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.

More on Caravan Equipment

I am very pleased with my second water container - it makes life a lot easier. If I'm only staying 2 nights on a site and showering in the toilet block, the 40l container does me. I've also bought a second bag for it. It's not a custom made bag for aquarolls (looks like a dry cleaning bag) but works very well and was a bit cheaper - bought on ebay.

I've also managed to buy a new hitch cover on ebay - it is a Maypole cover, very reasonably priced and does the job fine.

Lastly, I saw this useful bit of equipment on sale in Aldi - a combined thermometer and hygrometer. It doesn't need batteries and is very useful for showing how humid the caravan is. It comes with a detachable stand or can be hung on the wall. I use the stand and put it back into its box for travelling. I've ruined a pair of binoculars through leaving them in the caravan to get bounced around and so am very careful now with any potentially fragile equipment!

Oops!

I can do most things on my own with the caravan however reversing can be a bit of a problem when there's no-one to guide me. A problem which I usually solve by either using the mover or jumping in and out of the car like a jack-in-the-box to check where the back of the caravan is. Unfortunately I was not able to use either strategy recently while reversing the caravan up a friend's driveway. The mover would not have coped with the incline and I had to keep the foot down and keep going once moving otherwise the car would stall. The result? I reversed the caravan into a large wooden flower tub. The rear tail-lights were literally wrapped round the tub when I got out to see why I had stalled. Nightmare! Fortunately the plastic rear panel of my beautiful Bailey straightened itself out when I pulled forward but the lights on the nearside were a mess and the rear panel was cracked underneath. The moral of the story is never reverse up a long sloping drive without someone to help.

I managed to sellotape the red and orange plastic pieces of the lights back together and duck tape it back onto the caravan so that I could get home (amazingly the bulbs were still intact) but the insurance bill is going to be big. Bang goes my no-claim discount (again).

PS. I have now discovered how to check the caravan brake lights on my own - by jamming my folding camp chair between the pedals and the steering wheel! It applies enough pressure on the brake pedal to make the brake lights come on.

Baking in the caravan

Those of you who have been reading this blog for a while will remember my earlier post about cooking in the caravan, which can be summed up by the simple phrase - don't bother! I still tend to adhere to that when it comes to main courses however I have been experimenting with baking puddings in the caravan, partly because I have a lot of frozen fruit from my garden stored in my freezer. I started with fruit crumbles - making the crumble topping in advance of caravan trips and storing it in the fridge or freezer. I have also had a lot of success with ready-rolled pastry which can be filled with fruit, which has defrosted en route to the site, and baked in the oven. Easy peasy.
Then I saw a recipe for posh bread and butter pudding in Saga Magazine using brioche instead of bread so I decided to try a variation of it on my latest weekend away. I keep a collection of aluminium containers from ready meals in the caravan as they make handy casserole dishes.

I buttered one, placed two layers of brioche slices spread with lemon curd and blackcurrant jam in it and filled with a mixture of 1/4 pint milk and 1/4 pint cream with 2 beaten eggs and some caster sugar. Baked in the oven until set, the result was delicious, especially served with strawberries and cream!

A frightening experience

The A9 is a bit scary at the best of times when towing a caravan but it became positively frightening on a recent trip when I broke down on the dual carriageway south of Drumochter summit. I had been tootling along fine doing 60 on cruise control when suddenly there was a lurch and a loss of power. I managed to pull in to the entrance of a small side road where I inspected all 6 wheels, suspecting that a brake had bound on. All seemed OK and there was no mobile signal where I was parked so I pulled back on to the dual carriageway. Big mistake. I struggled to get up to 40mph and had to stop again, hazards flashing, when I spotted black smoke coming from the rear of the car. Still no obvious brake overheating. At least I had a mobile signal in my new position so I used it to phone the police as I couldn't get the outfit off the carriageway. I also phoned Mayday - the Caravan Club's breakdown organisation for caravanners. While on the phone to the latter, the police left a message to say that they would be some time, which was worrying as the number of vehicles which did not see the caravan until the last moment was frightening. I stood behind the crash barrier 100m before the caravan, waving people to pull over into the fast lane and praying that no-one would hit my beautiful Bailey. It took the police 35 minutes to get there - was I glad to see them! I also appreciated the couple with the caravan who pulled in behind me to see if they could help, especially as they were putting their own outfit in danger by doing so.

The police put out warning signs and then helped me limp along to a layby, black smoke belching, and breakdown arrived 10 minutes later. Turned out a hose had come off the turbo and was easily fixed at the roadside, allowing me to continue my journey. I am now going to buy the biggest red warning triangle I can find, just in case I ever end up in the same position. I will also remember in future to put on the hi-vis vest I always keep in the car - it might have helped convince motorists that I was not just waving at them for the fun of it! The average speed cameras on the A9 have reduced the number of idiots doing silly speeds on the single carriageway sections however the dual carriageway sections still resemble F1 racetracks - not a good place to break down, which is worrying, given the proposals to dual the entire Perth-Inverness section but without a hard shoulder. I also couldn't help wondering if the police presence on that section has been reduced since the average speed cameras were introduced. My patrol car had to come from Perth.

All-in-all it was a frightening experience and I am thankful to God that me and my caravan came out of it unscathed.