Mary-Ann’s look of astonishment and disbelief was agonising. Especially, when the damage to our baby new MOHO became apparent.

To make matters worse I had effectively blocked off our road from all traffic, which didn’t go down a treat. It was well and truly stuck. No way forward and no way back.

Mind whirling like a dervish there seemed to be only one way out of this cruel calamity. The top four layers of bricks would have to be removed in order to release the bracket. 40 bashing minutes later and the last one came away and with it the offending bracket. Phew. Got the MOHO onto the road and surveyed the damage. !?XX?$%S! – if you get my drift.

Lesson Learned: The back end of this beast swivels on a sixpence when cornering, like a pencil rotating in a compass grip, or George Best’s hips when selling a defender a dummy. Woe betide anyone or anything that thinks about getting in Beastie’s way.

Now at this point, having spent a much earlier hour on my back underneath the rear end fitting holding bolts for the scooter ramp, (yes, we really are aiming to live the dream) I mistakenly thought things had taken a turn for the better (no pun intended) Only to be confronted with a pair of ratchet straps. To say I never knew these even existed, might take you by surprise. If you have ever had the pleasure to meet one of these little suckers face to face for the very first time, you’ll fully understand my complete and utter perplexment. Brilliant design and function, but unfathomable to the uninitiated. I consider myself to be pretty practical with most day to day stuff and more often than not can work out how something new works, but after 20 minutes of fiddling and getting nowhere I had to put myself out of my misery and go and ask that nice Mr Google, who very kindly directed me to Dirt Farmer Jay’s masterclass. After all, we’d got places to visit and people to see and time was beginning to eke away. Putts Corner in Ottery St Mary, near Sidmouth was beckoning . . . .

Quantum physics teaches us that tiny things go on in tiny spaces. After less than 24 hours “on board” I can only imagine that those early scientists must have known a thing or two about motorhoming too.

These scientists tell us that there are very certain principals that govern the way objects move and behave in relation to one another when occupying and vying for these very miniscule droplets of space. A sort of heirarchy develops. Likewise, your mindset has to very quickly adapt and adopt a new set of procedures. Organisation is the key. The inside of a motorhome is cleverly designed to place an almost infinite number of convenient cupboards and crevices at your disposal. You are so spoilt for choice it becomes so easy to “tidy away” an item, to only later scratch your head in disbelief that that same item is now well and truly lost forever. Sucked into the MOHO quantum black hole. Fortunately time is of no conseqence when you’re lost in space, no matter how small.

That was not quite the case however earlier today. We got to the site in good time and plannned to put our scooter to use and trip into Looe. Getting the scooter up and into the MOHO garage was a breeze back at home, but here on site I overlooked the fact that we were not on a level pitch and had already spent 30 minutes or so toing and froing up and down the wheel blocks trying to level this beast on a slope. As one more attempt after another failed, we abandoned the notion and decided we’d put up with the slope and put out a call for Eddie the Eagle to join us.

Like the fist of a monkey that plunges into a bottle to retrieve a treat and wraps itself around the goody, only to then prevent the closed and enlarged fist from withdrawing from the neck, so it was with our scooter. Easy peasy in, nosy waysy out. It was all to do with angles. Even after creating a pyramid pile of gravel that Tutankhamun could have been buried alive in, we still failed to get the outside ramp to the necessary height with the garage door base. A couple of times we edged the scooter three quarters out, but the underside kept getting caught and with the weight increasing expotentially as gravity took hold we almost lost her to Newton’s theory of why things fall on your head, or in our case on your feet. It felt like it was almost going to snow as the chilly north easterly took hold, so we abandoned this idea too, resolving to make sure we operated on a level playing field from now on.

Thankfully the frustrations of day 2 loosened their hold on us as we were joined by my sister Yvonne to share a very relaxing dinner with. Maybe the wine helped too.

Then to bed, which is fixed at the back end of our MOHO and the sudden realisation that I’d put the levelling blocks the wrong side of the wheels. i.e. up slope, instead of down slope. My fear was that with our additional 130Kg at the rear, Newton’s theory that all things get pulled down to their lowest possible position, would be severly put to the test. 50 yards away downslope was the toilet block. So for 45 minutes every single creak or crack or slight movement kept my nerves jangling until sleep got the better of me.

Now above our bed is a skylight. At precisely 5.50am a couple of early birds decided to perform a song and dance routine for us – how kind. Oblivious to the fact that they had an invisible audience just three feet below,  their routine started with a bit of a natter and light banter, then developed into an excited chatter while their feet padded up and down as if they were dancing on burning embers, to be followed by a lot of hyena like laughter (perhaps they did know we were below) until it culminated into a wierd sounding cacophony of siren like calls. (did you guess they were seagulls?) The sky above was steely grey, but the sleepy air below was as blue as saphire.

Still the upside of this was that our MOHO hadn’t shifted from its spot.

I have to sort out our MOHO satnav. It seems to think its last location was somewhere on the continent – probably because it was built and shipped from Italy. I heard somewhere that you’ll get a better destination fix if you enter latitude and longitude coordinates. Ha! So far it has always assumed we’re the other side of the channel and warns us that we need to take a ferry crossing, and be prepared for multiple tolls and gives us on average a choice of 19,000 plus routes to choose from!

With tom-tom on board, google maps on our phones, a road atlas of Great Britain plus written intructions in the club site book you’d have been forgiven for thinking that even Steveland Morris could have easily navigated to our next overnighter at Trewethett Farm site – with pitches enjoying spectacular views across to the nearest craggy headland.

We got to within 2 miles of the site, found ourselves confused and disorientated and considering whether it would simply be easier to phone the site, cancel and move on to our next stop.

We (me) can be extremely stubborn and 55 minutes later, the penny dropped, and we whooped with delight as the cliff top site sprang into view.

We could do with staying here a couple of days, but it’s not to be. However we relaxed (if that’s the right word), shook off our doubts and brought ourselves back to sanity by walking into Tintagel via the 2.5mile coastal path. Wonderfully refreshing, with a picture perfect delight around every turn.

Sleep came easily.

When picking up our four wheeled beast I was persuaded (cus I’m a newbie to this lark – surprise, surprise) to purchase a few “add-on” and most essential items. These included a piece of clear plastic 8ft piping with one of those old rubber tap adaptors on one end. The type I remember from the 60’s, before Hozelock came along. You know the perishing type, when not often used they’d go dry, flaky and crumbly. When I queried the wisdom of this, the answer came firmly back with a “this is all you’ll need to cope with all the different types of taps you’ll ever come across, here and on the continent”. So I duly parted with my twelve quid, confident I’d added another piece of valuable kit to our MOHO armoury.

That confidence was sadly eroded as we pulled in to the water fill up point on our departure today. The tap staring me in the face was fitted with a bog standard Hozelock clip-on attachment. Could I wrap our new and super stiff pipe onto it? No way. At first I tried the full wrap over technique and tightened my grip until my knuckles turned a deathly white and the veins on the back of my hand looked as if they were ready to pop at any second. This had the effect of creating a Geysir like gush, shooting what seemed like ten gallons of icy cold water up the length of my arm and drenching my armpit. The tube was transparent so we could see how far the water had managed to reach – about three foot short of the filler hole. Ah! then we noticed a couple of kinks. Even with sorting those out it was still like trying to suck up pop through a straw with a flattened end. A trickle was how Mary-Ann described it. However, with a little perserverance, a slight change of technique and a lot of time on our hands, we did (so we thought, but discovered later we hadn’t) fill the tank to its brim.

We loved this site and its location with so much to see and do that it’s on our “must visit again list” Beastie is parked high up to the left across Rocky Valley.

We are now feeling like seasoned MOHOs.

There has been one curious side effect of travelling around Cornwall and now into Devon however.

And that’s that we now unwittingly converse to one another in super stylised accents that would convince even the likes of Josh Widdicombe that we were “locals” born and bred. (even if he wasn’t) Having been to France a few times, we have on occasion been subject to one or two spontaneous French lessons on the best way to pronounce certain words. And so it is down here. They have different rules about which is the best syllables to place the accents on and they don’t mind telling you. Tintagel being a typical example. They like you to pronounce it the way they do. So it’s not pronounced “TIntagel” but “TintAgel”. Comprends? So we now speak posh with a yokel slant – or rather slarnt. It is particularly effective with certain swear words.

Four nights on fully equipped sites to get us “broken in” to life on the road and now we’re enjoying a torrential downpour on the most amazing farm site just a hop, skip and jump west of Banwell, about 10 miles from Cheddar. We ate dinner while our eyes feasted on the stunning view over a very pituresque water scene.

On arrival, we’d stretched our legs with a short investigative walk into the village and on the way back been treated to a glimpse into the early life of eleven ducklings as they were being safely ushered  along by their guardian parents – dad up front leading the way, mum behind keeping a look out.

Woke up this morning with the realisation that I’ve been morphed. Transformed a la Tony Hart into a new being. A time warped state of evolution has kicked in.

After his change of heart, Darwin always looked backwards to where he thought we’d originated from, never daring to reconsider where we might be heading, for fear that the truth would be re-revealed.

Well Charles,  it’s all about being in the right place at the right time and you were born a century or two too early, for I can now reveal the truth you searched for.

Six days ago we set out on this trial trip (trial being the operative word) and I started this journey at what was then considered to be the very pinnacle of the evolutionery tree “HOMO Sapiens”, but this morning my discovery is plain to see and I can personally witness to the truth that man’s future is as MOHO Sapiens!

Say no more . . . . .

Beauty and the Beast below (which is which – answers on a post card please)

“Le Journey” continues 8th May (or should that be “La Journey”? – anyway, we’ll soon find out . . . .