On The Road

Still early days but we’ve been on the road for one month now so time for an update and reflection on how things are going. The main thing for us to realise at this point is that Treacle is getting older each day and we are now trying to limit her walks to between 4 and 5 miles a day – still impressive for her age but we have to bear this in mind when making our daily plans.

Having visited friends and family in Yorkshire we had to head west over to Manchester due to some pre-arranged appointments. This enabled us to visit some family in the area before heading further west to St. Helens to help out Uncle Ken with some house clearing.

After a flying visit westward we decided to head up to Cumbria for a while. That’s our next stop after a stop-over in Chorley. We will check-in places on Facebook as we travel so keep tuned. We would also like to take this opportunity to thank all those who follow our Facebook posts, it’s nice to know people are still interested in our travels.

So what have we learnt so far? Most importantly we’ve proved to ourselves that we are able to adapt to rapidly changing conditions and situations. We often find ourselves not knowing where we will be calling home from one day to the next, but in a short space of time we’ve got much better and quicker at finding campsites or places to stay – that includes motorway services car parks for 24 hours to bridge a gap.

We’ve learnt that Treacle will quickly settle anywhere and that people talk to you more when you have a dog. That clearly shouldn’t matter but we’ve realised that in general people do like to chat and having a dog seems for many to be a reason to start a conversation.

I have installed some front window wind deflectors on the van, not for the reason they were designed but because should we be parked up on a site in the rain we can drop the front van windows a couple of inches for ventilation without rain getting into the van, another example of thinking outside the box.

So is everything rosie? Well we did find ourselves on a campsite at one point that after a few days attracted some particularly unwelcome travellers. Simple answer, move. We packed up and left a day early. That’s one of the benefits of not having a fixed plan, having the flexibility to make changes when they become necessary.

In fairness the majority of sites have been great and we are enjoying visiting all sorts of new places we wouldn’t normally have had the opportunity to explore. Most people we have met have been a joy to chat to and we’ve managed to walk away from those less pleasant. Life’s like that, you take the good with the bad.

to be continued…