It'll be fine!!

 Well, both me and Betty (yes I know, bad grammar!) slept better last night, although I did have to get up for a wee and took a while to get back to sleep, but did eventually.  It poured with rain a few times, which woke me up (rain is very noisy on a caravan roof!) but I did fall asleep again quite quickly.  This morning there's blue sky with a few fluffy clouds and the sun is already trying to shine.  Brilliant.

Although the van gets toasty warm quite quickly with the electric fire on, there's no doubt that it does get very cold during the night, now the temperature has dropped quite a bit.  Getting up to go to the loo in the night, it feels decidedly chilly.  I'm glad about that, in a perverse kind of way - it means I'm not really very keen to stay here when it's going to be very cold, so softens the blow of not being able to come here over winter.  Once next March arrives though, I shall be chomping at the bit to get back here, I'm especially looking forward to seeing all the Spring bulbs I've planted in lots of tubs and the garden itself.  I do love Spring bulbs.

We were going home tomorrow but have decided to go this afternoon, once we've seen Charlie and Jean off, there'll be less traffic about today.  Our home garden has been somewhat neglected this year and it does need a lot of pruning and tidying up, the broken gazebo needs to be taken down and the garden furniture put in the garage - we'll be bringing the furniture here to the van next year, so we want it safe in the garage over winter.

Sunny weather is forecast for this coming weekend, so we might come back again then, we'll see.

I have been worrying a bit about leaving the van over winter and hoping it'll be fine with no problems.  But then I remembered that when we took this van on, it had been unoccupied and untouched for more than 18 months and, other than being very cobwebby and dusty (and very dirty!), it was absolutely fine - no leaks or problems caused by the weather.  So we have no reason to think it won't be the same when we come back next year.  And our neighbours (who have been coming here for years) have said they rarely have problems either.  So now I'm not really worried.  C and J have told us everything they do when closing their van down for winter, and I'm going in their van to have a look when they're ready to leave, so I know what to do in ours.  It's been such a help having them next door.

I'm not worried about security either over winter - the owners (father and daughter) both live on site with their families in separate houses, and the site manager also lives here in their caravan (that's allowed under Local Authority regulations).  The site gate is locked over winter, and there are CCTV cameras all around the park.  The site manager has a dog which barks at everyone who walks past (a Labradoodle, she's actually very friendly), so is a good guard dog in that she's noisy.