13-17/07/2023

We joined a Motorhomer.com meet in Kelso for 5 nights, predominantly to catch up with Margaret & Shirley and Meg, who all live nearby. We’ve been members of this and the sister group, wildcamping.co.uk for quite some time, so chatted with other folk we knew. And lots we’d not met before, which is the nature of these meets. In fact, it took me all one morning to just do 2 loads of laundry in the twin tub. I’m so easily distracted!

We ate solo, well the two of us, on the first night and then we hosted M&S, they cooked, we went out and then hosted Meg and Tiny Tim (tall!). We did manage a dry night! And I only took 2 bottles across to the bins after Meg and Tim … that didn’t look too bad for 4 of us! But what others don’t know is that we refilled from Greek box wine, maybe, a few times! So no weight lost these few days, although we did both exercise / run.

Weather wise … mixed. But better than being in Crete, or anywhere else in the Med for that matter. We can move without getting sticky and it’s cool enough to sleep at night. We even added a blanket to our summer duvet. Not at the stage of adding our heated under blanket … yet! Rain stopped play, well archery. I had to abort firing arrows to rescue nearly dry laundry from a downpour.

I did a fab walk along one of the rivers with Corrie and we both walked in Bowmont forest … a good tip from a chatty coffeehouse customer. Really do appreciate the lushness, greeness and diversity of the trees.

Van wise, all is still not well. The feffing fridge freezer had stopped working, despite new burner. One of the members, Jeff, managed to get it going and showed us how to lube the contacts. But it stopped again on the last night. After talking to a local repair centre (knows Meg), he diagnosed the connection brick … I managed to find one in stock and it’s now with Lisa in Tyneside. Both bathroom and kitchen taps are also crook, and replacements also heading towards Lisa. We can’t get hot water on gas either. Seems to be unrelated to the fridge issue. Both hot water and fridge will run off our leisure batteries . This is working fine when we harvest sufficient solar. Fortunately, there are really powerful and hot showers at the Kelso meet … lovely to stand under and luxuriate in not having to turn off between lathering and rinsing.