7. Jun, 2021

MONDAY 7-06-21

We did have a few showers this morning at about the time we should have been getting up but didn't bother as we were in no hurry. The good thing about it raining was that the pigeons that woke us at about 04:30 got wet.

We were scheduled to move on to Aysgarth Falls Hotel Campsite www.aysgarthfallshotel.com but we couldn't find the earliest arrival time on their website, even my phoning them ended in failure due to a poor mobile phone signal.

So we sat through a couple of rain showers before deciding we'd had enough and would make our way to the campsite and bend their ears about not publishing their arrival time on their website should they moan.

When we arrived at the hotel campsite (N54.290509° W1.984540°) The Chef popped out to do the deal, pay our dues of forty-four pound for two nights, and get our allocated pitch number.

At this point I must confess we have been to this campsite before. It was about seven years ago and would have been one of the first outings we had with the motorhome before I retired. At that time they were still constructing the pitches we now stand on including the hook-up connections. We were parked down at the bottom of the site on grass which had grown through a plastic honeycomb mesh. It was very wet during our short stay and when we left we got stuck and had to be towed uphill out of the site. This was due to the fact that the owner had put too much hard core down on the roadway and it was like trying to drive on Felixstowe beach, so we had insufficient traction to get us up the steep slope and out on to the main road.

I was quite disappointed when I went to check out the facilities. The showers and toilets were still in small wooden garden sheds. On the seafront in many UK seaside resorts these kind of huts would sell for a small fortune, but here they were more like temporary facilities built in a hurry following some kind of major catastrophe. This is just the meanness of the owner for not providing proper facilities.

Once we had set up 'base camp' I decided to do some hand washing, so up to the facilities I went. No hot water, not in the hand basins nor in the showers, so I grabbed a member of staff and asked him if and when they supplied hot water to their customers. He said he didn't understand how the system worked but would contact the owner who did. And that's the problem. Us Brits don't complain enough. If I were the owner I'd be grateful for having the defect drawn to my attention so that I could make matters right for the benefit of my guests, but I bet the hot water has been off for days but nobody liked to say anything. In the end I had to ferry a couple of kettle-full's of hot water from the motorhome to warm up what I already had in the large sink.

So out on the clothes airer my washing went before The Chef produced our lunch - cream tea of all things, but we needed to eat up the scones we bought yesterday before they went dry. Then it was housework before a bit of a sit out in the sunshine in our recliners, interrupted only by a rain shower which I managed to fend off by pegging a piece of plastic groundsheet which I carry to use should I need to crawl under the vehicle for any reason, to the top of the airer, thus covering the clothes up and keeping them dry. When I get home I shall cut a new piece of groundsheet to cover the whole of the airer plus a fringe around all sides. I did decide to put the remaining drain cleaning gel down the waste pipes of the hand basin and shower tray in the hope it will do the job sufficiently until we get home where I can fix it good and proper. I have to be cautious because motorhomes like caravans are  built from the inside outwards on the production line, so once the floor is in place the interior fixings, plumbing and things like fridges and cookers are secured in place, then the sides and roof go on. This means that if I damage the waste plumbing in the bathroom it will be an expensive, if not impossible job to repair, due to the lack of access to the pipework.

There's not much in the news of any consequence. Rebel MP's have been refused a vote to overturn the governments decision to reduce our Foreign Aid budget from 0.7% of GDP to 0.5%, or £14.500.000,000 down to £10,000,000,000, and considering we have to borrow that money in order to be that generous, I think it's still a good deal. Critics say that it will result in widespread starvation in the poorest nations, but I don't think that is the case. So much of the budget is squandered, as the Foreign Office, the department now responsible for allocation the funds, have so much money they don't know what to do with it, resulting in civil servants dashing around at the end of the financial year trying to find things to spend it on so that they can reach their spending targets.

Let's be honest, if we stopped giving the huge charity organisations billions to go out and spend on our behalf, resulting in the charities considering it a huge uplift in their income, thus warranting huge financial uplifts to their CEO's salaries and perks, and we only targeted the starving populations, then we should be able to buy an awful lot of food for ten billion pounds, and think of all those Tesco clubcard points we'd earn.

Elsewhere the Californian Fruitcakes have announced the birth of their daughter Lilibet Diana Mountbatten-Windsor. Interestingly the domain name 'Lilibetdiana.com was mysteriously purchased on the same day the baby was born, but two days before the couple announced her birth to the world and her name. So keep an eye out for a range of 'LilibetDiana' children's clothing. There isn't a chance this grubby pair of chancers won't exploit to make a fast buck. And to top it all they're giving themselves up to 20 weeks parental leave from their own charity funded  by money given to them by daddy via mummy, so that they can 'set an example'.

Tomorrow we shall go for a walk down to Aysgarth Falls followed by a walk along the river. Don't hold your breath, Niagara it ain't. The following day we shall travel to Barnard Castle after which we head north to Northumberland.

6. Jun, 2021

6. Jun, 2021

6. Jun, 2021

6. Jun, 2021