Monday, January 25, 2010
25th January 2009 – Are we ever going to remember all the technical bits?
So after the full and comprehensive handover and obviously now experts we drove back to Norfolk and started to buy stuff that we needed and also booked ourselves in for a two night ‘try out’ at Thetford Forest. It was fun buying things for our new adventure.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
24th January 2009 – Exeter for the big day
A night with our lovely friends ensured that we had a slightly hungover train ride from our UK base in Norfolk down to Exeter ready to pick up Trevor tomorrow. Spent a very pleasant evening and night at an old coaching inn and ordered a taxi for the following morning to take us to the dealer’s – not going to get a lot of sleep!
Saturday, January 23, 2010
23 January 2009 Norfolk
Getting really excited now! Tomorrow we will be on the train to pick up “Trevor” (long story...) the day after. We started our search for our dream van back on the 6th January 2009, setting out from our Spanish home we travelled for two days, arriving in Portsmouth for a ‘Premier Inn’ night (the last for a while!) before setting out for the Shepton Mallett show on Friday 9th.
Of course, as complete newbies we were astounded at what was available and not really knowing our A Class from our elbows, interrogated any poor soul who got stuck with us until we felt we had confused ourselves totally. The only real requirements we had, before commencing our search, were a bed we didn’t have to make up each night and a proper shower as opposed to wet room. We didn’t find our motorhome at the show but did gain lots of knowledge which helped us with the rest of our search.
Naively, with the credit crunch biting, we believed that people would be practically giving us motorhomes just to take them away. How wrong could we be? Having never really been campers of any kind we only discovered whilst on our search that caravans, campers and motorhomes are, if not recession proof then very recession resistant. Long story short - after a long search we upped our budget a chunk (surrendering a further life policy – whoops!) and went back to the first motorhome we fell in love with and became the proud, if slightly nervous owners, of Trevor.
Our home is a Swift Bel-Air and although it has 3 berths is nicely big enough for just the two of us. Unusual in that it is a British built A Class giving us the luxury of a pull down bed and almost domestic quality shower room that fitted our bill perfectly.
Of course, as complete newbies we were astounded at what was available and not really knowing our A Class from our elbows, interrogated any poor soul who got stuck with us until we felt we had confused ourselves totally. The only real requirements we had, before commencing our search, were a bed we didn’t have to make up each night and a proper shower as opposed to wet room. We didn’t find our motorhome at the show but did gain lots of knowledge which helped us with the rest of our search.
Naively, with the credit crunch biting, we believed that people would be practically giving us motorhomes just to take them away. How wrong could we be? Having never really been campers of any kind we only discovered whilst on our search that caravans, campers and motorhomes are, if not recession proof then very recession resistant. Long story short - after a long search we upped our budget a chunk (surrendering a further life policy – whoops!) and went back to the first motorhome we fell in love with and became the proud, if slightly nervous owners, of Trevor.
Our home is a Swift Bel-Air and although it has 3 berths is nicely big enough for just the two of us. Unusual in that it is a British built A Class giving us the luxury of a pull down bed and almost domestic quality shower room that fitted our bill perfectly.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Welcome to our motorhoming with NEILMAC 'Retro-Blog'
Some may wonder why we are writing this second blog whilst we are still writing "Motorhoming with NEILMAC" - well, simply put, I only thought of starting a blog about our motorhoming adventures a full year after we bought our motorhome, a Swift Bel-Air 730.
During the year we covered around 12,000 miles and spent months at a time in France and Spain - learning all the way! We had never owned or even been in a motorhome until we started looking for one.
As we had kept a journal of our travels we thought this blog would be a great way to share these writings and we will publish our notes on here a year on from the actual dates.
During the year we covered around 12,000 miles and spent months at a time in France and Spain - learning all the way! We had never owned or even been in a motorhome until we started looking for one.
As we had kept a journal of our travels we thought this blog would be a great way to share these writings and we will publish our notes on here a year on from the actual dates.
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