A nice, if wet, weekend in the van

 Well that was a good first weekend in the caravan.....apart from the weather.  Early last week it had been forecast to be ok, but that rapidly changed by the time we went away - we did have a few brief spells of sunshine on Saturday, interspersed with showers, but yesterday it pretty much piddled down all day.  Not that it mattered much, except for taking Betty out for her ablutions, as we were busy a lot of the time.

We put all the curtain tracks up - a joint and somewhat fraught effort, and that's all I'm saying about it!  They're up though and that's all that matters.  Husband laid the new vinyl flooring in the bathroom - it instantly makes the bathroom look so much better, he'll be wallpapering in there when we go back again mid week.  I started painting the top coat around the kitchen door, in the lovely aqua colour kitchen & bathroom paint (we'd already undercoated the walls).  Hmm, whilst it is a lovely colour, it's a bit too bright for my liking, not really what I want in the kitchen, so I've decided we'll just do the kitchen in the same subtle dove grey as the lounge.

Well, husband couldn't get the TV working, he thinks it's a problem with the aerial (the message on the TV kept saying No Signal) - I haven't a clue, I know nothing about tellies.  So it was a good job a) we had plenty of work to do, and b) I'd bought the stack of DVDs so at least husband had something to watch in the evenings.  Just as well neither of us likes football and I'm not very interested in tennis, otherwise we'd have been a bit annoyed!!  We do have a lovely little DAB radio in the caravan, so it was nice listening to old classic rock and pop and Classic FM while we worked.

I was a bit worried that Betty might not settle for her first night in the van, but she did - not a peep out of her all night.  When I got up in the night, she was pleased to see me, but went straight back to her bed as soon as I told her to.  She's been no trouble at all, in fact she's slept most of the weekend!  

It was certainly quiet over the weekend - out of 37 static vans, only about 6 (including ours) were occupied, and none of our near neighbours were there so we were pretty much on our own in our little area.  There were only a handful of touring caravans, so again very quiet.  When we left to come home just after lunch today, just 2 or 3 tourers there and 1 other static van occupied.

Not best pleased when we got home, though.  When husband washed his hands when we got in, he discovered the water was very hot - which it shouldn't have been, as we'd turned the water heater off when we left on Saturday morning.  Upon looking in the airing cupboard, he found that the immersion heater was switched on - we never use that as our water is heated by the oil fired system, which is a damn sight cheaper than the immersion heater.  We had an electrician in to check and service the electrical system on Tuesday of last week, instructed by the Landlord - we left him to his own devices and went off to the caravan for the day.  The electrician must have put the immersion on to test it, I'm guessing, and then failed to turn it off!!  So it's been on for almost an entire week, gobbling up electricity no doubt.  I've emailed the electrical company to put in a complaint.

And on the way home, I had a phone call from my dentists cancelling my appointment tomorrow (the reason we were coming home today) as my dentist has been pinged by Test & Trace and is having to self isolate.  Oh well, I certainly wasn't looking forward to going, and we'd have had to come home anyway as I also have a chiropodist appointment first thing Weds morning.  But we're going back to the caravan straight after my feet have been done - we have the Man with a Van coming again to take hopefully the last load of rubbish from the van.  We'll be staying over for 3 or 4 nights this time, doing some more work there.  We'll be finishing off the bathroom and possibly the kitchen top coat on the walls and ceiling.  If we have time (or the inclination), we'll make a start on the small bedroom.

We've really enjoyed our first weekend staying there, being able to work at a slower pace and stop whenever we want, and not have to drive home and then back again the next day.  It'll be even nicer from midweek onwards, as the weather is forecast to be really good - dry, sunny and warm, 24 degrees apparently.  So there'll probably be more fellow owners turning up, which will be nice.