Planning the “BIG” Holiday Part 2

Published on by Paul Hickman

It’s Sunday morning and it’s just me and the dog. Everybody else is having a lie in. So time to take over the living room coffee table to “plan” that most important of all holiday essentials. The Route.

It’s a fair old drag from Manchester down to the south coast of France so there are lots of variables to consider. First and not insignificantly is how to get across the English Channel (La Manche as the French call it.) Do you opt for quickest/cheapest, or longer more relaxed crossing? Continue reading “Planning the “BIG” Holiday Part 2″ →

Oops I Broke the Blog

Published on by Paul Hickman

For about an hour last night panic set in as I Broke the blog site.

I decided in my infinite wisdom that Caravan Adventures required it’s own domain name. So off I went to register www.caravanadventures.co.uk, completed the DNS settings and all was well with the world until that is I edited the settings within the site software and left a – in the site URL where there shouldn’t have been one.

So the DNS settings were now useless and the site was broke. Aa the site is hosted on a server that I own and not the WordPress servers, I tried the back door and realised what i had done. So i ended up having to go register www.caravan-adventures.co.uk

So now we have 2 working URLs for the site who would have thought a – could cause so many problems.

Hiluckey Solar Charger

Published on by Paul Hickman

Halys calls me the gadget man. Ok so she has got a point I love a gadget, I love tech. So when my latest gadget purchase arrived I got the usual disapproving look and the “what’s that?” question.

“A solar powered phone charger” I said. “What on earth do you want that for”? Continue reading “Hiluckey Solar Charger” →

Another New Category!

Published on by Paul Hickman

Hey I’ve added another new category! I’m on a roll! Useful Stuff  is where we will share our reviews of items that we find helpful, useful, a bargain etc….. The products are all things that we use, that we chose and the we spent our hard earned cash on. Not products sent to us to review. To be honest we have not been asked but if we are in the future we may reconsider but for now it’s all stuff we bought.

Planning the “Big” Holiday

Published on by Paul Hickman

The “BIG” holiday is our main 2 week break far away from our normal lives, and when I say far I mean Far! A little over 1000 miles away.

This will be our 3rd trip to the south coast of France to Argeles Sur Mer in the Languedoc-Roussillon region of France. It’s only a 10 minute drive to the Spanish boarder.

We have known about this trip since August last year when we booked the day after our return. In fact we would have booked while we were there last year but we didn’t have the details of Halys’ holidays with us. So it’s been booked for ages and you would think we have it all sorted? Well not quite. Continue reading “Planning the “Big” Holiday” →

New Category – Nerd Central For Caravanners.

Published on by Paul Hickman

I have just added a new category to publish posts under.

Trip Planning

I “Plan” to take you on the journey of planning our trips with me.(did you see what I did? “Plan”? – suit yourself! I thought it was funny.) Continue reading “New Category – Nerd Central For Caravanners.” →

Van fixed & Solar Panel install

Published on by Paul Hickman

I am so relieved, managed to piece together all of the wires that I destroyed.

Continue reading “Van fixed & Solar Panel install” →

Solar Panel Disaster!

Published on by Paul Hickman

So today was solar panel installation day and I know I promised a blog post of the installation but I had a major disaster!

I cleaned the roof, drilled the brackets and solar panel ready for mounting. Got everything on the roof ready. Was working out where to drill the holes for the cables to come out in the wardrobe and I had the bright idea, “I know I’ll drill from the inside so I know exactly where I’ll come out.” i.e. inside the wardrobe not outside which knowing me would be almost certain.

So I drilled 2 holes in my caravan roof and all my 12V electrics went off! After a lot of swearing i realised that there must be wiring in the roof and yes I managed to drill 2 perfect holes straight through the wiring loom!

I had to cut a section out of the roof board to gain access to the loom which I will now have to piece back together.

So the solar panel and cable entry are stuck in place and the van is watertight again but I have plenty more work to rewire my mess. On the plus side we did make sure the fridge was working properly on gas as last time I’m not sure it was.

Back to The Caravan

Published on by Paul Hickman

Jobs at home are almost done for this round, Halys still has plenty more on her list, but the shed is now up and stocked with crap, I mean Harriet’s treasures…..lol. Just need to sort the last bits at the container and run the crap to the tip then the next project is installing our new Solar Panel on the roof of the van.

Everything should be arriving in the next week to complete the installation so watch this space as I tntend to make a blog post on the installation process.

TTFN

Update

Published on by Paul Hickman

So we’re getting closer.

The new shed arrived on Friday instead of Tuesday, so we managed to get all the rubbish moved, prepared the base on Saturday and the shed is now up!

It still needs bolting to the floor and a floor creating but the major part of the excercise is now complete. As usual it rained so we could do with some warm weather to dry everything out and we can move everything in.