Dave K
Free Member
Well that's the plan anyway .
After setting off on Good Friday for a funster weekend at Chester the plan is to carry onwards and upwards to the Western Isles for a whistle stop tour and return home again on Sunday 30th April ready for work on Tuesday the 2nd of May, a lot of miles but hopefully worth the stress, arguments....you get the idea!
We left Chester at about 4 on Sunday afternoon and travelled to Biggar for an overnighter at a Britstop we've used a few times, not much there, it is basically a car park but they do have a shop and 'bistro' on site which does a good breakfast. We arrived around 8.30pm, the weather that was kind to us at Chester seemed to get its own back as we travelled North as we encountered rain and wind for most of the journey, nevertheless we arrived in time for us to do a quick walk with the 2 Labs and be back for Kathie to watch Line of Duty, the BBC 1 thriller that everyone is raving about, so all was good.
We woke this morning to a much brighter day, no chance of a lie in, the cockerel was shouting at dawn and the dogs were ready for action at 6.30 so up we get and off we go, it was worth it though.
It's basically a working farm so around the area you park up there are some natives
So dogs walked and then in for breakfast with all the produce from the estate or sourced locally, thought I'd include this for the Facebook crew, I know they like a food pic
So fully fed and watered we start to embark on our next leg to a site at Glen Nevis, we stayed there for Kath's 50th, a lovely site with a restaurant just off site for breakfasts or evening meals, I say start to embark because that's about as far as it goes...just about to start the van for the off, turn the ignition key, engine starts fine but loud beeping from the instrument panel in the back, after checking it's showing an issue with the vehicle battery, and whatever you press this beeping isn't going away, great, so it's Bank holiday Monday, only thing I could think of was to drive into the nearest town which was Lanark and hope and pray that something might be open, good news there was a tyre, exhaust and battery centre open, bad news, we're too big for him to get inside the workshop but he was able to test the battery and tell me that something is taking a large draw from it. After a bit of searching I find a Fiat Camper Assist workshop in Glasgow that was open and will happily look at it for me, off we go, we find said garage, had to ask for 'big Chris', they weren't wrong 6'6" with an accent that to match, got to say the language barrier became an issue, if he was on telly I'd have switched the subtitles on, ordinarily I'm pretty good with understanding various accents but really struggled with him, to be fair he probably struggled with mine as well . Anyway he goes and gets a technician who at a guess was Eastern European and strangely I could understand his broken English , he confirmed what the other fella had told me, then big Chris told me the Fiat expert wasn't in work until tomorrow so we had 2 choices, push on and hope for the best or bring it back tomorrow, bearing in mind we're hoping to go off grid whilst travelling the Western Isles we only had 1 choice. So tonight we find ourselves staying on a CC site in Strathclyde, not the worst, not the best but probably the most expensive at £28 per night , with the hope that the Fiat man can work his magic tomorrow, fingers crossed!
After setting off on Good Friday for a funster weekend at Chester the plan is to carry onwards and upwards to the Western Isles for a whistle stop tour and return home again on Sunday 30th April ready for work on Tuesday the 2nd of May, a lot of miles but hopefully worth the stress, arguments....you get the idea!
We left Chester at about 4 on Sunday afternoon and travelled to Biggar for an overnighter at a Britstop we've used a few times, not much there, it is basically a car park but they do have a shop and 'bistro' on site which does a good breakfast. We arrived around 8.30pm, the weather that was kind to us at Chester seemed to get its own back as we travelled North as we encountered rain and wind for most of the journey, nevertheless we arrived in time for us to do a quick walk with the 2 Labs and be back for Kathie to watch Line of Duty, the BBC 1 thriller that everyone is raving about, so all was good.
We woke this morning to a much brighter day, no chance of a lie in, the cockerel was shouting at dawn and the dogs were ready for action at 6.30 so up we get and off we go, it was worth it though.
It's basically a working farm so around the area you park up there are some natives
So dogs walked and then in for breakfast with all the produce from the estate or sourced locally, thought I'd include this for the Facebook crew, I know they like a food pic
So fully fed and watered we start to embark on our next leg to a site at Glen Nevis, we stayed there for Kath's 50th, a lovely site with a restaurant just off site for breakfasts or evening meals, I say start to embark because that's about as far as it goes...just about to start the van for the off, turn the ignition key, engine starts fine but loud beeping from the instrument panel in the back, after checking it's showing an issue with the vehicle battery, and whatever you press this beeping isn't going away, great, so it's Bank holiday Monday, only thing I could think of was to drive into the nearest town which was Lanark and hope and pray that something might be open, good news there was a tyre, exhaust and battery centre open, bad news, we're too big for him to get inside the workshop but he was able to test the battery and tell me that something is taking a large draw from it. After a bit of searching I find a Fiat Camper Assist workshop in Glasgow that was open and will happily look at it for me, off we go, we find said garage, had to ask for 'big Chris', they weren't wrong 6'6" with an accent that to match, got to say the language barrier became an issue, if he was on telly I'd have switched the subtitles on, ordinarily I'm pretty good with understanding various accents but really struggled with him, to be fair he probably struggled with mine as well . Anyway he goes and gets a technician who at a guess was Eastern European and strangely I could understand his broken English , he confirmed what the other fella had told me, then big Chris told me the Fiat expert wasn't in work until tomorrow so we had 2 choices, push on and hope for the best or bring it back tomorrow, bearing in mind we're hoping to go off grid whilst travelling the Western Isles we only had 1 choice. So tonight we find ourselves staying on a CC site in Strathclyde, not the worst, not the best but probably the most expensive at £28 per night , with the hope that the Fiat man can work his magic tomorrow, fingers crossed!
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