Yesterday morning we arose from our beds to a very calm start to the day... hardly any breeze at all...birds singing... no rain just a great start to another caravanning day..
What a difference to the night we had just been through.
The winds coming from an easterly direction were hitting us from Merrivale further up the moor with gusts of 72mph according to the local weather station....
It is not often I feel that I should lower Eva's roof but I was troubled by two things..first the thought that the roof would get seriously damaged if I left it up or even worse get ripped off and secondly the noise of the wind and the flapping around of the awning was so bad that there is no way that we would have got any sleep at all if I had left the roof up..
It is surprising how much noise lowering the roof keeps out...under normal conditions noise is not a problem with the roof up but with 70mph gusts howling off the moor and sounding like a steam train we would have not slept at all with the pop top popped....
After a full inspection of our awning in the morning all we had suffered was one peg that held the weather flap around the base of the awning had come out.... also one of the rubber ladder loops that are pegged out around the base of the awning had broken. A quick wack with my mallet solved the peg situation and two minutes later I had replaced the ladder loop.
This was probably the worst night of winds that we have experienced over the three winters that we have pitched here.
We have had some other bad nights but I think that this one must be right up there as the absolute worst.....
Unfortunately not everyone was as lucky as us.....
The new Site Assistant Darren suffered a broken corner bracket on his brand new £2500 Isabella Awning and throughout the night his awning pegs were popping out all over the place just like Champagne corks....
Apparently at 0300 hours he was running around his awning trying to hammer the pegs back in but as fast as he knocked one back in another one would pop out.
But even this was as nothing compared to one poor caravan owner who suffered total destruction of her awning...
She was off site at the time which in one way was probably a good thing but this morning Darren had to phone her up and tell her the bad news....
Below are a couple of images of the poor woman's awning literally torn to shreds....
In the second image you can see Darren trying to tidy things up a bit and make it all safe.....
Hopefully that will be the end of the winds for the time being but it certainly shook up our calm quiet and peaceful existence....
What a difference to the night we had just been through.
The winds coming from an easterly direction were hitting us from Merrivale further up the moor with gusts of 72mph according to the local weather station....
It is not often I feel that I should lower Eva's roof but I was troubled by two things..first the thought that the roof would get seriously damaged if I left it up or even worse get ripped off and secondly the noise of the wind and the flapping around of the awning was so bad that there is no way that we would have got any sleep at all if I had left the roof up..
It is surprising how much noise lowering the roof keeps out...under normal conditions noise is not a problem with the roof up but with 70mph gusts howling off the moor and sounding like a steam train we would have not slept at all with the pop top popped....
After a full inspection of our awning in the morning all we had suffered was one peg that held the weather flap around the base of the awning had come out.... also one of the rubber ladder loops that are pegged out around the base of the awning had broken. A quick wack with my mallet solved the peg situation and two minutes later I had replaced the ladder loop.
This was probably the worst night of winds that we have experienced over the three winters that we have pitched here.
We have had some other bad nights but I think that this one must be right up there as the absolute worst.....
 |
| All calm after the storm with the roof down. |
The new Site Assistant Darren suffered a broken corner bracket on his brand new £2500 Isabella Awning and throughout the night his awning pegs were popping out all over the place just like Champagne corks....
Apparently at 0300 hours he was running around his awning trying to hammer the pegs back in but as fast as he knocked one back in another one would pop out.
But even this was as nothing compared to one poor caravan owner who suffered total destruction of her awning...
She was off site at the time which in one way was probably a good thing but this morning Darren had to phone her up and tell her the bad news....
Below are a couple of images of the poor woman's awning literally torn to shreds....
In the second image you can see Darren trying to tidy things up a bit and make it all safe.....
Hopefully that will be the end of the winds for the time being but it certainly shook up our calm quiet and peaceful existence....
 |
| Awning torn to shreds... |
 |
| Darren trying to tidy up and make safe after the winds.. |
4 comments:
Those winds were powerful, so it must have been a bit scary in the van as our house seemed to shake with the strength of the wind. I remember camping outside of Settle in the van in high winds and that was unnerving. We had leveling blocks on one side and the van was rocking all night. Some good signs of Spring around here as the Primulas and Snowdrops are out.
The caravan was rocking and rolling...... It certainly ups the stress levels.
I hope those spring flowers haven't popped up too soon.
All caught up now. I must look in more often. Happy camping Trevor. See you at Verwood in the spring.
Looking forward to that. We should be there from April 23rd for 28days.
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