Changeover time.....

Well since we have been here  I have managed to get out on the bike every other day... 
The weather has been really nice with some very sunny days and quite warm making for some ideal cycling weather.

I cycled around the Wimborne area quite a lot and last Sunday I had a stunning ride out to Salisbury and back.... 

We have our awning up on site which has proved useful in the evenings as they are now drawing in and the awning allows us to sit outside of the caravan quite late into the evening and yet still remain warm. 

The forecast for tomorrow and the coming week is not looking good with rain and strong winds being promised. 

With that in mind I decided today that it would be a good time to changeover my bikes. 
This morning I went over to my daughter's and packed the Felt away in its padded bag and zipped the wheels up in their wheel bags... 

I recovered the Tifosi from the depths of my bike shed and have it now standing in the awning all nice and clean and prepared for the winter ahead.... 

At least with  mudguards fitted on the Tifosi wet roads don't cause dirt and streaky lines up the back of my cycling kit which is what I would get if I rode the Felt in wet conditions . 

Only one more week left at this location before we move on to Moreton and the last three weeks of our 2019 summer touring season. 
 It will then be back to Devon....

The Awning in use again.

Short break in Cranborne on ride from Salisbury.

Wimborne Minster..

Not what we Expected..,

We arrived back at the Verwood C&CC site after a bit of a convoluted journey.
 A couple of diversions sent us on a merry tour of Wiltshire countryside.
 We eventually arrived at our site about  an hour later than we had hoped.

 We had thought that with the school's going back in the week the site would be child free..... 
Unfortunately we were unlucky and the site still had quite a few of the little blighters running around... 
Obviously their parents were stretching their holiday out until the last possible moment...

Luckily for us the next morning they all packed up and left. 
However this weekend a lot more families turned up on Friday evening although by midday today they too had packed up and gone. Making the most of the good weather over the weekend I suppose. 

There are new managers at this site and in the short time that they have been here (since April) they seem to have upset everyone by being a bit jobsworth and wanting to make changes just for the sake of it ... 

The fish & chip van that has been visiting the site for the past five years that we know of no longer comes here due to a difference of opinion with the new managers... 

When we arrived there were just the two managers here as all the assistants had left as they had had enough...
In the past week two more assistants came down to help from a site in Lincolnshire. 

A number of the seasonal pitch caravanners here seem to be very unhappy with the new management style with complaints being made to the C&CC head office.

 It's always a pity when new managers move in and upset the running of a really nice site... 
This happened at the Tavistock site in Devon and we decided not to go back there and it looks like it is happening again here. 

The club seems to have a bit of a staff shortage from what I can tell ... Assistants are being pushed through on to management training about a year before they would normally do so.... 

Also I have heard today that the club intends to put more glamping 'ready camp' tents up as well as some camping pods here at Verwood.(as if there aren't enough here already)

 This of course reduces the space for traditional tents and caravans and also tends to attract a totally different sort of person to the sites.  
By this I mean people who might not have ever been camping before and as such do not follow the niceties of camp life such as keeping the noise down after about 2230hrs etc.... 

In a lot of cases they are not interested in camping they are just interested in getting what they think is a cheapish holiday and also because glamping is seen as a fashionable thing to do..

 The club is not really a club in the accepted sense and over the last few years seems to have moved a lot further away from it's original purpose than ever before...

Our plan this year to stay at more independent sites has proved to us that in monetary terms you can get a better deal by avoiding club sites particularly during bank holidays and school holidays. 
Next year we will be staying at even more independent sites.....

Below are a few more photos taken during our stay in the Forest of Dean area......

Docks......

Our time here in the Forest of Dean is now up and tomorrow we head back down to Dorset. 
We will be touching base with my daughter and her family.... 
They have recently returned from a trip to Canada so it will be interesting to hear all about their own travels..... 

As well as visiting family and friends I have a number of hospital appointments and other commitments starting off with a MOT and service for the car next Friday.

We have loved this little site and will be sad to move on but that is after all what full-time touring is all about. 

During the time that we have been here there has been a very useful bus service that has been running for over thirty years but like a lot of rural bus services in the UK the plug has been pulled and the service has been withdrawn. 

The last bus ran yesterday. 
I have no idea how some of the elderly locals are now going to manage without the bus as it was a real lifeline for a lot of people.

 One lady I was talking to told me that she is now selling her house and moving because she no longer drives a car and just won't be able to get by without that bus.

 Anne and I took one of the last buses to use the route to travel to Gloucester.... We visited the cathedral and the shops and then wandered over to the docks for a look around and also have a spot of lunch.
 It was over twenty five years since I had last visited the docks area and I must say that a good job has been done in tidying and smartening the whole area up.

 Since we have been staying here I have taken quite a few photographs of the forest area and beyond which I have not shared on the blog yet...
 Over the next few posts I will share them with you but in the meantime below are some of the images I took around Gloucester docks...