Getting Ready For Wales

We have been slowly getting ready for our trip to Wales on Saturday.


I say slowly, as there isn't a great deal to do when you all ready live in the caravan you are taking with you!


But, we seem to accumulate vast amounts of paperwork, books, and other bits and pieces which all need to be taken out and either binned, sold or stored.


We are off to Fforest Fields near Builth Wells in South Wales.


We are taking our large awning complete with the sleeping pod as that's where "M"s Mum will be sleeping with her dog "Buddy".


Not too sure how the week will pan out, fingers crossed that everything goes well! If not there are plenty of hills to loose ones self for the day!


The weather doesn't look to clever either, but if it rains, it rains, its not as if we will dissolve!


Thinking about the weather, partly due to following Robin and Jenny's blog Romany Rambler as they are having snow in New Zealand where they don't normally get it. I looked back in my diary to when we had snow last year.


Our first frost was on October 20th! That's just two months away and our first snow was on December 1st and lasted all of December!


So all you other full timers, time to really think about lagging pipes and thinking about aqua roll jackets if you haven't all ready done so.


We are not too sure which sites we will be spending the winter, we had problems with frozen water on site last year. I can see the same problems happening here as the pipes are above ground in places, so inevitable they will freeze up.


Back to our trip to Wales, there are many ways to get to where we are going, but the route I fancy doesn't touch a motorway, which I find tedious beyond belief, so have managed to pick a route that is only 10 miles longer than the motorway and it also saves the £5.70 Severn Bridge Toll.


I've allowed with towing, approx 6 hrs to get there, not including the numerous stops we will undoubtedly have to take along the way. Without the caravan it should only take around 4hrs so have built in an allowance for going at slower speeds etc.


I want to be away for 1300hrs on Saturday so should pull in some where between 1930 and 2030.


This is the furthest we have towed this caravan, must say I'm looking forward to towing with the Pajero over a distance.


The only down side that I have found with the Pajero is there are not enough cubby boxes and stowage. The Freelander has deep and wide door pockets, more side pockets next to the rear seats, then two more in the load space and finally a full length door pocket on the rear door. Oh and a lockable stowage box on the floor of the luggage space.


Plenty of room for all the gear I like to keep with me when travelling such as oil, water, tools, jump leads, tow ropes, gaffer tape, warning triangle, etc.


There is room underneath the rear seat where the bottle jack is located but I cant get oil and water stuffed in there. So will have to have a think about stowage nets, or something similar.


The other thing is that its going to take some careful loading as with our additional passenger we cant put the rear seats down as we normally do for travelling.


The seats are one piece as well, would of preferred it if they had a split seat arrangement. The Freelander was a solid seat as well, but it did have on the bottom a full metal plate to act as some protection from gear coming through from behind if we were involved in an accident.


When I carried the stationary engine in the Freelander with the seats folded up, I would ratchet strap it secure from the cargo hooks tight up to the seat back to stop any movement. In the Pajero I had to strap it to front and back cargo hooks. I use industrial ratchet straps the same you see on lorries, so they should do the trick.


Gardening:


Well, Ive got a regular weekly slot at a nursing home, and the front of the house is looking alot better now. I'm also please that the alpine shrubs that I planted out in the rockery that Id cleared as it was completely over grown look as if they are doing well, ie, they are still alive!


I started at the back of the house, its a massive job as its been left to do what it wants, its not that bad, but there are some lovely bushes/shrubs that have just overgrown each other, the lawn is in a terrible state, and alot of the trees have dead branches.


So that's my next task. I also start this Friday on a pub garden. But this is very low maintenance of just mowing and strimming, so relatively easy. Sounds daft but looking forward to using my mower! never thought I would say that!


Anyway, got some paperwork to sort today,


Till later....................