This year's trips (and baby number three joins us!)

Been very slack on the blog lately - we've been busy!

We welcomed our third child into the family in January, which meant he was old enough to come along with us when we went on our first trip of the year in the van back in May.  It was a super weekend in Skegness with family.  Fitting three kids in the van was "interesting" - we settled on putting our middle child in the front car seat with the eldest and youngest wedged in the back, with the non driving adult sat in the back too to keep an eye on things! 

Next up was Swanage in July for the town's festival week, and what a brilliant time we had. Great, traditional entertainment for the kids including 'wacky races', a tots disco, fancy dress, sandcastle competitions and for the grown ups a fun run, darts, pool competitions and of course the infamous wheelbarrow race! Mentioning the pool competition brings me onto the most dramatic van moment of the holiday - Dave entered the pool comp and as it got later I took the kids back to the van (we'd driven into town) to put them to bed and wait for him to get knocked out...

Hours passed....it got darker...still hours went by...kids were asleep and I was bored...I saw a lone pool player walking home with his cue...still no Dave.  Has he walked home to the campsite, I thought?  About 1130pm I decided to start the van and drive up to the venue to check - however there was absolutely nothing happening when I tried starting it.  Great.  I couldn't ring Dave as my phone battery had died, so eventually spotted some girls going home and asked to borrow their phone - it was now 1230am, and I got through to Dave who had literally just won the pool competition!  (thank goodness - I wouldn't have been happy if all that waiting was for nothing!)

Dave returned victorious to the van having also won the wine in the raffle (my pay off for babysitting I think!) - there was no starting the camper so in the back streets of Swanage at 1am we pushed the campervan and eventually managed to restart it - thank goodness! Could have been interesting for local residents to see us brushing our teeth on the pavement come the next morning....

Dave's written a separate post about all the maintenance jobs from this summer - a long list as usual!  My job is going to be to repaint the van - the paintwork is looking decidedly tired now and some bits are peeling off. We are off to France in October so I'm hoping to have it spruced up by then...I'll be checking our European breakdown cover too....

The Lovebus!

We'd managed to get Trevor looking ace for our wedding day (we drove off from the church in Trevor, and spent our first night in the van after our marquee/field wedding...romantical? No, but it was a 3 minute stumble from the marquee so convenience rating was high) - and he then had the honour of being our honeymoon vehicle.  It was nearly 2 years ago that we wed but the honeybops were a watershed Trevor moment, so here's a superquick run through 'em!

The start of our honeymoon was dead posh, spent at the Randolph Hotel in Oxford - don't you think we blend in? (the concierge's face was a picture):

only everso slightly conspicuous

 We then headed down to the south coast to catch the ferry to Swanage, which was our first stop. We were driving along the coast in glorious sunshine and the van was going great, and looking brilliant:

Spot the lovebus!

 We had a great few days at the Swanage carnival, the highlight of which was the wheelbarrow race - absolutely bonkers dash around 9 pubs (downing half pints at each one).  For most of the trip we stayed at lush wee campsites like this one outside Swanage:

Somewhere near Swanage in a field

 ...But for the night of the wheelbarrow race we wanted to be in town, so stayed the night in a car park:

Our car park overnighter, and the hallowed wheelbarrow which was taken home with us...
..that's right, it was carried round for a fortnight in the van...

 Following our lovely time in Swanage, it was off to Paignton and Torquay, where the food varied - we had some awesome champagne BBQs, and an amazing fish dinner at No. 7 in Torquay (I really rate this restaurant, I preferred it to Rick Stein's place) - but then we also had an evening where I cooked up an Argentinian stew from my charity shop purchase, the 1963 edition of the Good Cook's Encyclopedia - this stew involved boiling mince with pears, plums and raisins for about 2 hours....t'weren't good...

lovely job, nice champagne BBQ

And the contrasting 'Argentinian Stew'....we washed it down with a LOT of red wine

Unfortunately towards the end of our Honeybop, Trevor was making some nasty noises, and starting to develop a rattle. By the last day, this had become an all out bone shaking vibration accompanied by a constant drone which meant we couldn't listen to the radio or talk to each other. The gear stick was also decidedly shaky throughout any journey, providing a higher pitched rattle to go with the deep bass drone.  We were glad to reach home without a breakdown ride, even though it meant after 6 hours of driving through the noise and shaking we both had headaches and terrible back pain!

Update from the Husband: Apparently the problem here was the propshaft front CV joint - the bearings had disintegrated, so it was a joint rattling in its housing. Fixed the following day, after getting a new bearing for a tenner...and back on the road without the noise!