Walking instead of cycling......

 A short walk that Peter and I did the other week when he stayed with us was around the Burrator Reservoir....

Usually over our winters spent here I have used the circuit around the reservoir as a cycling time trial route... Each circuit is 4 miles in length so ten laps gives me a nice round 40 miles. Add to that the 3 miles warm up from the site to the reservoir and a slightly meandering 7 mile route back to the caravan site and that all adds up to a nice 50 mile morning ride with each lap racing against my own times...

This time though I was walking instead of cycling and I was really surprised at how much more I actually saw than when I have my head down on the bike.For instance I don't usually notice  things like the ruins of a Manor house.....a waterfall and some of the lovely views.....

Peter and I had a really enjoyable walk and it just goes to show that even when on a bike it might be a good idea to slow down sometimes and see a bit more of the area that you are cycling through..... 

It is easy to get caught up in training for the next sportive...time trial or hill climb and there is nothing wrong in that but it might just be an idea that once the event is over to go back and have a slower ride with time to stop and stare and take in a bit more of what the route has to offer.....

Changing the subject ..... I said in a previous post that I would keep you updated on the performance of the Kampa All Season Awning and Annexe.... Well last week we had a really un-seasonal storm...... Gale force winds in excess of 50 mph with torrential rain hit the site.

 My next door neighbour was up at 4am attempting to pack away a large gazebo which had been torn apart by the storm....... All his BBQ equipment was in it with bikes.... chairs etc. The structure ended up in the sites rubbish bins.

 Another caravanner on site was also up in the early hours  trying to dismantle his awning before it got ripped apart....  And our awning?? Well it survived the storm with hardly a murmur...... Just one peg had started to pop out but I was already aware that it was loose before the storm and had intended to replace it but had forgotten. The awning seemed to perform really well and had also proven to be pretty watertight as well. 

That was last week and tonight and tomorrow according to the forecast we are going to have it happen all over again.... Another storm is going to hit us and will be yet another test for the Kampa All Season awning. 

I will keep you updated on how it performs...........

Out on the moor.....

 Since my last post we have been quite busy compared to the quiet of lockdown...

 My daughter and her family were on holiday in Cornwall for a week and took the opportunity to visit us twice during their stay.... They experienced some of the steepest and narrowest lanes that Devon had to offer as they followed their car sat-nav from where they were staying to our site here in Devon.... My daughter is a very competent driver but she hated the hour long journey across to us and went back a different way ignoring the sat-nav this time. Their return journey was both quicker and stress free proving that there are times when it is better to ignore your sat -nav and use a map......

Although the weather wasn't perfect for their visits it was really good to see them again as apart from a flying visit to Bournemouth for a hospital appointment when I popped over to their house for a coffee ☕ and to pick up my Felt Bike we hadn't seen them since Christmas due to the pandemic...

This last week my mate Peter visited us..... He was originally going to cycle from Bournemouth to our site here near Yelverton but in the end he chose to let the train take the strain as it became obvious that he would have had insufficient time for the return trip and have a few nights here with us... 

 He has cycled to visit us on a number of occasions over the past five years during our travels visiting us in Suffolk... Lincolnshire.... Wiltshire and Somerset to name just a few places.... Last year he visited us when we were staying at the Cuckoo's Corner campsite near Hereford.....

It was great to see him again but as on this trip he didn't have his bike with him we had planned some walks out on the moor.... Peter and I have completed a lot of walking and backpacking trips over the past couple of decades including the Pennine Way. 

Our last backpacking trip together was actually here on Dartmoor when we did the so called Dartmoor Perambulation with other members of the Backpackers Club. During that trip we had a varied mix of weather which is quite normal for the Dartmoor area which I have said in previous posts seems to have it's own weather bubble...

This time the forecast for the week was for very hot weather and getting hotter as the week went on..... As it turned out that forecast was pretty accurate indeed the day we had chosen for our first walk 'Out on the Moor' turned out to be one of the hottest days of the year.... The walk was to include a visit to a remote waterfall and some standing stones, again in a remote area of the moor.... As it turned out we made it to the waterfall but due to the excessive heat making it very tough going we decided to cut the walk short and miss out the standing stones. The walk was taking us longer than we had expected and in the end our walking experience kicked in and making the decision to cut it short proved the right and sensible thing to do.....

I've posted an image below of Peter setting up his tent next to our caravan and some images from our walk 'Out on the moor'.

Fiona's first rides in Devon......

I mentioned in a previous post that I had now collected my Felt Bike (Fiona) from my daughter's in Dorset....

I had never ridden Fiona in Devon before because normally when we spend time in Devon it's usually over the winter season and I have Tiffany the Tifosi as my winter season ride. One of the main reasons of course is because Tiffany has mudguards (fenders) fitted and with slightly wider tyres etc is more suited to riding in the winter weather.

The pandemic changed a lot of our plans as it has done for a lot of people so it seemed a sensible idea that when I had to go back to Dorset for a medical appointment I picked up the Felt and brought it back down here to our pitch in Devon.

So currently I have two bikes down here.... The Tifosi I have fitted to the turbo so even when the weather is wet I can still manage to maintain my cycling fitness.

At the moment I am riding every other day either on the Tifosi  on the Turbo or on the Felt on the road....

Riding in Devon is totally different from riding in Dorset...... The lanes are narrower and the hills are generally steeper.... Also the weather around Dartmoor seems to have its own climate bubble... In one ride you can have Bright Sunshine.... Mist.. Wind and Rain all on a two hour ride.

The other day when I was riding along a hedge lined lane that was marked as being only seven feet wide I met a van followed by a lorry coming the other way.

 I had to dismount and literally bury myself into the hedge in order to allow them to pass. (The alternative would have been to have turned around and cycle two miles back down the lane). 

It was tight enough when the van slowly slipped past me but when the lorry went past there was literally only two inches to spare and that was with me forcing my back into the hedge as far as I could..... Luckily the hedge didn't have any brambles in it or it would have ripped some very expensive cycling kit to shreds......

 As I said a bit different from my rides in Dorset...

On another occasion I was cycling up a 13% hill on another narrow lane only to be met by a tractor coming down the hill. He filled the lane as did the van and lorry mentioned above. The tractor had some equipment on the back that seemed to consist of lots of spikes and blades.... This time I did turn around and cycle back down the hill...... 

Riding in Devon is certainly not straightforward and is very different from most other places that I have ridden in... 

When I cycled LEJOG some years ago it was agreed by all the team that the Devon section was the hardest of the whole trip.

At the top of this post are some classic 'bike lean' images taken on some of my recent rides on Fiona the Felt....

A step closer to what is normal........

Over this past week our campsite has taken a step closer to what we think of as normality...  The sign that was put out at the entrance to the site at the start of the lockdown announcing that the touring section of the site was closed has now been removed....

 The site is now open to all and for most of the past week every pitch has been taken..... 
We have had people visit us from Liverpool...London... West Sussex and even someone from just six miles down the road who wanted a slight change of scenery after being stuck indoors for the past three months....

The very first caravan to arrive was an Eriba Troll similar to our Eva that was our touring home for the past five years.......

The site here as I have said before is only a small site. ..  it is more like a CS in lots of ways as the touring section can only accommodate about seven units.... The longer term/seasonal section holds about fourteen units..... I am saying 'about' as when people come and go the numbers can vary.   

The site never feels busy even when all pitches are filled .... Some of the pitches are more secluded than others with some being enclosed by mature hedges and others being more open...... Our pitch is surrounded by hedges and being a corner pitch is very secluded and private....
 We don't have such a good view over the Tamar Valley as some of the more open pitches but for a seasonal pitch I would place privacy over the view every time.     

At the same time that the site opened again another large box arrived at the site for us..... 

 It was a box from Kampa Dometic.... It contained an all season annexe for our awning.... Something else for me to put to the all season test....

As with all things in camping it's always a good thing if everything you have has multiple uses.... The annexe is a useful extra space that can be used when we have visitors in bad weather..... It can also be used to accommodate my bikes....

(I recently had to drive up to Bournemouth for a hospital appointment and while I was there I was able to pick up my best bike the Felt and so currently I have two bikes here..)

It can also be used as an additional sleeping area as an inner bedroom tent was also supplied with the annexe ....

This has the potential of being a really multi use bit of kit for us and I will be putting it to the test very closely over the coming months.....

What I can say is that the annexe was an easy fit to the awning and is made from the same heavy duty all season fabric....
It has just one air pole that takes just 20 pushes of the pump to inflate it to the 9psi that is recommended for both awning and annexe.... The spacing on the pegging points is similar to the awning and it has a two part metal pole that is used to create a very stable ridge along the length of the structure.... 

As with the awning I will let you know how it all performs in the various weather conditions that can be expected over a multi season pitching......

Three weeks with Sophie

Well it has now been three weeks since Eva the Eriba left us with Kevin on her way back up to Automotive Leisure in Bournemouth.

  In less than 24hrs of them putting her details up on their website Eva was sold. I hope that the new owners enjoy her as much as Anne and I did over the past five years.

So.... we have now had three weeks with Sophie the Swift and I have to say in some ways it has been a bit of a learning curve.... 
The Swift Command panel controls lights... water pump.. heating.... power and more including the radio. All these things can be controlled by the touch screen panel itself.... or by an app on my phone or remotely by using an internet connection.
 Most of it I got to grips with quite quickly except for the heating controls that have driven me to distraction... The caravan has Alde central heating installed and the Swift control seemed to be in a constant conflict with the Alde control particularly when it came to setting the heater/hot water timer. 

Last Friday we popped back to Tamar Caravan Centre who I have to say have been great and they set up a similar caravan with power and their technical guy went through everything again for me and sorted out all the queries that I had.....

 He did admit that the system is confusing not helped by the fact that the MK2 panel that we have works in the complete opposite way to the MK1 version.
 As the handbook wasn't updated to include this latest version it was no surprise that I had ended up confused and driven to distraction...but...we got there in the end.
 As I said a bit of a learning curve....

The observant regular readers amongst you would have noticed that in the image of Sophie that I included in my last post there was a large box under the front of the caravan. This was an awning just waiting to be errected...

The awning that I bought last year was Eriba specific so wouldn't have fitted Sophie. When I purchased her I also bought a new awning amongst other caravan goodies.

Now I have had mixed fortunes with awnings in fact I have had two awnings destroyed in storms.....
One awning that I had was a Kampa awning. This faded  badly in the sun and the material that it was constructed with ended up just falling apart. The UV light of the sun literally destroyed it. 

A friend of mine had a Kampa awning at the same time and his went the same way. He has said that he would never touch another Kampa product. He has said that one of the things that he has learned since fulltiming is to avoid all Kampa products.

Now I feel that is a bit unfair on Kampa as in the instructions that came with both those awnings it did say that they were not intended for long term or seasonal use. I feel that the fault was ours for choosing a product that was not intended for the use that we put it to.

There were some nice features that I liked in that awning and when choosing this latest awning I wanted one that included those or similar features.....

Kampa do a range of awnings that are intended to be used on a seasonal pitch.

The material is twice as thick as that used on the Kampa awning that failed... The lower section is made of a thick PVC coated canvas that is easy clean and is intended to withstand the rigours of a winter  pitch. The pegging points are closer together than those found on most summer awnings and the whole awning is in a different league to my previous Kampa awning .. ..

This time I wanted a large porch awning and the Kampa Rally All Season 260 fitted the bill. 

I also wanted an air awning as I have seen the damage that can be caused to caravans in winter storms by steel or fibre glass traditional pole systems.....  and the all season 260 is an air awning.

Now I could have purchased an Isabella awning as I know they are first class when it comes to traditional styles but they have only just started producing air awnings and their winter awning is only steel poled. So I have given Kampa a second chance with me with this All Season awning range. 

Since the awning has been up we have had a mixed bag of weather... Blazing hot sun.... Torrential rain and strong winds gusting up to fifty miles an hour. So far the awning has performed well and in the winds is very stable indeed .... I will continue to test this awning and if it fails in any way you will be the first to be told about it.... After I've spoken to Kampa of course...

Hello Sophie..... Goodbye Eva

Yes ... You have read that correctly...

Last Friday Sophie arrived...

Sophie the Swift is a Swift Challenger 565.

 Just before the lockdown we were at the Tamar Caravan Centre near Plymouth. We only went there to purchase some toilet cassette fluid and while we were there we had a mooch around some of the caravans as you do.

 There was one van that stood out from the others for us. It had a layout that we liked....a layout that we first saw back in 2016 when we were at the C&CC site at Oswestry.

 We said back then that if and when we decided to stop fulltime touring we would buy a van with the same layout and pitch it on a seasonal pitch.

 Anyway we purchased the toilet fluid and headed back to Yelverton where we were pitched up in Eva the Eriba. 

Then...a few days later the lockdown was announced due to the Covid 19 pandemic and the rest is history.....something that no one will forget. The lockdown went from days to weeks and we went from one month to the next and as I explained in my last post it slowly dawned on us that it was probably the time after five years of full-time touring to stop the touring and do what we had discussed back at Oswestry in 2016.….. So I contacted Tamar Caravan Centre...by phone of course ... and arranged to buy the caravan. Obviously at that time they were only doing business on the phone and internet. Anyway as we had already seen the van in the 'flesh' prior to the lockdown we arranged to have it delivered to the site a few days after they reopened...... So last Friday Sophie was delivered to the very minute of the arranged time of 1030 . I have to say that the Tamar Caravan Centre have been a joy to deal with from my first enquiry to the delivery and setting up of the van. They even put my name on the rear numberplate..... See the next image....

 So our plan is that we will continue to stay on this site pitched on a long term seasonal pitch..... At some point in the future when this pandemic allows we could well spend part of our winters abroad ..Spain maybe Portugal.... in a longer let villa or similar. This change will allow us to continue to fulltime in a caravan which even after five years we love ...  but also allow me to do some longer multi day cycle rides and cycle touring and also do a bit of backpacking and at the same time allow Anne to be close to her aging mother and the rest of her family including her two year old grandson....

At the same time as all of this was going on I had contacted Cameron at Automotive Leisure at Bournemouth and arranged for them to buy back Eva....

 As the main Eriba dealers in the UK they are always looking for good used Eribas to buy.
 We have always got on well with the team at AL and we always attended their annual open days.....
 This was always a good social event to attend and we have attended every year except this year as due to the pandemic it had to be cancelled.

It was arranged for Kevin their driver to drive down from Bournemouth to pick up Eva on Monday the 8th June.....
Today!!!!!

After five years of living with Eva it was going to be a sad farewell..
  Five years of our lives have been tied up in that little iconic touring van and we have loved the experience.

At about 1040hrs this morning Kevin arrived and the first thing he said was... "You have really looked after this"

 And so we have.
 We have smothered the little van with lots of care and attention in order to keep her in pristine condition.....

Documents were signed....the keys were handed over  and then Kevin hitched her up and five years of our lives headed back to Bournemouth where she originally came from..... 

Hitching up..

Going......

Going ...

Going....

GONE!!!!

Lot's of Changes Ahead ....

I thought that it was about time that I posted another entry on this blog, although to be honest most days have seemed a bit like Groundhog day throughout the lockdown....

Every day has been more or less as I wrote about in my last post....the same basic  routine......

I mentioned in a previous post that Anne and I were more or less geared up to the possibility that we could be here right around to next spring depending on how things were to pan out with the Covid-19 virus.

Now it seems that there is a possibility that campsites could well open (with some possible restrictions) in July....

 We have thought about it a lot and we have made the decision that we will not be moving on even if they do open. 

The main reason for this is because we have seen what it has been like here on Dartmoor the moment a slight relaxation was made in the lockdown rules. Car parks have been packed and people just seem to have forgotten about social distancing....

 Lot's of the Devon and Cornwall beauty spots have been heaving even though people have been requested to keep away....

 This has made us think that when campsites do open they will be packed with people maybe having to have a staycation rather than their usual holiday abroad. Camping will be something that a lot of people could well decide to do ... 

Being on a packed campsite with screaming kids is not somewhere that we  would want to be.

 The site we are currently on is a small site and has mainly residential and seasonal pitches with only about seven touring pitches....

 Even if it is full it will not feel crowded as the pitches are larger and more secluded than those that would be found at a club site......

All of this has made us think a lot about our fulltiming touring adventure....

It is now just over five years since we totally downsized moved into Eva the Eriba and set off on this little adventure.

At the time we had no idea how long we would continue for. It could have been six months .. it could have been a year or two.

I know that a lot of friends and family thought that we would probably pack it in sooner rather than later, however  here we are five years later and still fulltiming in Eva ..

 We have enjoyed every minute of the experience and would have great difficulty in moving back under the roof of a normal brick built dwelling......

However........

This lockdown has given us plenty of time to review the last five years and look back on all the great places that we have visited and all the great times we have had in Eva our lovely little Eriba Touring Troll caravan.

 We have also discussed where we want to go from here..... 

What we have come up with is an acknowledgement that all things must come to an end and that this lockdown seems to have brought our fulltime touring to a natural end after five years.

 

So...we are going to stop fulltime touring from this point on.

 After all everything has a starting point and an end point.

What are we going to do now? I hear you ask....... 

Well for that you will have to wait until my next post in about two weeks time......

In case you were wondering the flowers in the photos above are all on our pitch here on the edge of Dartmoor......