Rather than wait until early September before uploading anything else on the blog I thought I’d share bits from the short trips we will make during the summer, probably once a month just to keep the vehicle used and of course give us the opportunity to spot any defects or problems whilst we have time to sort them out before our next long trip which will be France and Northern Italy.
As for the battery charging problem we had in Spain, well I got it sorted. Having gone to the expense of buying the second intelligent charger and having it delivered to Spain, I thought we should now have it fitted, giving us the luxury of having two of them, one for the engine battery and one for the living/habitation battery.
Rather than use my regular auto-electrician I booked it in with a local company. In the end it turned out to be the vehicle engine battery, it was the original one fitted to the vehicle in 2008/9, making it ten or eleven years old. I wouldn’t have minded but I had asked my auto-electrician to check it whilst he was fitting the first charger. This would have involved removing the drivers seat to gain access to it. When I picked the vehicle up he assured me he’d checked it and it was fine, so when I had problems only a couple of weeks later down in Spain I just didn’t consider that the battery itself would be the problem.
Never mind, all sorted, and whilst I only have the engine battery mounted under my driving seat, Rosina has the habitation battery, the fuse box, TWO battery chargers and the portable solar panel control box. So really I suppose it’s akin to an electric chair. I’m travelling with ‘Ol’ Sparky’.
In future I will include the GPS co-ordinates of places we visit wherever possible. I use them constantly, having used Google Maps to find them. For me that’s far easier and more accurate to use, and if you ever fancy visiting any of those places yourself then that's one job done.
Our first break was to Lincoln as we’d never been there before and The Chef fancied a look around the cathedral and I fancied a look at some aeroplanes. After all, you can’t do Lincolnshire without doing Bomber Command, that's what I told The Chef anyway.
May's trip was just to Wells-next-the-Sea in Norfolk, a place we like very much but because of bad wether forecast we just grabbed a couple of days there which was hardly worth a mention on here.
For June it was to be Malvern and the Cotswolds, including a visit to a vineyard and a tour of the Morgan car factory.
For July and August we’ll probably go in to hiding doing DIY jobs etc and leaving the campsites and beaches to the families as it will be school holiday time.