BACK ON THE ROAD AGAIN

The story so far

May was spent spending money like water as we sorted ourselves out after the winter away but also was a pleasant month of enjoyable breaks. The boiler was eventually fixed, a new Tracking device fitted to the van along with a new water pump and Tv monitor (both under warranty) which necessitated 2 trips up to Great Yarmouth and a bit of getting stroppy when having arrived at the dealers the second time and waited 2 hours for the monitor to be fitted I was told that "we're very sorry but we haven't actually got a monitor to fit as it's still on order". As I began to express my opinion of their service department in a loud voice they decided to follow my advice and pinch one from a new van just as I was beginning to enjoy myself. Since the van will be 3 years old in July and out of warranty, I doubt that I shallbe troubling Simpsons of Great Yarmouth again.
WE had a great weekend with Paddington and North Dakota mainly watching the twins win rugby tournaments, although getting to bottom of several bottles of wine seemed a secondary occupation. I then had successive boys' weekends away, firstly with Julian and Dave Brown (whom I may have to adopt, he's such a
nice boy) in Belgium as we watched the 1000km of Spa, a cracking race and then a weekend in London with Brucie at Twickenham for the Rugby World Sevens (where my 3 course picnic and Brucie's production of 3 litres of wine from the bottom of his rucksack brought admiring comments from the youngsters around us paying £4 a pint and eating inedible burgers). In between this frivolity, the GF racked up another year in the age stakes and on the basis of turning 65 tried to paint me into a corner by demanding a dog or a diamond which is why I am somewhat poorer than I was although I shall save on dogfood in the long run. Finally, in the course of having a new carpet fitted in the lounge I managed to split my head open when crawling under our home to lay the old carpet underneath to make crawling about more pleasant (?). This required the attention of the emergency services who were very efficient and glued the bits of my head back together with no apparent (yet) consequences.
Globally,the cost of diesel rises as BP attempts to pollute the Gulf of Mexico with crude oil instead of sending it somewhere to be refined, the value of my pension funds plummet as the companies begin to calculate how little they can get away with paying out to me in August and in response to Justin's vitriolic diatribes on the Japanese political system on his Blog, yet another Prime Minister calls it a day and North Korea senses an opportunity for a pre-emptive strikes whilst the Pacicfic Rim is otherwise engaged....

So we left home on Friday 28th May......

To WELLINGTON COUNTRY PARK, between Fleet and Reading where we stayed for 9 days looking after Charlie whilst Katharine and Julian re-enacted scenes from 3 Men in a Boat as they cruised the Thames from Chertsey to Benson.....a journey by road that takes an hour and a half max.....However we had a great time although 8 days in an adventure park made me appreciate the full horror of Groundhog Day. But the weather was good and Charlie was exceptionally well behaved and was still talking to us at the end so it was most successfull.
Left on Sunday 6th June and drove northwards to Scotland. Stopped at a farm CL in INGLEWHITE we have used twice before when heading north which is quite delightful -£9 a night - and then a campsite at INVERARY for 2 nights on the banks of LOCH FYNNE. An excellent lunch at the GEORGE HOTEL in INVERARY which has been in the same family for 6 generations where I had Loch Fynne Mussels and a bowl of the BEST chips I have ever tasted and the GF waxed lyrical over the local smoked Haddock.