2nd - 8th October 2017
We have been visiting Lyme Regis many times over the years staying for many years at a Caravan Club CL Green Lane Farm, a CL of the old school, just a tap, black water disposal point. No toilets, no showers and (the reason we no longer stay) no electricity. This visit we have chosen an ACSI site (there are now 47 ACSI sites in UK and more are joining each year) Wood Farm Caravan Site. We came here a couple of years ago and were impressed.
Our first outing in the area was into Lyme Regis to visit the fishmonger “Wetfishshop Ltd”, one of the best, although not the cheapest, fishmonger we have come across. We bought two line caught Dorado - delicious. It was staggering how busy the town was, OK it was the weekend and the sun was (briefly) shinning but we have been there in August when it was quieter.
When we arrived at this site and asked for a pitch for a few days there was a sucking of breath and a long and sigh filled look at the computer before we were allocated a pitch. We thought this a bit of theatre particularly when we arrived at our pitch and saw most in our area were vacant. By the following evening virtually every pitch on the site was occupied, and not an Indian summer in sight. We had a pleasant couple of days revisiting one or two of the old places and would have liked to visit many more - perhaps next time.
We have decided that we need to visit the lock-up again before leaving UK for the winter so rather than heading into Cornwall as planned we have turned north and fetched up at the small Somerset coastal town of Brean, south of Western-Super-Mare. The camp site - Holiday Resort Unity - is unashamedly a Hi de Hi style holiday centre (it was Country and Western week), lots of opportunity for activity and almost as many for inactivity. We spent four rather boring days here, there is little in the immediate area that caught our imagination and the entertainment while we would have liked to attend was so popular there was standing room only, not pleasant for a whole evening and anyway at the advertised time there was no sign of the Dolly Parton tribute band, in fact the warm-up duo had just got on stage. We went back to the caravan and watched telly.
9th - 15th October 2017
Monday is moving day, well it would be if we could get power from the car to the caravan.
Everything was ready, we moved the car to the front of the caravan, hitched up and plugged in the power cable, where normally there is then the noise of the anti snake device doing a self test this time only silence. We spent some time trying to sort it but eventually were forced to ring the ADAC our breakdown service in Germany. As breakdown callouts go the response was quite quick, the AA man (the AA act as ADAC UK agents) was on site just an hour and a half later and soon diagnosed a fault in the socket on the back of the car. He bitched a temporary repair together and at around 1.00pm, around 3hours later than planned we set off on our 230 mile journey north.
I could write at great length about that journey but you would almost certainly end in tears, the normally four hour journey took over seven, traffic jams the whole way - nightmare!!
We arrived in the pitch dark, and discovered we had driven all that way with only indicator lights and a nearside brake light working. The following morning we called in at a local tow bar specialist less than a mile from the campsite and he stopped the job he was on and spent the next two and a half hours wiring a new 13 pin caravan power socket on the back of the car. This did not completely cure the problem so when the chap had finished the job he interrupted when we arrived he called in at the campsite and replaced the power socket on the caravan which was full of water - job now done!
The bill was a bit of an embarrassment, the chap had spent over three hours working on our problem, he supplied a new socket and plug and included a site visit, his invoice totalled £30.00. That means he was working for less than minimum wage, I can’t even see it covering his costs. We gave him £60.00 feeling even that was less than half of what it should have been.
While in t’north we took the opportunity to pop into see old pals Carol and David who live in glorious Cumbria, it was lovely to see them, they are very fond of cruising so we were very lucky to catch them at home and thankfull we had not elected to see them the previous day as there had been so much rain in that 24 hours large parts of Cumbria were cut off by floods, even the day we visited there was a lot of water in fields and low roads.
After spending another day in and out of our lock-up/shipping container we hitched up and set off down the M6 heading for Little Henham Hall Farm, and this time the traffic was kind to us.