Tony68000
Free Member
We've returned from our second trip away. We went to the same site in Skegness and took our son (26) and our dog again. Our son’s autistic and we wasn’t sure how he’s like it, he can make a lot of noise and run around a bit, but he was very chilled and loved it!
We really need to get the dog to sleep on the floor. 2 adults and a lab on the small French bed doesn’t lead to a good nights sleep!
Trip down was mostly okay. Lost acceleration again at exactly the same point as last time - motorway, 60MPH, up a long steady hill. Reset then I later pulled over, turned the engine off and then on again. I’ve read this could be something as simple as low transmission fluid. I’ll get it all looked at. Coming back, no such hills, and no problems with the van.
Saturday night was interesting. Got woke by extremely loud group coming back from the pub. Not sure what time this was, but we were fast asleep. Thought they’d be a little more consideration on a camp site. I can live with this though, people are on holiday and having fun!
Flag poles and lights!! Wow, some people really like their LED lights. Had one chap erect a 5-6 meter tall pole that just flashes white LEDs. Looked terrible. Perhaps if he’d had gone for the coloured LEDs it would have worked better. As it was, it just hurt my eyes and probably destroyed my wifi signal.
Wifi - roughly fitted our Teltonica router. Haven’t yet mounted the external antenna, kept to the ‘stick on’ internal antennas for this trip, but we wanted an ‘always on’ wifi. Again, mostly worked, but the Vodafone signal wasn’t great, and it couldn’t get a good connection to the camp wifi. I’ll look at fitting the external antenna when I feel brave enough to start drilling holes. Bought a battery Ring camera for extra security, and that worked nice with the wifi.
On the way down, we had 8 out of 10 waves. Not sure if this is a good thing or not. Coming back 2 out of 2.
Didn’t cook at all this time. I had great ambitions, but by the time we’d walked 10 miles each day on the great beech, the last thing we wanted to do was to start cooking!
Found a few good spots for wild camping. Next time we head down there we might leave on the Friday afternoon, do a night of wild camping, then head to a camp site the next day. Need to figure out how much capacity our leisure battery has, but lights + fridge should be fine for a night.
Fuel consumption was much better than I expected. My rough calculations tells me around 30 MPG, my car gets 36 MPG (2.2), so quite pleased with this. I think steady acceleration and braking made a good difference here. (3.0 Mercedes auto)
We’re slowly finding a place for everything in the van. We have a lot of storage. Still come back with a new shopping list thought - wind break seems like a good idea, and we need a camping table - or somewhere to put our drinks whilst sitting out.
Looks like I’ll need to give the van a good wash now (what do you call yours? ‘The Van’ doesn’t do it justice, but it’s what we’ve dropped do).
We really need to get the dog to sleep on the floor. 2 adults and a lab on the small French bed doesn’t lead to a good nights sleep!
Trip down was mostly okay. Lost acceleration again at exactly the same point as last time - motorway, 60MPH, up a long steady hill. Reset then I later pulled over, turned the engine off and then on again. I’ve read this could be something as simple as low transmission fluid. I’ll get it all looked at. Coming back, no such hills, and no problems with the van.
Saturday night was interesting. Got woke by extremely loud group coming back from the pub. Not sure what time this was, but we were fast asleep. Thought they’d be a little more consideration on a camp site. I can live with this though, people are on holiday and having fun!
Flag poles and lights!! Wow, some people really like their LED lights. Had one chap erect a 5-6 meter tall pole that just flashes white LEDs. Looked terrible. Perhaps if he’d had gone for the coloured LEDs it would have worked better. As it was, it just hurt my eyes and probably destroyed my wifi signal.
Wifi - roughly fitted our Teltonica router. Haven’t yet mounted the external antenna, kept to the ‘stick on’ internal antennas for this trip, but we wanted an ‘always on’ wifi. Again, mostly worked, but the Vodafone signal wasn’t great, and it couldn’t get a good connection to the camp wifi. I’ll look at fitting the external antenna when I feel brave enough to start drilling holes. Bought a battery Ring camera for extra security, and that worked nice with the wifi.
On the way down, we had 8 out of 10 waves. Not sure if this is a good thing or not. Coming back 2 out of 2.
Didn’t cook at all this time. I had great ambitions, but by the time we’d walked 10 miles each day on the great beech, the last thing we wanted to do was to start cooking!
Found a few good spots for wild camping. Next time we head down there we might leave on the Friday afternoon, do a night of wild camping, then head to a camp site the next day. Need to figure out how much capacity our leisure battery has, but lights + fridge should be fine for a night.
Fuel consumption was much better than I expected. My rough calculations tells me around 30 MPG, my car gets 36 MPG (2.2), so quite pleased with this. I think steady acceleration and braking made a good difference here. (3.0 Mercedes auto)
We’re slowly finding a place for everything in the van. We have a lot of storage. Still come back with a new shopping list thought - wind break seems like a good idea, and we need a camping table - or somewhere to put our drinks whilst sitting out.
Looks like I’ll need to give the van a good wash now (what do you call yours? ‘The Van’ doesn’t do it justice, but it’s what we’ve dropped do).
And glad you're enjoying your 'van'. Ours is called Tom, after the cute little dog the previous owners had. It just seemed 'right' and it suits him well. Of course, his full name is Tom Benimar