Stratford-upon-Avon… Finally off exploring!

It’s more work than you would think to fit out a motorhome with 18 months of full-time living in mind! It pretty much took us 3 full days, the first involved clearing out every cupboard, shelf, external storage bin and every other nook and cranny you could think of. Then figuring out what is needed and what can be discarded.

Day 2 was pretty much a day of shopping (FUN!), the Bullring is Birmingham’s main shopping mall and would be at least as large as 277 in Newmarket. We were delighted to sort out local SIM cards and a few other items before heading for the much larger-footprint retailers for linen, camping supplies and a load of other bits & pieces. I’m sure if Anita was writing this blog the detail would be somewhat less general however she seems to be suffering from jetlag a little worse than your author this evening… so unfortunately she is in bed and you’re stuck with me for now 😀.

Our final day in the camp ground was pretty much unpacking and storing our purchases from the previous day; a trip to the grocery store then dropping off the rental car (which was a bit like cutting the apron strings, we were sad to see the little blue Volvo go). Over the 3 days Anita has done a truly amazing job of setting up our little home while my duties included sanitising and flushing the water tanks and other such excitement.

We were delighted to land in England on Saturday to fine and sunny weather with a high of 18deg. Not bad we thought… that is until today when the high was around 6deg and about half an hour from now, snow is forecast to fall. I guess that’s the UK in spring – someone told me that it’s more likely to snow at Easter than Christmas over here!

Which leads me onto today. The last piece of motorhome fit out was some new house-batteries for the motorhome however they weren’t being delivered to the fixit place until 2pm. So with Stratford-upon-Avon only just over 20 miles down the road it seemed like a good impromptu plan. And I’ve got to say it lived up to the hype. The main claim to fame is being the home town of one William Shakespeare however the river-side and old architecture make the place equally special. We stopped for a quiet beverage at an establishment dating back to 1594 and saw many others just as old or older.

Having taken a couple of wrong turns on the way we arrived at the motorhome fixit place just before 5pm for a simple swap-out of some aged house batteries. All of which went off without a hitch until it was time to leave when the motorhome developed a random and (so far) unexplained fault. It would start no problem but when you pumped the accelerator nothing happened… which pretty much means we aren’t going anywhere. Luckily we were at a motorhome fixit place however despite 2 of their experts trying everything they could think of for over an hour, the problem remained unsolved. Which, as we speak, remains the case. Fortunately the place we parked up for the battery replacement was reasonably flat, and with new batteries on board, all our systems are fine for a night pretty much anywhere. So I write to you this evening from TMD Motorhomes in Redditch just south of Birmingham with a reasonably noisy freight depot over the road to keep us company.

Tomorrow is our 10th wedding anniversary and we have a night booked at a very nice establishment by the name of New Hall which is just to the north of Birmingham. Either the good folk of TMD Motorhomes will solve the problem in the morning and we’ll drive there, otherwise we’ll pack a couple of overnight bags and catch an uber 😀

Until next time this is Adventures with Harvey signing off.