One for the Road........

When we were in Barnstaple recently I noticed THIS....!
 see the image below....

One for the Road.......

 The can of Fosters had been opened so it looks pretty certain the driver had been drinking whilst driving......
No matter how many don't drink and drive educational messages are sent out on TV and in the media it seems that with some people the message will never sink in..!!

The driver must be pretty thick anyway, as driving around with a can of beer on display is just asking to be pulled over and breathalysed by the men in blue.....

Note the high banks .....

Still on the subject of things vehicular.....
I took the above picture in one of the many lanes around our campsite..... 
Just imagine driving along this lane with it's high banks and no passing places for a long...long...way with your caravan in tow. Then you meet a tractor coming towards you with a trailer stacked  with hay bales higher than the banking.....
It could be a bit of a nightmare.... :-)

It Arrived....Well just a Little Did..!!

In my last post I predicted that some snow was likely to arrive in our area....
Well it arrived..Well just a little did..!! 
It wasn't a huge dump of snow which you can get sometimes up here on Dartmoor, but it was certainly more than a dusting.....

The snow actually fell overnight Thursday/Friday....
When we woke up on Friday morning the temperature had dropped further since the overnight snowfall.....

All the snow that had fallen on our awning had now frozen solid and it took me quite a while to remove it..... It's important to remove it if possible, because the weight of it all could eventually do some serious damage to the roof of the awning.

The empty hard standing pitch next to ours was a solid sheet of ice and the internal campsite road was too icy to attempt to walk on initially....
However it wasn't long before our campsite manager had spread salt/grit around and the site road turned back from a skating rink and became useable again....

We didn't venture out of the site on Friday as the reports we heard concerning the condition of the moorland roads made us feel that it would be more sensible to stay put even with a 4X4.

On Saturday it was Anne's birthday so we decided to venture off site to have a meal and a drink........
We set off up onto the top moor around Princetown and what surprised us was that although some of the snow had by now melted away, the roads were packed with cars parked everywhere. Lots of people had decided to visit the moor for a walk and a play in the snow..... Vehicles were parked up on the banks at the sides of the road and there were snowmen in almost every field.

Cars parked at the side of the moorland roads 

A lot of the snow had now melted

Although there wasn't much snow left it had proved to be a real visitor magnet.... 

According to the Dartmoor Ranger all these visitors had caused a major field invasion.... Although there are acres of access land that people can walk and play on, lots of these visitors chose to just park anywhere and enter fields where they had no right to be....

One farmer on entering one of his fields with his tractor to feed his sheep, had to avoid lots of loose dogs and children running everywhere only to find that his sheep had been scattered and had to be gathered and moved  into an area two fields away.....
Result... One very disgruntled farmer....

Most of these visitors seemed to be be 'Townies' who seemed to think that they could park and go wherever they wanted.
 Just a pity that they hadn't bothered to double check where they could in fact go.......

More vehicles parked everywhere

 As well as lots of cars being parked up at the side of the road, the moorland car parks were all packed solid and even 'Willy's' Ice Cream van was parked up at the car park above Pork Hill...

All the Moorland Pubs were packed solid too and it eventually became clear that we were going to be very lucky to find somewhere to shoehorn ourselves in and get a drink and a meal.....

The Plume of Feathers in Princetown itself was packed solid..... more like a Friday night than a Saturday late lunchtime.......
In the end we headed back down into Tavistock and had a very nice meal there.... Also I eventually got my much waited for pint (or two) of beer.
I chose a pint of Dartmoor Breweries Jail Ale which apparently is the best selling pint in these parts......

Princetown...The Plume of Feathers Pub on the right

My Pint- Darmoor Brewery Jail Ale

A Few Days Away.................

We had a really good Christmas and New Year on site, with the site managers arranging a couple of events over the holiday....
On Christmas Eve we had a mulled wine and mince pie get-together with other campers and on New Years Eve a barbeque and bubbly meet-up.

Anne and I were really surprised how many people were camping out over the holiday period the site being almost half full over Christmas and every useable pitch in use over the New Year.

Since then Anne and I have spent a few days away from site on a visit to Ifracombe on the North Devon Coast....

I haven't been to Ilfracombe since I made a trip to Lundy Island in the Bristol Channel a number of years ago.
I wanted to go back for another visit as I had heard that Damien Hirst had arranged for one of his sculptures to be placed there....
As the sculpture has the same name as my daughter (Verity) it had found it's way on to my 'must visit' list.

View of Ilfracombe Harbour

 The harbour at Ilfracombe makes a very attractive scene as can be seen in the image above.
Unfortunately during our visit we had some very heavy rain but it didn't spoil our visit too much.....

Lobster pots stacked up in the harbour area

Ilfracombe harbour is a working harbour and as we walked down from where we had parked the car we passed lots of lobster pots all stacked up waiting to be used....

Our first view of Verity on the harbour wall

 As we walked from the car park we had our first view of Verity standing on the far harbour wall.....
Verity is 20.25 metres tall and is situated at the entrance to the harbour and she looks out over the Bristol Channel towards South Wales.

Verity - A closer view

 The statue is made from stainless steel....bronze and glass fibre reinforced polymer.
She is on a long term loan from Damien Hirst to North Devon Council and is an allegory for truth and justice.
She stands on a base of scattered legal books and holds the traditional symbols of justice....a sword and scales. 

Verity - Another view.

 She arrived in Ilfracombe in three sections in October 2012 and she took a week to assemble on site and was hoisted into position with a 250 tonne crane...
Unlike my daughter, Damien Hirst's Verity is not the prettiest female I've seen and as a sculpture might not be to everyone's liking but she was certainly worth a visit.....

A general view of Ilfracombe town

We enjoyed our visit to Ilfracombe very much in spite of the continuing wet weather....

Now we are back at Eva the Eriba  the rain has stopped and it has now got a lot colder... they even had a dusting of snow today up at Princetown just a few miles up the road from our campsite.....
I wonder if we will be getting snow here next....?

A Message for all Purpletraveller Followers and Friends......

I hope that all regular and not so regular readers of the PurpleTraveller blog have a great Christmas and a truly Peaceful New Year.......

I will start posting on the blog again from early January. 
Anne and I will hit the road and return to actual touring in Eva the Eriba from early April........

Scary Rocking and Rolling.....

Over the past nine days since my last post the wet weather has continued..... 
Luckily for us the area we are in has not suffered any flooding unlike some places in the north of the country......
We heard that one of the camping sites that we know well in the Lake District has suffered badly with flooding. We saw some images of the site following the floods and it was staggering to see the damage caused by the flood water.....frightening to see how easy a caravan can break up with the force of the water.......

What we have had though have been some strong winds.....
The pitch we are on is quite well protected from most normal winds but a few nights ago we had quite a major storm with some huge gusts of winds that caused Eva to do a lot of rocking and rolling.....
Tucked up in our beds it was a scary experience..... You could hear a gust coming before it hit us..... It sounded like a locomotive as it roared over the moor towards us and we held our breath as a few seconds later the gust would hit the caravan with a bang......
No damage was done to either us or Eva but it was an uncomfortable few hours.....

We still have the awning erected as it is a four season model and we do have it pretty firmly anchored to the ground. 
We have two sets of sprung storm straps across the entire roof, three porch tie down storm straps and also wall ties with bungee cords as well as all the normal pegged down fittings ......
So far we have not even had a peg pull out.....

The Awning Fully Anchored Down...

Where the sprung webbing storm straps go over the awning poles at each side as well as the centre ridge I have used  plumbers pipe insulation as a protective measure. 
The idea is that as the straps have springs at one end so that there is a bit of give in the wind, they will move within the tube and therefore avoid any abrasion damage being caused to the awning material....

Another use for Pipe Insulation....

One other tip that is worth remembering when using storm straps such as these is to put a couple of twists into the webbing before pulling it tight.... this stops the webbing vibrating in the wind and causing a noise like a machine gun in strong winds.......

When we were staying at the site in Verwood, a motorhome on a pitch near to us had his awning out and held down with some webbing straps, but because he hadn't put any twists in the webbing the noise the straps were making in even a light wind became very annoying and we were about fifty feet away from him... the noise inside the motorhome caused by those straps must have given him a few sleepless nights....

Today we had a wind and rain free day and the mild weather we are experiencing is pretty amazing for this time of year so we are enjoying it for as long as it lasts....

It's Been a While......

It's been a while since I last posted on this blog.... 
All is well but I have just allowed myself to become pretty lazy so it's now about time for me to update you on the reason why and where we are.....

We left Dorset in early November, changed counties and are now in Devon.....
We decided that we would take a winter seasonal pitch, so we will be here until just after Easter next year.....

The reason for choosing to take a seasonal pitch for the winter is because being static over the winter months seemed preferable to towing in bad weather and short days.... We also fancied the idea of getting out on Dartmoor in the nice crisp and cold weather for some serious walking......  

However.........
Since we have been here we have not had any crisp and cold weather, all we have had is rain!!
We have been here over a month and not a day has gone by when it hasn't rained...
In actual fact it has been rather depressing weather and that is one of the reasons that I haven't posted on the blog because not a lot has happened...just wind...rain...dark and dank...
Mind you from what I gather the rest of the country has also had very similar weather.....

Due to all of the continuous wet weather I have not been able to get out on the bike either.....
So a trip to a local bike shop produced a turbo trainer for use in the awning..

New Turbo Trainer in the Awning

When I was living in Bournemouth I had an all singing and dancing indoor bike trainer, but although I still have it stored away it was too big for caravan touring hence the turbo trainer....
At least I will be able to work on my fitness over the winter period.

About ten days ago Anne and I spent a few nights away from Eva and had a mini trip to St Austell in Cornwall.....

Welcome to St Austell...

 One of the rules of our winter seasonal pitch is that we have to be off site for three nights every twenty one days, so this gives us the opportunity for some small trips to various places....

The China Cafe Mural...

We stayed at a hotel in St Austell but both Anne and I didn't sleep very well..... The beds were comfortable enough but not as comfortable as our beds in Eva... Also, even with the window open and the heating turned off we found the room to be too warm which was one of the reasons for not sleeping well..... We have obviously become too used to being in the caravan....

Whilst we were walking around the town we saw the mural in the photo above... As we walked along the road towards it, it looked as if it was real and certainly got a double take from us both.......
Even in Cornwall the weather delivered us some rain with a few dry spells in between the downpours that we managed to take advantage of....

Today the weather started dry and sunny..... by 1045hrs the rain decided to give us it's daily visit and the weather forecast on the TV at the moment is confirming that it will continue wet into next week.....

Two Rusty Old Pumps and a Bicycle.....

One of my cycling buddies.... Jason Boynton-Lee... sent me this picture today....
He took it when out on one of his cycle rides yesterday.......

Knowing that I like images of things like old petrol pumps.... in fact anything man made that is being taken over or reclaimed by nature......  he thought that I would enjoy the image....

Well I did enjoy the image so I decided to share it.....
It is a similar shot to the one of three old pumps that I posted on this blog earlier in the year when I was cycling in the Hereford area.......

Jason said:-

"I decided that this autumnal pic needed a suitable title so I came up with:-
The futility of man's technology against the inevitable vengeance of nature.

Or for those with little imagination:-
Two rusty old pumps and a bicycle"

I like the shot and also Jason's sense of humour....