It’s a lovely small site, very friendly & quiet. We went there just to get away from it all, and it’s great if you just want to sit around and relax or are passing through.

http://www.blackbarnsfarm.co.uk

Website says £7 but it’s now £10. Showers, toilets, wash basins, free use of freezer. There’s an electrical hook-up & a tap.

The pitches are near to the chickens, guinea fowl & ducks and you can buy eggs from the site.

Views across the the River Blackwater estuary are great, and it’s where we took this picture:

Bob was great again, and it gave us a useful trial run to perfect sleeping arrangements with a baby so we’re sorted for Europe in the summer.

Have a go!

Bob had only been back on the road a week and so I did a few test runs to make sure she was OK, and then on the Friday we took her out and washed her with a pressure hose and cleaned and hoovered her interior. After stocking her up with food and clothes she was ready.

The trip up to Techenders was fantastic. A little cold as it was an early-ish start but no rain, no wind, not much traffic and Bob running like a dream. We arrived without having to stop and with L contentedly staring at me, transfixed by my mirrored aviators! With only a rock & roll bed in the back I had the pleasure of L‘s company in the front which, for most of the time, was lovely. We parked up next to a smart looking T25 and nervously looked around at the Splitty, assorted T2s, T25s, T4s & an original Beetle and wondered how we should introduce ourselves and who to. That problem was solved as almost immediately ‘Superhands’ came over and after saying nice things about Bob showed us how our fuel tank vent pipe was badly split and needed replacing. If we found out nothing else during the weekend…

As a picture to capture the sense of Techenders 15 this is pretty rubbish (I didn’t get around to taking a picture from the other side with all the other vans in the background!) but it does show us camped up so it’s something! Saturday was spent watching other people service and repair their vans. There were people making a custom interior, others doing services and more trying to tune and improve the way their vans ran. By the time we arrived there was already one engine out due to a clutch being replaced, and by Saturday afternoon a routine carb replacement had turned into engine out number 2! (Both vans drove home by Sunday afternoon.) Lunch was a vegetable chilli made by another Techender and was enjoyed by all including L who seems to love spicy food.

Saturday evening H took L to bed in the roof and I stayed up to have a couple of beers around the camp fire with the others. L‘s first night camping went well for her as she was well wrapped up in her grobag and I was OK downstairs on the rock & roll bed in the double sleeping bag, but H was freezing in A‘s single sleeping bag and didn’t sleep well at all. Next time I’ll have the smaller sleeping bag as I don’t feel the cold so much, but it was also a reminder that there’s only canvas between you and the outside temperature when you’re up top.

Sunday was much colder and saw several people who had been there since the Friday gradually leave as they finished sorting their vans. We had a go at some tuning and Bob’s running speed was altered somewhat. Although she was running well, a go with the strobe showed the timing to be too far advanced. Dad came up to to have lunch with us and after saying our goodbyes to the other Techenders we left with a long list of small but important jobs to do and reassurances that Bob is actually the very nice van we hoped & thought she was.

The journey home wasn’t quite as relaxing as the one to Techenders. L was tired and irritable, I was just tired and the crosswinds… The A14 isn’t a good road to drive a vehicle with ridiculous aerodynamics on and after the previous day’s chilled driving I was constantly on my guard for Bob being blown around. L picked up on my apprehension and that made her worse. Eventually the wind died down, we got off the A14 and after a couple of feeds L was much happier. As for Bob, well an occasional misfire suggests that she has been tuned down a little too far so I’ll have to sort that soon along with the rest of the  jobs list, but otherwise she was great. Again.

Techenders 15 was a very enjoyable weekend. It was great to spend time with other people who ‘get’ what it is about a VW Camper that makes them special (and that was enough to have in common to get along) and it was an opportunity (taken) for H & I to learn a lot more about how to keep Bob running well. It also pushed me towards wanting to take Bob onto the continent this summer. It’s the vibe, it does things to the mind…

So…great company, great vans, great camping – roll on Techenders 16 in September!

A bath is too big to fit in the back of the Picasso so it would have to be Bob making the 60-mile round trip, just a day after being put back on the road. As has been so often the case during our time with Bob she didn’t miss a beat…bath picked up and delivered back home without any problems. Good old Bob, you can have a carrot when they’ve grown…

Bob & Mandy (for that’s what I call her in my head – take this to be an official announcement!) meet for the first time!

Alfie & I (assisted by Dad via live ‘phone link-up) got Bob going after 6 months of hibernation. I believe we flooded her at first but she got going soon enough and drove (almost) flawlessly round the estate whilst being moved between our front and rear gardens. Almost flawlessly because she’s never liked low revs & first gear when she’s cold and after 6 months asleep it was more obvious than ever. She didn’t cut out though and the brakes were fine. In hi-tech news you may notice the solar battery trickle-charger in the side window – works a treat!

I’m going to take her out for a small drive today where I’ll do the tyre pressures and fill her with fuel, and then tomorrow it’s off on a longer run to pick up a bath for the garden. She’ll probably need a clean too.

This is the first time I’ve ever woken something from hibernation and years of watching the Blue Peter tortoise in my youth make me want to go and rub a damp cotton bud over Bob’s lights. Maybe I’ll just polish the chrome eyelids instead…

Here goes…

Playing cards in rainy Wiltshire having been to see Stonehenge on our way to North Devon. Our first night all together in Bob!

Next, at our campsite in Devon with J‘s van getting off to a smokin’ start!

It was the first time we’d tried the awning and because we were doing a fair bit of driving around we didn’t attach it.

We went into Exmoor to visit the village H‘s parents lived in and had a picnic :

but only after a lengthy spell sat behind the locals!

We did the Devon-Essex run in one run which took about 10 hours as I had to keep stopping to rest.

After a day of washing and clearing out Bob we were off again to a woodland campsite in Suffolk. As we weren’t planning to move Bob for the week we fixed up the awning to Bob for the first time. It was very useful, especially as H‘s sister and her family were camping on the plot next to us and we had lots of bikes and toys to store.

Overall then two weeks of enjoyable camping and 1200+ miles covered without a hitch, made all the sweeter after the problems we’ve had with Bob. She did us proud though and we’re thinking about Europe next year with Liesel!

I might do an inside-Bob one of these in the future…

This afternoon I thought of two things:

Sitting by the side of the road exactly a year ago waiting for the RAC to arrive for what was to be the first of many times, just hours after picking her up from the garage we bought her from and the feeling we had when we returned from our successful holidays in the summer (photos & details still pending here…).

Overall we don’t at all regret buying her!

Here’s to a much improved second-half of year 1 and a more consistently good year 2!