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Staycation - Dungeness Railway

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Another staycation day between showers to take advantage of the dry weather that appears between them! Molly the Moho is still at the dealers and so we are in the car again.  It's about a 25 mile round trip to Dungeness.  This is officially a desert.  I kid you not. We had a walk on the shingle to the Polish Airmen's Memorial and then walked back to the station to have tea and wait for the last train of the day to arrive. Luckily, when the train arrived it didn't hoot the horn.. If it had, Reggie would have gone mental. Instead he ignored the sound of it wheezing into the station. Claire took a couple of photos on her phone.  Today the Sony A300 was left at home..... The "New" Lighthouse

Staycation - White Cliffs of Dover

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With Molly the Moho being in the dealers for some warranty work and a (possible) repair to the damage to the rear bumper, we are having to staycate in the car. It also means that we can go away for a few days and so are based at home. The weather has been really poor. The "Mediterranean Climate" we were told to expect in the South of England as a result of climate change hasn't arrived. Instead we have had some really hot periods but not that long and wetter summers. July 2023 has been the 6th wettest on record.... So this week we have been out between showers and some torrential rain where we can. Today we took a short drive to the White Cliffs of Dover to walk the dog and to have a look at Dover Harbour. The harbour under the white cliffs themselves. I dug out Claire's Sony A300 DSLR and charged the battery. It seems a shame to let it sit unused in the case.  I had to format a 4gb compact flash card to get it to work, and a few test shots were fired off in the garde

Afternoon at Dungeness

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NO! The lighthouse isn't fitted into the top of the van! Today we picked up Suki from the storage and site so we can get her ready for the trip to Mersea Island in the week.  We drained off the water and I ran the pump to get some clean water through the waste water to flush that out too. It means we currently have no water onboard. We'll need to fill up or at least have some onboard when we set off on Wednesday.  So today, we took coffee made in the Bosch Tassimo machine in the Waitrose Travel Mugs and a hot cross bun each!  The drive was about 20 minutes to the parking at Dungeness.  We had a walk over as far as the Polish Airman's Memorial .   We didn't go far as I started to get a migraine. This manifests itself with flashing/flickering in my eyes and a rather strange problem where I can't read and I can't remember words!  Back at the van I took a couple of  paracetamol as I didn't have any migraleve with me. We had our coffee and I went to have a look

Blog moved to new platform

I decided that trying to maintain different platforms for the blog(s) was getting difficult to maintain and so I have decided to move all the travel blogs to Travellerspoint. All the vehicle specific blogs such as "Suzi Triplo" will stay in Blogger. Only any that are travel oriented such as "Cruising" and "Devall Travel" have been given up and entries in future will be in  The new home of Devall Travels .

Staycation - Brixham

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Today we stayed locally in Brixham. My brother Neill and my niece Eleanor were going to visit. We were up about 0830, although as usual Reggie had kept us occupied from about 0530. He wakes at dawn and needs to have a comfort break! Once breakfasted I took Reggie for a short walk on the path behind the house that goes to Berry Head. It doesn't show up on Google Maps. We got about halfway before turning around.  The relatives arrived about 1125 and we had a chat and then decided to walk down to Brixham itself. We are about a km to the south on top of the hill. It was hot and so I wore my new Chinese hat. It did the job of keeping the sun off but is still horrible.  It won't last the week in my possession. Going downhill was easy enough with no thought of getting back... Loads of scenic views. Murder on ageing knees. Lunch was by the replica of the Golden Hind in the harbour. A meal-deal from the Co-Op. We to

Staycation - Back of Beyond to Brixham

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We were up early. When you have a dog and are in a confined space, when he is awake so are you.  We were all three of us ready for breakfast when we went over to collect fresh baguettes and croissants. We opted for one baguette between two for breakfast with Claire's homemade marmalade.  Then we were off. Emptying the grey water at the service point, then on the A35 with the first destination of West Bay near Bridport.  The A35 was again busy even though we had left the site before 11am. One of the problems in this area seems to be the dual carriageway roads become single lane, this leads to tailbacks as the traffic has to merge. The same happens on the A303 near Stonehenge. At West Bay we found a parking area for motorhomes near to the old station. There is a buffet in a short length of carriages. At £1.50 an hour it's cheaper than at home. We had a walk around the harbour and along the promenade to look at the cliffs and see the gang gliders, some up close.

Three go to Devon Again

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On the way at about 1.30pm. The Satnav says 3.35h to get to the Back of Beyond Campsite. Keeping to 60mph meant we arrived at scheduled pee stop for Reggie and coffee and cake for us was about two hours. From home the Satnav decided it was 155 miles. At Fleet Services Reggie had his dinner and we had a Starbucks and a cake from Waitrose that we bought this morning. Before I forget. May 4th - Star Wars Day.