Home again - delighted to say . . .

Although Dot and I do rather live for our caravan outings and trips, it is rather nice to get home at times.

For no good reason, I felt that way when we got home today, after 4 nights away - 1 at Milestone, just north of Newark on the A1, and 3 at the Newark showground. It was just good to be back in our own little place, with the heating on ('cos it was extremely chilly in Newark).

Having said that, we now want to plan the next trip - if we can find a pitch next week, it'll be up in Norfolk, and we'll take Dot's grandchildren with us for a couple of nights.

It'll be another good test of the little 4-berth caravan we're using, the French-built Caravelair Antares Lux 425. So far, it's done quite well, and I wouldn't have too many qualms recommending it to suitable users - but it isn't a Brit, most definitely. UK built caravans and motorhomes tend to be high on internal luxury, and this doesn't have that, but is is comfortable enough, and if the weather outside were warmer, it would be fine.

Orf we go again!

Well, heavens, it must be spring because:

(a) It's been raining this morning

(b) The Newark UK Motorhome & Spring Fair starts on Saturday!

As last year, we're up at this interesting and enjoyable show, with our own little stand, and looking forward to meeting some of the many friends we've made over the nearly three years of The Caravan Channel.

As always, it'll be a busy couple of days, but we enjoyed last year enough to go back again. After the heavy workload at the NEC, I hope we'll have a rather less busy time, and it would certainly be nice if we have enough time to do some serious filming - we'll have to see how it goes!

See you there if you're going!

A bit ahead . . .

For some mad reason, I just decided to try using Twitter . . . looks like a really rather odd thing to do!
Apparently, you're supposed to kind of (b)log your way through the day, using either the net, if you're online, or the phone if you're not.
I'll be fascinated to see if people look at it - there's a running example at the right-hand side!

A proper weekend away . . .

Although we've had a fair few nights in the caravan this year, this is the first proper weekend we've had.

We overnighted at Ferry Meadows in the February snow, then spend a whole week in the temporary campsite at the NEC for the February caravan show, but this weekend, we've visited Abbey Wood and Crystal Palace CC sites - the latter is where I'm writing this.

So it's been a chance for us to actually have a proper bit of a break, and sort the caravan out. This year, we've got a temporary loan of a van from the French manufacturer Trigano - their UK importer, Freedom Caravans, fixed up for us to have the use of one.

In the next couple of weeks, we'll be filming a first report on it - I wanted to before, but because we've been too busy, we haven't got around to it, and it's just as well in some ways.

The problem is that in many ways it's ideal for the French, with their slightly better weather than ours, and not quite so good for us. But with a four-berth (two convertible dinettes, and there's a version with two bunks) in a short space, it is very comfortable for herself and me . . .

In the aftermath . . .

The aftermath of the NEC show has been really odd. For no good reason, I haven't seemed to have my act together since, but hopefully we're over the worst now.

I think the main reason is that Dot and I are used to working alone, and having more people about gave me some difficult moments when making programmes. For instance we usually shoot all the footage ourselves, but this time had Giles and Roy shooting bits and pieces, too. That means I didn't have a good record in my head when editing, so spent a lot more time searching about for material I knew I had, and wanted to include.

But we've nearly got to the bottom of the NEC clips pile now, so I hope that after next show is completed (6/09, premiering 25th March), we'll be done with that event!