About Me

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Hi! I'm Eunice and I live in Bolton, Lancashire, with my two dogs Sophie and Sugar and an assortment of cats - well it used to be Sophie and Sugar, now it's Sophie and Poppie. I first began camping back in 1997 when my then partner took me to Anglesey for my birthday weekend. We slept in the back of the car - a hatchback - using the cushions off the settee at home as a mattress, and cooked and brewed up on a single burner camping stove. The site was good, the views were great, the weather fantastic and I was completely hooked. Following that weekend we got a two-man tent and some proper accessories and returned to Anglesey two weeks later, then over time we progressed to a three-man tent followed by an old trailer tent, then a new trailer tent, a campervan and finally a caravan. When my partner decided that the grass was greener on the other side of the street - literally - in April 2009 and I suddenly found myself alone after fifteen years, I decided there was no way I was going to give up camping and caravanning if I could cope on my own. This blog is the story of my travels, trials and tribulations since becoming a solo camper - I hope you like it

Tuesday June 10th 2014 - I'm glad I got the hook-up extension

After a very early rain shower, which fortunately didn't last too long, the morning turned bright and sunny and the tent had dried out by the time I got up. After the first dog walk of the day I was just about to make a brew and some toast when the power went off, and a quick check on the meter told me that my credit had been used up - and that's where my recently-purchased hook-up extension cable came in handy. It wasn't worth buying any more credit, and though I could have made toast and a brew on my gas stove I wanted to keep my fridge running as long as possible, so I disconnected the main cable and connected it to my existing extension which in turn was connected to the new extension, then the whole lot was connected to a hook-up point right across the field which had some credit left on it from the last time someone used it, and bingo! - the power was restored. Now I wouldn't have been able to do that if I hadn't bought the bargain hook-up extension from Stermat!

After a leisurely breakfast and an hour with my book I put the dogs on their line outside the tent and made a start on packing up, taking my time as I was in no rush. With everything finally in the van I dismantled the tent and it was when I came to fold it over that I made the grim discovery - slugs on the footprint groundsheet. Yuck!! I hate those things with a vengeance, they really make my skin crawl and I'm convinced they were spawned by the devil as only he could invent something as revolting as that. 

Dragging the tent onto the grass showed me the extent of the invasion - while there were no slugs on the underside of the tent itself half a dozen of them were sliding slowly across the groundsheet. Somehow I had to get rid of them so I dragged the groundsheet to the other end of the field and used a long rock peg to flick them off into the long grass near the hedge - no way was I doing that in the vicinity of my pitch, even if I was leaving it in quarter of an hour's time. With the tent finally folded, rolled and strapped up and the groundsheet put into a black bin liner I disconnected the hook-up cables and stashed them all in the van, then last but not least were the dogs and their bed.



Following my usual departure routine I drove down to the promenade, parked up, and took Sophie and Sugar for a final walk along the beach before setting off on the drive home, and with no en route stops and no delays I made good time and was back before 4pm. As I downloaded my photos later on I thought back over my holiday; I'd only been away for ten days but it felt like a month. Maybe it was because I hadn't been out and about as much as on previous breaks and I'd spent more time relaxing - if that was the case then I'll be doing the same again, and maybe my next Anglesey holiday will feel like six months.

2 comments:

  1. Ten days of relaxation sounds heavenly!

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  2. It was, and it really made a change for me as I'm usually out and about every day. I was back at work an hour after getting home, which usually makes me feel like I've never been away but this time, even a few days afterwards, I still felt like I'd been away for a month

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