What have you done with your California today?

[SimonB]

Lovely Café in Dartmouth just across the Lower Ferry called Alf Resco. Superb breakfasts, ideal before a walk around the headland. It's in Lower Street. We went there when they had a marmalade festival on and tried some very unusual marmalades. Fantastic area, spent many long weekends down there.

 

[T6 CFO]

Lovely Café in Dartmouth just across the Lower Ferry called Alf Resco. Superb breakfasts, ideal before a walk around the headland. It's in Lower Street. We went there when they had a marmalade festival on and tried some very unusual marmalades. Fantastic area, spent many long weekends down there.

Great name for a cafe. Can definitely see us visiting there again soon and will give it a try. Good distance for a couple of nights stopover and loads to see and do.

Mike

 

[Velma's Dad]

Nothing very exotic this week but last night stayed at one of our nicest pubstop finds for ages. The Tichborne Arms, about five miles east of Winchester. Lip smacking local beers from barrels behind the bar, proper pub food (bread and butter pudding made with panettone - genius), and a dog or two under every table. Velma made very welcome in a quiet car park looking over open fields. And they left the pub loos open for us overnight. Highly recommended if you're down that way.

 

[Yorkie]

Jealous of everyone took my California to work it sat in the car park then I came home.

Worse; work car park then left him in dealership car park for tomorrow's mot

 

[Borris]

Nothing very exotic this week but last night stayed at one of our nicest pubstop finds for ages. The Tichborne Arms, about five miles east of Winchester. Lip smacking local beers from barrels behind the bar, proper pub food (bread and butter pudding made with panettone - genius), and a dog or two under every table. Velma made very welcome in a quiet car park looking over open fields. And they left the pub loos open for us overnight. Highly recommended if you're down that way.

View attachment 20441

That's a gorgeous pub, thatched if remember correctly. Is it a Britstop location?

It's not far from where our youngest daughter lives so we have often found ourselves in there. It has a lovely atmosphere along with a resident crisp gobbling, floor sniffing, hoover hound.

Mrs B and I are members of the VCC (Veteran Car Club) and have also used it as a lubrication stop on several rallies. Nice pub and nice location.

For rally read - leave hotel after a hearty breakfast and alot of oily tinkering then drive to the mid morning coffee stop, usually a pub. Then drive to another pub for a sumptuous lunch. Then drive back to the hotel the pretty way possibly stopping for tea and tiffin. Then still more oily tinkering and replacing the bits that either fell off or stopped working during that days trundling around. Then if you're lucky an early bath followed by drinks and a splendid evening meal with other like minded Mr and Mrs Toad types.
In my exerience, the only thing that can help to stop a person putting on weight over one of these rallies is if you spend time helping other VCC members that have broken down or to brake down yourself thus missing out on one of these fodder refuelling stops. The average rallies usually only lasts three days. Any more and the springs can't take it!

 

[Velma's Dad]

That's a gorgeous pub, thatched if remember correctly. Is it a Britstop location?

Yes it is in the Britstop book, although I happened to find it on one of the motorhome pub sites:
http://wildcamping.moonfruit.com/pub-stopovers/

We really like pub-overnighting and the Cali of course is a brilliant vehicle for it (provided you're prepared to rely on portable or otherwise ad-hoc ... ahem... "toileting" arrangements).

Sorry, off-topic, but what is your veteran car? Sounds brilliant.

 

[Zenaj]

I took some pictures of my new Coast

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Amarillo]

Sorry, off-topic, but what is your veteran car? Sounds brilliant.

I love veteran cars. The first Sunday of each November is when veteran car owners celebrate the end of road safety being taken seriously in this country by driving from London to Brighton. We try to join them as they pass through Croydon, on our tandem, and more or less keep pace with them to Brighton as they chug and choke along.

 

[Blue Juice]

First weekend trip, mountain biking and paddleboarding in Henley

 

[briwy]

Seaside. Next to the beach near St. Tropez.



Sunset from wild camp a couple of nights ago and the Sanctuary of Notre Dame de Salette about 1800m up. Stunning views from up there. Bit nippy though.

 

[SimonB]

We are having old paint removed from the Bath stone at the front of the house.
Clouds of dust everywhere thus I'm having to dust the Cali to get as much off as possible so it won't go down the drainage pipes and block them. If it gets wet it turns into a paste.
Then wash the Bristol Belle for the 3rd time this week.
We also had to vacuum the dust from plants as it clogs the leaves and flowers. Neighbours most amused that we are vacuuming the garden and the outside of the van.

 

[Julie and Archie]

'Worked from home' at Cromer MCC site. No photos as obviously working very very hard. But very excited about weekend away again. Yesterday had meeting in Cambridge. Archie had 'play date' at Oaklingham Doggie Day Care where he ran around barking with his new chums for 5 hours. Brilliant. He slept a lot today. I used to do lots of long train journeys when going to meetings - not anymore!

 

[T6 CFO]

We are having old paint removed from the Bath stone at the front of the house.
Clouds of dust everywhere thus I'm having to dust the Cali to get as much off as possible so it won't go down the drainage pipes and block them. If it gets wet it turns into a paste.
Then wash the Bristol Belle for the 3rd time this week.
We also had to vacuum the dust from plants as it clogs the leaves and flowers. Neighbours most amused that we are vacuuming the garden and the outside of the van.

Messy old business. Once put a terracotta floor down and had to machine sand each tile. Several hundred of them. Had a broken arm in plaster at the time. Side of my house and me were a lovely terracotta colour and required frequent washing. Hospital could not believe the state of my plaster.
Nice floor though as no doubt front of your house will be.

Mike

 

[Borris]

Yes it is in the Britstop book, although I happened to find it on one of the motorhome pub sites:
http://wildcamping.moonfruit.com/pub-stopovers/

We really like pub-overnighting and the Cali of course is a brilliant vehicle for it (provided you're prepared to rely on portable or otherwise ad-hoc ... ahem... "toileting" arrangements).

Sorry, off-topic, but what is your veteran car? Sounds brilliant.

Thanks VD. We will probably try the Tichbourne Arms sometime next week. Our regular grandparent duties have been suspended for a week over the Easter school holidays. So we're freeeeeeeee.
Yippee

The Veteran car thing is something for which I really need therapy. As with Mr Toad I too have always had an issue with lovely motors, these are the latest. "Oh bliss, oh rapture, oh parp parp".


This one's Henrietta, a 1912 Austin 10/12 Sirdar Phaeton. Registered in Shropshire one month before Titanic sank. It was shipped to France during WW1 to be used for the war effort. Afterwards it spent much of it's early life running a saw bench in a builders yard in Shropshire until they broke it!
Note Mrs B's yellow mittens. She makes a very effective direction indicator and and sat nav, shouting loudly in my ear if I don't obey her instructions.

Here we are stopped in the New Forrest so that I could retrieve the foot operated bell which had just fallen off. Situation normal!
This lovely old motor is Rene', a 1909 Renault AX. He was first registered as a chassis to the head chef at the Railway Hotel in York. He had a local coach builder make it's unique body. Mechanically, I liken it to a four wheeled concrete mixer, once started it will bang along all day quite happily.
It's a shame it's out of warrantee as I've just had to have the wooden rear wheels rebuilt. Still the original ones had lasted 108 years!

Strictly speaking our's are Edwardian brass era cars. True london to Brighton Run veteran cars have to have been registered before the 31st December 1904 to take part.

 

[Velma's Dad]

The Veteran car thing is something for which I really need therapy. As with Mr Toad I too have always had an issue with lovely motors, these are the latest. "Oh bliss, oh rapture, oh parp parp".

Fantastic pics, thanks for sharing. Looks like a great excuse for breeches and leather gauntlets. The Kop Hill climb is quite close to us - if you ever do that one, give us a shout and we'll come and cheer you on.

 

[Borris]

Fantastic pics, thanks for sharing. Looks like a great excuse for breeches and leather gauntlets. The Kop Hill climb is quite close to us - if you ever do that one, give us a shout and we'll come and cheer you on.

I've been to several hill climbs over the years but not Kop Hill......yet.

I've just googled Kop Hill only to discover that the hill record of 26.8 seconds set by Count Louis Zborowski in 1922 still stood at the time of this events revival in 1999.
The Count lived at Higham Park, about a mile from where we live in Kent. He built several huge aero engined monsters that he called Chitty Bang Bang 1, 2 etc.

As a boy Ian Fleming was inspired by these cars and later wrote a novel entitled Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. It is said that Roald Dahl later used it for the basis of the film script for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Apart from a car that raced, I cannot see any other parallels with Zborowski's story.

One of the Count's cars was called the Higham Special, a 27litre V12 Liberty aero engined beast that was later purchased by Parry Thomas who named it Babs. Thomas used Babs for world land speed record attempts and in April 1926 he achieved 171.02 mph and attained the world record at Pendine Sands in Wales. Unfortunetly he was killed trying to break his own record and the car was buried in the sand dunes. Some years ago it was exhumed and after much work is now going again and touring major events like the Goodwood Revival.

Sorry, I have now wandered very much off topic.

 

[kave]

We live in a town 70km from the sea so we use the Beach as a way to get to the ocean more. Being close to the sea has it's downsides though. Yesterday we had 18C degrees, quite ok for April.
We loaded the California and went down to coastal town Varberg (Swedens windsurfing place no:1).
We have 100km to drive and saw the temperature drop constantly the closer to the sea we got.
When we arrived it was 11.5C degrees and quite windy:

I almost liked to go home again. Well, we took a walk on the beach:

We elevated the roof and had our meal inside:

Due to some issues we went home after sunset at 20.00.
We saw our first other California, a T5 SE, taking a small turn on the closed pitch with 2m height restriction. We figured they like a chat but they just drove away after noticing the toilet was closed. Quite big problem in Sweden, our country is not very populated but some people just hate the fact that it can be possible to park next to the ocean in a Camper and have good nights sleep so technically this possibility is closed winter time.

 

[briwy]

Marseille. Absolutely thronged. Couldn't park anywhere so drive along the front. Good views out to the Chateau d'If and the little islands.
The Vieux Port is very good. Full of literally hundreds of yachts.
Now camped up by the river Gard.
Pont de Gard tomorrow

 

[Dottie]

View attachment 20364 Headed north to the C&CC site at Ravenglass for a few days, hopefully sunny ones.

Try Eskdale at the other end of the steam train trip - lovely site...with great pubs nearby...

 

[Jabberwocky]

Drove to Bolsover (60 Miles) to meet the guys at Everything VW California, helped fit a "C" rail, met some nice people, shared some experiences, asked a lot questions (sorry) and bought a few things (even if some were from the Cafe round the corner- nice cakes I might add) and visited Bolsover Castle.

Nice day out in the sunshine!

 

[headsuk]

Just got back from Normandy France
Very emotional trip down the coast, last stop was Belgium to see a relative

 

[pjm-84]

3mm ribbed rubber matting to the shelves and cupboards. Looks good and easy to cut.

 

[GillianC]

Spent a few pleasant hours at the caravan and Motorhome show at Romsey. Lovely setting of Broadlands. Managed to buy a jacket, collapsible basket and some dog food! Small event and would imagine the camping would be great fun. Lots of food stalls, bar and live music in the evening.

 

[Wind Witch]

Stayed overnight at the C&MC site at Chatsworth House after a good day at the Shop opening for Everything Campervan in Bolsover. Bought some tie downs for the awning and looked at toppers - good to be able to literally feel the quality

Caravan site packed (obviously at the start of the Easter hols) but a gate leads into the grounds of Chatsworth House - nice walking, peaceful, and I got to use my new binoculors to look at the deer. Kept awak half the night by birds arguing - amr and Mrs Pheasant are strolling past the van door as I type.

Planning to pootle home via the delights of the Peak District. Lovely.

 

[sapto]

Once again staying at Lake Zug to check some tests from my students using my Cali as a office with fridge.