Malvern....Still No Awning...

Last Monday we moved on from our site at Cropredy and are now at the Blackmore CCC site close to the Malvern hills.
We have stayed here before but that was about ten years ago and on that visit we were camping in a tent.

Having received a replacement air tube for our awning we were planning on putting the awning up on our arrival here.
We got the awning out of it's bag and unboxed the new tube but after attempting to insert the tube in the outer zipped pole tube it became obvious that we had been sent the wrong tube.....

So we are still using the canopy and windscreen (wind break) set up that we have been using since our stay at Salisbury.

A quick call to Cameron at Automotive Leisure and Cameron admitted it was his fault...
He said that he had been sent the complete set and had obviously sent the front arch out to us instead of the rear as we had requested.

Unfortunately there are issues with the CCC receiving parcels on behalf of campers so we will have to wait till we get to our next site in a couple of weeks time and get it sent there....
Still with the hot weather we have had this past week the canopy has probably been a better set up than an awning anyway..... 

Current set up...great in hot weather..

 Since we have been here I've been to a Jazz Festival  at Upton on Severn as well as getting out on the bike in an area that I've not cycled in before and we have also been out walking some of the many footpaths that there are surrounding the campsite....

This coming week we are planning a trip to Worcester which is a place that neither of us have ever been to before.

View of part of the Malvern hills on today's walk.

This past weekend the site has been rammed with a lot of people trying to take advantage of the good weather with a weekend camping trip.

Apparently 77 units packed up and left the site at lunchtime today. Mind you as they were leaving more units were arriving although not quite as many as had left......

Tomorrow I am planning a cycle ride down towards Gloucester so I am now going to head off to bed for a good nights sleep in preparation for the cycling effort...

Banbury or Eccles....

Wherever you travel to in the UK you can usually find somewhere that will sell you an Eccles cake....
I don't dislike Eccles cakes but I have always had a preference for Banbury cakes...

It must be said that they are very similar.
They are both made from a flaky pastry with a spiced fruit filling although the Banbury cakes are more oval in shape whereas the Eccles are round and deeper.

But I feel that it is in the eating where there is the biggest difference....
The Banbury cakes to my mind have a more spicy and nicer texture in the mouth.

I have always liked them but over the years they seem to be more and more difficult to find in the shops as I said most places will sell Eccles cakes but very rarely will they have Banbury cakes.

A lot of the people working in cake shops don't even seem to know what they are.

As our current location is only a few miles away from Banbury I was able to find some for sale but even Tesco in Banbury stocks Eccles cakes but not the nicer Banbury cakes...Shame on you Tesco. !!!

I found my beloved Banburys in a shop selling sweets and a few types of cakes but I just don't understand why they are so difficult to obtain...after all they have been made in the region to secret recipes since 1586...
Maybe that's the reason....the recipe is so secret that not enough people know how to make them.....

Aviation Interference and a New Location....

We have moved on from the Salisbury site and are now at a private site in North Oxfordshire close to the border with Warwickshire.
It is a very nice site that seems to be a mix of residential and touring pitches very similar to the site in Devon where we spent last winter....

All the grass around the site is neatly cut and the hedges are well trimmed. The toilets and showers are clean and tidy and there is a small information room with lots of ideas for places to visit.
There is also a well equipped laundry room.

All in all the site has everything that we look for in a site and best of all it is cheaper than a site operated by either of the two UK clubs...

We are less than a mile from the village of Cropredy where Fairport Convention hold their annual music festival.
Unfortunately that takes place in early August so we will miss that event.

Intrestingly we only heard of this site during a chance conversation with another camper at the CCC Moreton site back in April....
They come here each year in order to attend the music festival.

While we were at Salisbury something happened that hadn't happened at anytime during our previous four years of touring.
When I tried to operate our motor-mover it wouldn't work properly...it just kept jerking and then turning off...

I mentioned this to Cameron at Automotive Leisure and he said that it sounded as if it was interference from something that was transmitting on a similar wavelength as our motor-mover hand control.

He suggested that when we leave the site if we were still getting the interference to try operating it with the controller held just inside the caravan door...
Apparently the steel frame of the caravan would help to shield the transmission from my hand control from the transmission from whatever was interfering with it...

So that's what we did with Anne shouting directions and me operating the mover with my arm held through the caravan door effectively driving the caravan blind.
We managed to get the caravan hitched up with this method but were happy when we got here to find that all was working again as it should.

There was an airfield not far from the Salisbury site and there was a lot of small airplane activity and it seems likely that was the source of the interference....