15th April 2009

We left Godrevy and stopped at the M&S shopping park at Hayle on the way back. Shanice and I were just looking at some clothes, when Paul phoned to say I’d better get back outside as he was about to be fined £80 for parking in the car park.  Apparently the van was taking up more than one space because of the width and length, and some jobsworth was threatening to issue a fine.  As I ran back to the van, I saw another motorhome trying to park, so I told them about our problem. They said in that case, they wouldn’t stop and give them their custom either.  Paul was getting really angry and shouted at the parking attendant. It wasn’t as if the car park was busy, there was plenty of space.  Paul found the man’s boss, and tried to reason with him, whilst the attendant continued to rant. The boss told the attendant to go away and said we’d be alright where we were, but we’d had enough by then, so didn’t bother.

We drove back to Plymouth to drop Shanice off, and pick up the stuff my dad had kept for us that we normally stored on the over-cab bed. We had a cup of tea and then got going.  It was nice driving off with Mum & Dad, my sister and the kids all waving us goodbye.  They’ve taken bets as to how long we’ll last! Dad’s given me two months, Mum three, and Maria the whole year.  Let’s see who wins.

We stopped at Lee Mill lorry park to have a roll for lunch and as we drove off, Paul’s seat wasn’t locked in place so started to swivel round. Lol, it was funny but could have been dangerous.  He won’t make that mistake again! Having said that, you just have to learn by your mistakes.

We drove up to Taunton to stop at Vanbitz again as Paul wanted to have an external cable fitted to the van so we could plug the satellite dish in for the TV once we left England.  We’d also been having some trouble with the alarm they fitted - it kept going off for no apparent reason. We were talking about satellite dishes on the way down and Paul said, ‘The problem is we only have a 60cm dish which isn’t quite big enough for when we get to somewhere like Portugal or Spain.  What we need is an 85cm dish minimum.’

So I said, ‘What size is the other little dish we’ve got?’
 ‘40cm,’ Paul replied.

‘So why don’t we just join the two together and then we will have a 100cm one.’  Paul was speechless and then I realised what I’d said.  We had a good laugh about that.

We arrived in Taunton, and Paul dropped me at the town shops as we had been looking for some more 4ft wide fitted sheets for the bed.  I found them in a small linen shop, the only place I’ve ever seen them.  Now we had enough sheets for our journey. We drove to the Cornish Farm campsite - owned by Vanbitz - where they’d do the work we needed the next day.  It was pouring with rain; no surprise there then! We didn’t do a lot that night, I played Animal Crossing and Paul went on the internet as we had free wifi access on the site.