A New Tow Car

I started looking for a replacement tow car nearly two years ago when little things started going wrong with my trusty old Mondeo estate - like the heating fan starting to make a noise and the front passenger door not always wanting to open from the outside. I started off looking at any big diesel estate for about
£3k but as the months wore on with nothing suitable in my price range I decided that I would need to be more specific and would also have to pay more. In the end, if something works - why change it? I was very happy with the Mondeo, it is one of the biggest estates on the market and, although not exactly common, there are more of them than most other makes. I finally found a suitable one in September at Henry's in Glasgow. It's a bit older than I was hoping for but, with one previous owner, is in good condition with a reasonably low mileage. No towbar but I got a fixed swan neck fitted by Fife Towbars in Thornton for a very good price. I'd only had it for a fortnight when I took the caravan off for the weekend and all went well - the new car seems to be even more economical than the old one when towing. It also has a much bigger fuel tank which is a real bonus when towing! All-in-all I am very pleased with it.

I must be mad

Since my last post I have had several very successful trips in the caravan with Cheeky and Choccy. Having two pets definitely takes up more room in the car (and makes more mess) than one so I must be mad to have taken on a third! It happened like this ...

I forgot to take Cheeky's mirror when I went on holiday to my cousin's in June. He was getting left alone in the caravan more than is usual and I was worried he'd get lonely or bored so my cousin bought another mirror for him. He was delighted! I even took a video of him talking to his reflection. Fast forward a few months and I played the video to a friend, in hearing range of Cheeky. Cheeky immediately started calling to the budgie in the video! I had already started to think maybe he needed a real friend, not just a reflection, and this confirmed it. I had a look on the SSPCA website for budgies needing a new home and spotted a young blue male. Just a few days later I brought Merry home. He gave me a scare at first with a tummy upset while he settled in however he is now doing really well.

The only problem is ... Cheeky is being a wee bit of a bully with the new bird and Merry is still young and recovering from rather a bad start in life so most of the time they are in separate cages side by side, Cheeky in the big one and Merry in Cheeky's old, small travelling cage. So now I've had to order another small cage on ebay so that I can go away with both birds in the caravan! Hopefully they will, in time, settle harmoniously into the big cage at home but perhaps it is too much to expect them to share cramped quarters while on holiday. Here they are side by side in the big cage, Merry on the left and Cheeky on the right. It is, of course, still possible that Merry is a girl, not a boy, as he/she is a bit young to sex accurately. I suspect Cheeky will be delighted if he is a she!

Cheeky and Choccy

My first caravan trip of 2016 was a weekend away to introduce Cheeky the budgie to the caravan. It was very successful - Cheeky chirped all the way up to Killin in the car and settled into the caravan well. His cage alternated between the front table and the top of the cooker when the latter was not in use. At night, he settled down and slept until morning allowing me to do the same. The resident ducks on the site made more noise than Cheeky early in the morning. It went so well that, on my return home, I found myself thinking that having another guinea pig as well as the budgie would not be any more trouble. I still had the cage and all the equipment for a guinea pig so I had a look in the pets for adoption section of my local Pets at Home and found a young male looking for a home on his own because he had been fighting with the other pigs. His name is Chocolate Brownie or Choccy for short.

Unfortunately my next trip after acquiring Choccy was for a week in April. All went well until the middle of the first night when the little pig decided to start gnawing his way out of his travel box which I had placed in the toilet. I put him back into his cage and went back to bed, wondering if I had done the right thing in getting him. I decided to stay longer at my first site just in case I ended up having to leave the caravan there and take Choccy back home to friends so that I could get some sleep on my holiday! I even considered the possibility of returning him to the pet shop. Fortunately neither option was necessary - after much anxious consideration I had the divine inspiration of using the coolbox for Choccy overnight. Lined with sawdust and hay, he was quite cosy but unable to climb or chew his way out. After a couple of nights with him in the 'cooler' I felt confident enough to move further away from home for the rest of the holiday. Cheeky, meanwhile, behaved impeccably.

Having two pets instead of one IS more trouble, especially when it comes to hoovering the caravan, however they are both good company in their separate ways. I am looking forward to more trips with them both. I am also looking for a second coolbox, for the food!

An expensive caravan companion

Cheeky the budgie is in rude health and I am looking forward to introducing him to caravanning soon, however, before I do so I will have to replace all the pots and pans in the caravan! I have discovered that birds are very susceptible to poisoning from the fumes given off by Teflon non-stick cookware. Fortunately most of my pans at home are stainless steel but everything in the caravan is Teflon non-stick. It's actually very hard to get reasonably priced pots or baking trays which aren't these days, especially baking trays. Not that I bake a lot in the caravan but I do have one non-stick tray which gets used quite a lot, even if it's just for heating a ready-meal in the oven.

Apparently ceramic non-stick is OK for birds so I'll probably get a ceramic frying pan and replace the rest of the pots with stainless steel, which is going to be a costly exercise! However doing nothing is not an option - I don't want to lose another bird!

Rising prices

I don't know what the Caravan Club are up to with their pitch prices. Last year I spent a couple of summer weekends on the economy (non-electric) pitch at Clachan for £3 less per night than a pitch with a hookup. It was not worth doing in cold weather as I reckon even in summer without the gas fire on I was using about £2 per night in gas however in July and August it was fine and I was planning to do the same this summer. Unfortunately someone, in their wisdom, has decided to make the charge for an economy pitch at Clachan (and also at Altnaharra) exactly the same as the charge for an electric pitch. That means the so-called economy pitch will be more expensive when I take the cost of gas to heat the water and cool my wine into account. The only advantage in booking it will be that I will know in advance which pitch I'm going on, thereby reducing the time between arrival at site and sitting with a glass of wine in my hand and a pizza in the oven.

It will also be cheaper for me, as a solo caravanner, to go to Bunree with hookup and a heated toilet block in April or Morvich with ditto in October than to go to Clachan, with no toilet block, in those months which is ludicrous. Are they trying to dissuade solo caravanners from going to Clachan and Altnaharra? Those are precisely the sort of sites solos like! I think it's time the Caravan Club realised that we don't all tour as couples or families and we don't want to pay for electricity we are not getting!

Rising Damp

I have just got the caravan back after a winter spent in two different workshops. I knew it would be away for a while getting the accident damage repaired but I hadn't bargained for finding damp in the shower room on my last trip of 2015. The caravan is quite well ventilated (ie draughty) and so has never suffered from damp, even over the winter months. Unfortunately, and unbeknownst to me, water had started getting in along a seam at the back of the caravan and became noticeable when the shower room wallpaper started bubbling. The plywood underneath felt spongy and when I stuck my damp meter into the spot, it read 45%! I booked the van into Wallace's at Kirkcaldy as soon as I got home from holiday and left it with them a week later. When the panel in the shower room had been removed we could see that the damp had travelled from the back corner along two wooden battens. Fortunately we had caught it before the wood rotted but it still cost over £500 to get the leak sealed, everything dried out and a new panel fitted inside. The moral of the story is to check for damp regularly and act on any reading over 20%. I had decided to save money on servicing by getting a mobile engineer to service the caravan in 2014 and 2015 but it turns out to have been a false economy as he didn't pick up the damp problem. That back corner had been reading 20% when I last had a proper damp check done in 2013 so the early indications were there. Next time I will act on them sooner.

PS. Glencairn Coachworks in Leslie, Fife have done an excellent job on the accident damage. The only difference is that I don't have a nearside fog light now because they couldn't get exactly the same tail light fitting for my old Bailey. The more modern version has a reversing light in its place.

A New Caravan Companion

Cheeky

It is with a heavy heart that I write this post because my caravan companion of more than 3 years, Tom the guinea pig, has died. He was at least 7 years old so he had done well but I will miss him. He was just ideal for taking in the caravan - no trouble at all. Instead, I now have a budgie called Cheeky who I am hoping will be my new companion in the caravan. I have been thinking of getting a budgie for some time, having looked after a friend's bird a few times, and so, when I spotted a budgie in the window of a caravan on a site last year, I had a chat with the owners. They said the budgie went everywhere with them and it certainly seemed quite happy in its cage in the caravan so I took that as encouragement.

Happy

Unfortunately my path to budgie ownership has not been trouble-free. I found a brand-new cage in my local charity shop in November and so had no more reason to delay getting an occupant. I saw an advert for baby budgies on Gumtree and bought a lovely white and blue baby bird from a breeder in Tullibody. He was very tame, sitting on my finger almost immediately, and I put the fact that he didn't fly very well down to his young age. Sadly, Happy was actually weak and ill and died six weeks after I had bought him. I was (and still am) heartbroken and was wary of trying again, however a friend recommended the pet shop in Kirkcaldy where she had got her healthy budgie and so now I have Cheeky. He is not nearly so tame (yet) but is a much better flyer and all round healthier bird. The original cage I bought is small enough to take in the caravan and I now have a bigger one for the house so I am hoping that, by the time I next go away in March, Cheeky will be travelling with me.