29th July 2009
We managed to get some fresh air today by walking into Thirsk and looking around the shops. We got back to the van just in time as it's started to pour with rain again. Played AC and watched TV and went on my laptop for a while, as did Paul.
28th July 2009
Oh great, the weather is rubbish again today, in fact it rained so much in the night we thought the pitch would be flooded as it's very flat here. So we were stuck in the van all day again, BUT, it gave me the chance to finish my book, YES I've finished it. OMG, I didn't think I would ever get it done. Now all I have to do is edit the whole thing, maybe more than once, and set it out (format it) properly. I'm so proud of myself, YAY. Paul's walked into town to the Tesco store to buy a bottle of Taittinger Champagne so we can celebrate.
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| Yay I finished my first novel!! |
27th July 2009
We're now heading back to England, goodbye bonny Scotland! Although the weather has been awful nearly all the time, I still think Scotland is my favourite place. If we ever thought we could move away and not worry about family etc. then I think we’d live in Scotland, it's absolutely beautiful.
We're headed to a Caravan Club site at Thirsk racecourse and hope that the weather improves a bit.
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| Thirsk Racecourse site |
We got up quite late for us, 9am, so got ready quickly, no showers today, and got on the road. We stopped at a Morrison's just up the road from the campsite and got some shopping and then at an Asda to have some lunch in their restaurant.
It was a long drive and we were tired and worn out by the time we arrived at Thirsk. We travelled all down the east coast, saw the Angel of The North and even some RAF fighters across the A1 motorway.
I've never been to a racecourse before, and certainly not one with a campsite in the middle of it. I understand that on race days you have to move off the racetrack area to another site and then you can come back afterwards. Mmm think we'll move before race day which is Thursday.
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| Angel of the North |
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| RAF trainer jet |
I'm sitting outside writing this, no rain! It's even a bit sunny, quite windy but it's nice to get some fresh air for a change. It's not exactly warm for this time of year either. Would be nice to go back to Europe, it's probably hot there but the campsites are so expensive in the holiday season that we can't afford them. About €40 per night for most of them in July and August and that's partly why we made the decision to come back to the UK for the summer.
Besides, I wanted to tour the UK. I've lived here all my life but haven't seen much of it before, and have never been to Scotland or Wales or ‘Up North’ so I really wanted to see some of my own country too. Paul's been booking some of our campsites ahead in case it gets busy, and he says he just booked a nice looking adult only site near Shrewsbury. It's a bit expensive at £25 per night but we’re fed up with kids everywhere running about and being noisy, we just want a bit of luxury for a change. Okay I know it's school holiday time, and to be expected, but it still irritates us as we just want to enjoy the peace and quiet and we're NOT on holiday.
We'll have dinner in a bit, we bought pizza for tonight and I'm really looking forward to mine, goats cheese, red onion and rocket mmm, Paul's got spicy chicken. I'm not eating chicken again at the moment as we saw a TV programme called ‘What's in your Food’ and it showed what they inject into them to make them look plump. As well as water they inject beef protein which is all the yucky bits of the animal ground up. Really, the state of our food these days is disgusting. They wouldn't have put up with it in the forties! So, we're eating more veggie and fish things, which won't do us any harm.
The difference the weather makes is amazing, you instantly feel happier if it's sunny. I'm going to sit out here for a while longer as I don't want to go inside yet. Oh blimey, I've just offered to help Paul wash the van, I must be mad or am I ill?
26th July 2009
Tina: Didn't do much again today as the weather is still rubbish. We're getting a bit fed up with being stuck in the van, it's been raining almost non-stop for two weeks now. It's great when you can open your door and your garden is the whole outside world, but stuck indoors you notice how small your living space actually is.
We talked about what we’d change if we did this again and I think one thing we both agreed on was a different van layout. It would be nice to have some extra lounge space and that means a foldaway master bed. We decided that it might be worth the compromise of having to make the bed up each night and being able to have a rear lounge area to use during the day. See, we said you should take time when choosing a Motorhome, but some things you can't be sure of until you've actually tried it.
This weather has given me the opportunity to get on with my novel, I'm nearly finished now, 84,000 words. Done the bit about Felicity being stalked, all that's left is Mollie & Graham's wedding, the girls shopping for outfits, then Graham giving Molly the keys to the tea-room at their reception.
Played AC for a bit and tried to format a copy of my book but it was taking too long so I gave up. We had shepherd's pie for dinner, watched TV, did the dishes and went to bed.
25th July 2009
We’ve decided to stay here for a couple more days, because the site I’d booked emailed us to say they had a problem with their toilet facilities and we wouldn't be able to shower or anything. Although it's pretty dismal here it would be worse if we couldn't wash or anything. We packed the van and drove to a nearby M&S as Tina would like to get another track suit top and some track suit type trousers and to stock up on provisions. She says she's put on weight and nothing fits anymore. We got her two pairs and two fleece tops so she said she's okay for winter now, In July?
We then drove to a Jaguar dealer to look at some cars. We had been discussing what we’d do when we decided to stop travelling in the van, and we thought that we may buy a caravan and tow it with a car, or if not, then sell the van, buy a decent car and go to Italy for a while next spring. Tina has never really expressed an opinion on what cars we’ve had, although she did like the Audi A6 Quattro.
I asked her what sort of car she’d like and she kept saying ‘a proper car shaped car.’ After getting her to draw what she meant, and looking on the Web, it transpired that what she meant was something with a long bonnet and boot and I couldn't think of a car like that so asked her to look through some pictures. What she picked out was an "S" Type Jaguar, so that's what we went to look at. The people at the dealership were really interested in our Motorhome. All the sales staff came out and had a look over it, I think they were hoping we might part-exchange it! We did look at some "X" type Jags, but they are just Ford Mondeos with a Jaguar body but the "S" Type is quite different and looks like a traditional Jag. We both liked them.
We drove back to the campsite had dinner and watched Casualty on TV.
24th July 2009
Weather still bad, raining and gloomy so we just did stuff on the computers, Tina wrote some of her novel. She is up to 81,000 words now and must be very near the end. As the internet signal was so good I managed to download an Anti-virus programme and Explorer 8 for her laptop so that’s now fully set up.
23rd July 2009
We left Braemar and headed south again. We were heading for a campsite at Glenrothes, between Perth and Edinburgh. On the way I spotted a Tesco so we stopped to top up provisions and as we were very low on fuel we filled the tank as well.
Paul: We made a slight detour so I could see RAF Leuchars which I had often heard about but never seen. There wasn't actually much to see so we pressed on to the Balbirnie Caravan Club campsite .
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| Balbirnie Campsite Glenrothes |
This is set in the woods outside Glenrothes, and although a nice site, it was dark and dingy in the rainy weather and a bit gloomy under all the trees. I'm sure in the height of summer it would be much nicer. We had some lunch and then Tina wrote more of her novel and I read. Despite being tucked under the trees I managed to get an Internet signal so Tina spoke to Shanice on MSN for a while.
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