1. Jun, 2021

1. Jun, 2021

TUESDAY 1-06-21

For me I'm afraid, it was another rough night. I slept through until about 02:30 when I heard the local kids with their cars doing wheelies or something around the P&R site and shopping complex car park. The squealing of tyres was quite loud, but thankfully The Chef slept through it, and so I think did the local police. I dozed off until about 04:00 and then that was it. Never mind, at least I don't have to get up for work in the mornings.

Before leaving Chowdene campsite (N53.978199° W1.051881°) this morning I had to make several trips back and forth to dump grey water in a foldable bucket and take onboard fresh water using a watering can. Once ready for the road we made our way to the local Sainsbury's supermarket down the road followed by a visit to the M&S store not far away. We're now loaded up with food and drink ready to face whatever motorhoming life throws at us.

Today's planned trip was to take us to Upwood Holiday Park at Oxenhope south of Keighley (N53.815595° W1.932399°) a drive of about 50 miles west on the other side of the A1. The route took us along the A659 through Otley and Ilkley, before heading south to Oxenhope. I have to say the satnav behaved impeccably today and the journey was really quite pleasant driving at a nice steady pace, until that is we hit the towns. The poor roads through them just can't cope with the volume of traffic and we spent a lot of time in long traffic queues as we made our way through them.

We kept looking for a suitable lay-by area where we could have lunch whilst enjoying the view, but in the end had to settle for a lay-by on a dual carriageway just eight miles from the campsite.

Reaching the campsite was a bit tricky as the final leg was up a steep single track road. But behold, there was a bus stop there.

The campsite is quite large with a number of permanent static caravans plus full timing caravanners with the usual garden gnomes etc outside the van. There are also numerous caravans with two large Calor Gas cylinders about three feet tall standing outside them. Now there's no way anybody going on a holiday would have a need for so much gas. The cylinders are too large to be stowed in the caravan, so I assume they get loaded in to the back of their hare coursing 4 X 4's.

Upon arrival I had hoped we could stay one extra night so we could make sure we got to see all of Hayworth and the Bronte Parsonage Museum. Unfortunately The Chef returned from registering us at Reception with the message that they have no pitches available for an extra night. At first I was disappointed, but having spent time on the campsite this afternoon disappointment has become great pleasure. I have to say if I had realised that this week was half-term for the kids I would have shortened the trip and left home next week, but we're stuck with it. There are very few of us motorhomers on site, it's mainly caravanners.

What was most annoying was that having gone online to book a couple of tickets in advance to the Bronte Parsonage Museum I was informed that it is closed for a private event tomorrow, so sorry, but you can't come in. We'll have to see if we can come up with some kind of solution when we leave here on Thursday morning.

The bus service is almost non-existent and so tomorrow, rather than wait for a bus we're going to walk the one and a half miles in to Hayworth, and if necessary get a taxi back, the reason being we're very high up here and the wind doth blow, so the return walk would be all uphill. We'll have to see how it goes.

I don't expect us to get to sleep very early tonight as we have a group of youngsters in the pitch next to us who at nearly 21:00 are getting louder and more bladdered.

All we have to do is get through the rest of this week and hopefully we'll be shot of most of them.