A bit of Normandie

We’d taken the ferry as a change from the tunnel, as well as the route to Portsmouth giving us that chance to drop-in to SIV but it is slow! Le Shuttle is so quick to load and unload and although the Commodore Clipper is a very small ferry, we sat in line for ages, both before and during the check in and border process. Maybe the M1/25/20 drive isn’t such a bad option after all.

That route has brought us here to Normandy and it’s full of things to do. We are going to spend a day at Honfleur which is across the Seine from Le Havre. One is a big port and the other a beautiful coastal town. We’ll concentrate on the beautiful bit.

First though we need a place to stay as it’s already 7pm when we disembark (no queues or further checks here are needed to enter the EU). Just up the coast are a couple of places on Park4night. We drove past one in order to have a look. It’s a €10 fee to go through a security gate to a house but we think you need to ring a French number and we wonder about the preimposed ‘spend cap’ we have on the pay monthly sim in the phone and decide to look at the other place.

That’s in a village up the road and is a small parking area next to the church, at the entrance to the cemetery. When we arrive, there are six camper van / motor homes already occupying the six reserved spots and although there are a few other parking spaces, we are not sure.

The sign says parking must be in allocated spaces (it’s very succinct in French but I can’t recall it). The ‘six’ are all Dutch / German, save for one and I muster my best Franglais and ask if he thinks we are ok where we have parked. He says that as we are out of the turning circle for the bus, then we are. This doesn’t help for some reason and we resolve to return to the €10 make-a-call gate, which is only a few minutes away.

As we pull-up to the gate and start to fumble with the phone, it opens and the kind lady hostess bekons us across the apron and welcomes us. Not only that, we don’t need to park alongside the other four small motor homes and we can drive onto the grass and park further away. It must be a Land Rover thing.

So we do, The dog stops barking, we have a beer in the sun and all is well.

The next morning we pay the fee and drive 20mins north to Etretat. Dawn has done the research and knows what to expect but even so, the high chalk cliffs with their sea arches and the huge steep pebble beach are quite a surprise.

We walk along, out towards the school kids picking in the rock-pools for snails (?) and I find a lead sinker off someone’s beach fishing tackle. How long it has been there I can’t tell but it hasn’t degraded.

It’s a popular place, even in this sudden cool weather with heavy rain on the way. We walk up the cliff and back down again, manage a coffee and then walk back to the Pay-by-phone car park (the only one that allows >2m).

We know it’s going to rain. A low pressure system is heading straight for us. We’ve almost forgotten what rain a like, it’s been so dry in England.

So we head for Honfleur and a big campsite a couple of miles out, with lots of hot water and facilities. We’ve invested in ACSI cards for this year and the site will thus give us a low season discount. 

The motorway pèage doesn’t seem to know if we are class 1 or 2. One of these will be more costly than the other but which one is selected is a lottery at each barrier. We pay extra on this motorway section to go across Pont Normandie. There’s little alternative but it’s a great bridge anyway. The fact that they are adding cables to those that have been there since it was built 30 years ago is slightly surprising but presumably the result of recent bridge collapses (was it Genoa?).

It rains all afternoon and into the early evening, before we finally venture out for a little leg stretch and then some very appropriate warming soup. 

It hasn’t been a long drive today!

On y va

Hooray. We are off. The ferry was booked a few weeks ago and the pressure was then on to get all sorts of jobs finished on the house and Landy.

Major cosmetic work was to cover the grey front doors with paint that matches the rest of the vehicle.

On the engine a coolant leak had developed behind the water pump and so the P gasket and adjacent core plug were renewed. Also a cheapy head unit from those Chinese people replaced the old Sony fm radio. Now we have opened up the wonders of Car Play and all that comes with it.

Finally the 9th gen iPad with WiFi became a 9th gen iPad with WiFi and ‘cellular’. This means we can use OsmAnd Maps which need no data and get their gps position off the ‘cellular’ chip in the iPad. More on this useful map in subsequent posts.

We headed towards Portsmouth for a mid morning ferry via our old neighbours in S-I-V. There we had a great few hours updating each about our families and then proceeded to save the NHS, the country and the world too. I mean why not? We’ve now been around longer than most; have seen and experienced more than most and are older and wiser (than most). We deserve it and have the time.

Portsmouth is an interesting port even though there weren’t as many naval vessels around as I might have expected. Highlight was the aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth which is already eleven years old (since commissioning). 

I’m sure that it spends a lot of time at the dock. Maybe it is getting upgraded. The work appears to be major and I doubt it will leave anytime soon. I’d feel happier about our defensive capability if it was at sea.

The ferry is small and not at all busy. There’s a few cars, caravans and motor homes. An old chap was in a Smart car. Didn’t seem very laden. I wonder where he’s going? The guy with the Harley had one small piece of luggage and we decided that he’s only travelling with essentials.

So we are happy to surf the waves and the internet (with free and fast Wi-Fi) as we cruise in the sunshine across to La France. Tomorrow it’s going to rain. 😩

Turning around

Soon it was time to turn around and head into Shropshire. The first port of call was Ludlow on market day (Monday). This is a nice place and we will be back I’m sure, as there’s two family reasons why we will be coming to the area.

There’s no photos of Ludlow as rather frustratingly we handed over our aging phones at the willing repair shop. We entrusted them for “new batteries” but the short story is that two hours later, neither phone had been updated and we raced back to the car park, exceeding the allotted time, without any ‘snaps’ being taken.

The exploratory visit to the campground at Little Stretton was a success. We and a dozen others were there for day #1 of the new season. According to Pam, half of Pam and Oscar, they have run the place for fifty five years. It’s in an idyllic valley, right under the Long Mynd, accessed across a gentle ford 🤪 This year anyway!

We decided to test our walking pace and with Oscar’s slightly disbelieving eyebrow raising after he suggested a six mile round walk. We took it with an “Ok we’ll go now before tea” and set off.

The valley is a picture of tightly interlocking spurs and the narrow path rises steadily up to the road at the top of the hill. In contrast to home, there were few about and we hopefully teased the walker 1/2 mile behind us as we got to the top in 50mins without stopping for a breather.

This is the start…

It is a big lump of hill and the views are tremendous. On the way around to the decent we came close to some of the many wild ponies up here. The foal was clearly just finding its feet; probably just a few days old.

Down we went, against the clock and we were back within two hours. That’s not bad for virtually six miles and two OAPs 😀

Later we ate a great meal with T&S at the Ragleth Inn in Little Stretton, a very handy 2 minute walk from the campsite.

With walking confidence boosted, the next day we again strode up the same valley at 3mph but then turned right and walked the short distance to the top of Cardingmill Valley. This is a popular spot towards the bottom, as it’s accessible by car.  Quite a few walkers were well on the way up the very steep top half.

Lower down we met a big group of GSCE school kids, who were measuring, at various points, the width and depth of the stream coming down. Also they were taking measurements of the bed load, sampling rock size and angularity. A quick google suggests they are studying the Bradshaw model. More on that, once I have studied it 🤓

Our walk didn’t end down in Church Stretton. Oh no, we apparently had to walk up the hill on the other side and we then, after a rest, were able to wander south along the ridge. This presented a great view back over to the Mynd and down to the town.

The campsite passed the test and I expect we will be back. It’s clearly popular but not big and perfectly situated.

Into Herefordshire

The frenetic pace of the trip continued and we headed south and soon we were at the home of Peter and Carol, people with whom we’d become acquainted during the Alps holiday in 2023.

It had been hilarious when Carol answered questions about “where in Derbyshire did you live?” and she was narrowed right down to Sparrowpit, all the time assuming that we wouldn’t know where she meant.

The purpose of this first visit was to take a closer look at their DIY van-to-camper conversion, the first that we have seen that has the sort of highly practical fixtures and fittings that we might try to emulate, should we ever decide to get a van.

For the record it’s a 2015 Transit 2014.5 MY 350 L3 H3 AWD  (long wheel base and high roof neither of which are as big or as tall as we thought).I saw the spec sheet and it had some very useful features at purchase that would have helped with the decision to buy.

We left with lots of ideas of what to do and maybe what not to do, once we commit and decide to do ‘it’. They confirmed some of what we know already, which is that boxes are better than drawers and hanging space. Single beds lengthways are better than a double sideways. Also that access to water, heat, toilet servicing and the like is much better from the rear than the side. A service area can be created between the rear of the living space and the rear barn doors.

We said goodbye after a few hours and had only driven a mile when the low coolant warning flashed on. This is a DIY addition which uses a Range Rover coolant header tank float switch to warn, very early, of a drop in the level. For our 300 TDi engine, discovering coolant loss only when the water temperature gauge goes into the red is far too late. Damage to the cylinder head would have already happened.

Normally this doesn’t happen anyway but of course I had recently ’fiddled’ and done some preventive maintenance by changing some of the coolant hoses. We had a leak at the radiator bottom hose but it wasn’t too bad and we topped up with a litre or two.

We continued, skirting Shrewsbury and then passing the St Ivel factory at Minsterley, now a Müller brand. In 2007- 8 that was the source of much trifle making success by teaching to concentrate on the “devil’s in the detail”. Considerable quantities of trifle and yoghurt were bought in the factory shop and taken home each weekend, to be shared with family and friends.

At Bishops Castle we were the first and only on the CL there and were reacquainted with site owner Bruce. A quick check underneath the radiator and I nipped-up the hose clip and thought all was well.

We were amazed during our walk into the town at how dry it is this year and how terribly wet it was at that same time last year. I remember that we had lots of rain from October 2023 to late Spring. This year the ground is hard and the winter mud is already dry.

Unfortunately all the local beer at The Three Tuns was ‘settling’ and the alcohol drinker was content with the widely available Landlord rather than that from the on-site brewery. We enjoyed a late afternoon wander and then walked back for what was a very wet night outside.

Wandering towards Leominster the next day, it became obvious that the leak wasn’t fixed with my quick intervention and I decided to find a garage. Lying on your back, pulling the bottom hose off a radiator with about 7 litres in it, threatening to discharge a mix of Glycol and water onto you, is not appealing.

We made our way to a 4x4 garage in Knighton but it was closed and the owner answered the phone and recommended another up the hill but having got it up in the air, Richard decided he was too busy!

Michael, an unassuming guy at the interesting Knighton Classics, was very willing but concerned that the soon to arrive pickup truck, would come just after he got started. With no ramp to put the Landy up in the air, both he and I were anyway likely to be lying underneath with 7 litres of coolant about to fall on us. So I quickly agreed with him that the truck would probably be here imminently and instead made small talk about the MG Midget that it was collecting.

It took quite a lot of small talk to tease out that this immaculate car was about to be sent back to its owner, a widower who had entrusted it to Knighton Classics for a rebuild.

A TV programme could have been made of the story. The car was at their house in France and the owner died without completing the project. His wife brought it back to England / Wales but in bits and in several large boxes. The unassuming Michael has spent hours rebuilding and restoring it and now, just as it was about to be handed over, a bloke with a leaky Land Rover turned up!

We did rummage amongst old colony hose boxes and I found a piece of hose that might be needed and Michael handed over a new hose clip that eventually I did use. He refused my £5 offer and we left.

A day later, in the shadow of a friend’s 1954 Series 1 Land Rover, I removed the fancy Micalor clip and fitted the Jubilee and realised that the problem was caused by me changing the hose type from silicone to rubber and forgetting that the silicone ones are a little thicker. For the record and to round-off the story, Micalor clips have a minimum diameter, below which they can’t go. My clip was correct for the previous silicone but oversize for the rubber. The 7 litres stayed where required.

So we were now in Herefordshire, with H & T, wowing over their completed heritage barn conversion to dwelling. You could easily imagine Kevin McCloud visiting with the Grand Designs crew as the project had everything. It was previously a cruck barn only ever used for cattle and now looks almost the same from the outside but is ultra modern in that it is all electric, with ASHP, underfloor heating, solar PV supported and with a humongous amount of insulation cloaking it.

You would never know about that though as all original features have been retained, the walls stabilised and it is beautifully finished inside and out.

Look at the weather forecast!

We spent some nice days again touring the local black and white villages. In contrast to one year ago, it was dry, warm and the skies were blue. Last April it had been raining for five months and it had been tough in the Landy.

This is Weobley

The iPhone camera has distorted the beautiful church…

…and the sundial is showing the incorrect time, even though I know it is now BST. The error seems to be about the same as that caused when the foot of the support metal was moved slightly to the left. You can see the previous position at the mark of the square mount, above the XII with the new support shown as the dark black vertical line. It was about 2:30pm GMT.

The nights were dark and the sky perfect. What a spell of weather,

Almost a year

Wow, it’s April next week and this blog has almost been forgotten. That’s because we haven’t driven far due to spinal MRI scans and the consequences of those, which still continue and there’s yet another in two weeks.

Also we have installed an insulated roof on our house and solar PV panels with battery. For those who appreciate these things we now have a house which has a ‘warm’ roof (yes that’s a technical term), has a U value of 0.15 (that’s a thermal insulation term) and has 15 x 440W of solar PV and 2 x 3.68kW of inverter power with 10.25kWh of battery. Yes it can get boring in the world of ‘generate your own green electricity’, having spent a fair bit of money to buy equipment that might not necessarily been produced in a particularly green way 🙈.

However we have have ventured out into the world of Land Rover camping and pointed towards the Welsh Borders in beautiful spring weather. First stop was Chirk, somewhere between Llangollen and Oswestry. It pretty much straddles the border but our bit is in Wales, reinforced by Welsh dragon flags around.

However the influence of Thomas Telford in the 18C is just around the corner. He had a grand design to facilitate the building of a canal linking Bristol and Liverpool. The end bits into the respective ports weren’t completed but much of the rest was.

There’s tunnels and bridges, including this tunnel through which we walked without torches. Ok so what if you can see through to the other end?

Here at Chirk, together with William Jessop, they built an aqueduct to carry the Llangollen canal across from Chirk to Chirk Bank. It opened in 1801 and at 70m, was the highest navigable waterway in the world.

In 1848, the railway viaduct was built by Henry Robertson. This also straddled the valley, built parallel but a little higher. The two magnificent stone structures are a fantastic sight from below and on the top. 

Yes you can walk alongside the canal and look over the low railings to the ground below, all the time imagining the horses towing the barges and looking over proportionally lower railings at the ground.

Nearby, and handy for the Caravan Club site, is Chirk castle. It’s no surprise that Telford and Robinson built those two great stylish structures. They would have seen this castle, high on a hill, built in the 14C. It set a high bar and looks stupendous today.

Somehow we were walking around the castle grounds before hours and missed the NT ticket gazebo but we weren’t the only ones.

It’s a nice leg stretch up from the site and after the visit we walked on, past some of Offa’s Dyke and wandered slowly back downhill to the north of Chirk. The views of the countryside across England were great with a couple of large factories too. A local lady had referred to them as “our blot on the landscape” but I see them as great places that actually make useful “stuff”. In this case it’s the interesting combo of chocolate based confectionery (I assume) at Cadbury Trebor Bassett and MDF at Krono-span. Both of these are essential items in the inflation calculation’s ‘basket of goods’.

We headed for Chirk Marina, only once going wrong and walking all the way around the side of a field, looking for a way out that wasn’t our way in. We dropped into the Marina but for some reason were pulled towards the shady end where several of the many barges looked as though they would never again be seeing the open waters of the canal.

I lingered next to one barge but was ushered along by Dawn and steady we walked past vessel with slightly more attractive names until we got to the posh end. 

From there we walked the tow path, as many horses did in days gone by, passing the two factories out of sight but not hearing, until we climbed up, away from the longer tunnel under Chirk.

Later we walked the aqueduct and appreciated the construction and were careful to follow the instructions, until we received a welcome at the border.