Tuesday 15 August 2017

Taking (in) a shower.





OK, so I cheated...this isn't really a meteor but my attempt to draw what we saw - but it looks just like one, honest!

Saturday night. But we didn't get (very) wet as the "shower" was of meteors - the Perseid show. Apparently an annual event, although a Scottish summer rarely has a clear night sky so we've never seen it... So, after a tip-off from Kristen we decided to take ourselves off to the coast again and try to get a good view of it since the forecast was good and we'd have a clear view to the north with no lights. Or so we hoped, anyway. I had a bit of a practice with the fancy menus on my camera and we thought we might get some good shots of the action.

Another reason for going out again was to test the new tent cover that we've had made. It completely replaces the original and knackered zip-on cover. With the habit that zips have to break or jam, and the huge faff we've experienced with this type of cover in the past made us choose to use straps instead. Tim made the new cover to incorporate some of the old one so there's a reasonable weather seal all around when the straps are snugged down, but the major advantage is, we hope, the ability to do most of the packing and unpacking from ground level. This will avoid at least some of the need to crawl about on top of the tent with the risk - nay, racing certainty - that one day I'll fall off.


Once the side straps are released the whole cover can be lifted off and stowed away. Only the front corners are formed, so it's much easier to put on. The rear corners - the ones that caused most grief before - are simply folded over like "hospital corners" on a bed sheet and fastened with a buckle.



The straps use the roofrack as a fastening point.








That removes the struggle to force a square corner over a point where it won't fit.
All the ladder parts can now be stowed under the cover as well as the support for the "Jumbo entrance porch" so we don't have to mess about fastening that to the underneath of the rack. The colour is suitably Deserty and we asked Tim to put the Hannibal patches back on it. It looks good and works well although we haven't yet trialled it in really wet conditions on a long journey. However it performs it'll be an improvement on what we had before and quite a bit cheaper than a new Hannibal cover- not to mention that we didn't need to take the tent off to fit it. That's a major bonus.. Some fine tuning of the buckle positions are needed on the awning side as we've now moved that to the higher setting. This might make the side curtains hang a little better. We also need to think about some kind of outlet in one of the side curtains for the stove flue. Since we don't want to make a hole in the roof section, the thing we need is this:
This will avoid the need to keep the door open....but we need to think carefully about which side to put it. The flue needs support from the awning frame and we don't want smoke blowing into the roof tent. It wouldn't be ideal to have the stove right in the middle of the space either since the table will only hang neatly from one point so the chairs would be too close to the stove, and it gets really hot. Maybe we won't get an ideal solution to this given the variation in all of these situations.

All set for some star gazing


Another great view from the kitchen door.

Some of our "neighbours" farther up the beach were clearly in Party Mood and invited us along to join in. They were celebrating a birthday and gave us a great welcome,complete with music and champagne. We spent a few hours with the party as the rain fell, the drink flowed and the songs got louder. By the time the rain stopped and the skies cleared I was in no state to get involved in complicated photography which is why this post just has my Artist's Impression of what followed. Sue was feeling a little wobbly as a result of sampling "a tiny drop" - she assures me - of some homemade tipple that had, shall we say, an unusual provenance. I stayed on the beach, away from the flames, and got a good view, as well as a stiff neck, watching the "shooting stars". It takes some concentration as well as determination since they don't exactly appear to order, but in 30 minutes I saw 4 very impressive streaks of light, one of which was trailing sparks!

...and another little bit of "fine tuning". The levelling wedges have always been stored underneath the floor, so we've made a neater job of the storage solution.

They're already pretty bashed about so a little more damage won't have much effect. Keeping them here gets the mud and crud out of the "dry" area inside and they're easy to get at when we park, given that they're the first things we need to sort out before we can unpack the tent. OK, so they're vulnerable to damage and theft but it's a risk worth taking and makes very good use of otherwise unuseable space. Although they look pretty obvious in the photo, in reality they're pretty well hidden under the body. I did, a long time ago, paint them black but this has worn off. I think you can buy these in black plastic anyway, so maybe, when they eventually have to be replaced, we'll get the "camouflaged" versions. No doubt they'll then be so hard to see we'll leave them behind one day....


Friday 11 August 2017

Some time at the beach.



Wild camping. It's what we like to do but this year we haven't managed much of it since it isn't a comfortable pastime in Spain or France, what with worrying if the Stasi are going to appear and insist we desist. With the massive investment in money and time we've put into Elly, we "need to get out more", as they say, and make some use of our investment.



Bow Fiddle Rock near Cullen (stock image)


A couple of weekends ago I did a kayak trip along part of the Moray coast and landed at a very secluded bay that had vehicle access and looked ideal for an overnight camp. Last weekend Sue and I took the truck and spent a very relaxing 24 hours there.

The weather, contrary to the forecast, was warm and sunny - most of the time - and with a gentle breeze that persuaded us to put up the awning complete with all the "toys" that go with it. We  had the front section attached overnight to keep the heat from....


 ...the woodburning stove, which we used for the first time this year and tried a different way of fuelling it. Since previous attempts weren't always successful, this time we tried the compressed fuel blocks again but cut them into thin slices. That appears to be the secret - they're too thick to burn properly if left whole and merely smoulder, but the greater surface area when split gives them a fighting chance.


They last a reasonable time too, so I didn't have to constantly feed the stove with sticks like before, and once a bed of embers had built up it was easy to maintain. We arranged the flexible flue to direct the smoke to the downwind end of the awning but I think we'll have to work out a way to get the flue through the walls without doing anything too permanent. With the stove going the inside the awning, even with one side mostly open, it got really warm. With the kettle on the top we had a constant supply of hot water, so perhaps we'll invest in a couple of cheap Thermos flasks so we don't waste the energy.



The awning walls don't hang correctly for a number of reasons, principally because I've mounted the suspension rails upside down (see previous post). Once we've got the new tent cover, which will remove the need to get at a zip, we can turn the awning the other way up and this will help the walls hang properly. There will still be a gap down the sides though, since the Defender's sides aren't vertical. We might make up some kind of filler panel for these bits and probably something to screen the underneath of the vehicle too.


Tim Phipps is making the new cover this week. We had to choose a different fabric as the one we wanted can only be ordered in 50 metre rolls - a tiny bit more than we need! It'll be good to get it fitted though. When we opened the tent on Friday night to air it there was a lot of water inside, swilling about on the floor. It was a good job we'd removed the mattress....


So, we packed everything up and set off for the coast on Saturday morning. We decided to explore some of the back roads that, even after having lived in the area for over 20 years, we'd never used. The coastal lanes are narrow but pretty much devoid of traffic, so progress doesn't have to be slow. We passed the old aerodrome at Boyndie - home of the Banff Strike Wing from WW2 - which will be a place to visit on a future trip. This time, though, we wanted to 'scope out the harbour at Whitehills for kayaking launch possibilities. There didn't appear to be any but the harbour is small and pretty and has a lot of pleasure craft moored there. Not much fishing activity that we saw, but maybe they were all away.Since it was a quiet day on the roads we decided to "overshoot" our intended camping spot by a few miles and visit Pennan again. The location for some of the scenes from the movie "Local Hero", Sue had to get (another) photo of her and the legendary telephone box..



Pennan harbour


Arriving at the beach we "tipped our hat" to the nearest residents, Bill and Lynn who, although they don't actually own the beach run a business that relies, in part, on the sea view and they're naturally keen to preserve it. Bill asked us to park "at the end of the beach" which meant, in practical terms, "as far away as you can get" but we thought this a fair request. If you lived at a beautiful place with a great view, would you want a succession of pikeys spoiling it every weekend by parking outside your window?



How's this for a view from your kitchen window?

We joined a group of 4x4s and caravans that we initially thought might be the notorious Travelling Folk who make a nuisance of themselves all over the Highlands every summer before returning to their "mobile" home parks in Essex for the winter. Happily we were wrong and had a number of interesting and amusing natters with the other temporary residents. It's always good to exchange ideas and swap stories. One couple had a bit of a grumble about the "bloke who thinks he owns the bloody beach" but I was amused the following day when, as I was chatting to him about the state of the world, they turned up with 2 empty bottles and asked him for water.....

On the way home we stopped to visit the village of Crovie - pronounced "Crivvy" apparently - which I've often seen from afloat but never walked there. And it is a walk; steeply downhill from the "visitors" car park which is necessary because there's only a very small parking area at the south end of the village, the rest being impossibly narrow for vehicles. The locals all have a handcart parked outside their tiny houses, ranged along the sea wall and backed by the cliffs and hills. So no back garden to hang out the washing; that's all done on communal drying lines "out the front", something I remember from my childhood but a sight long gone nowadays. According to Bill there's only one permanent resident, the rest are holiday homes. That must make for a lonely life in the winter, lashed by gales and freezing nor'easters. There used to be a footpath connecting the village to the nearby Gardenstown - which has a small harbour and road access - but the Great Storm of late January 1953 took that away and with it the village's lifeline to the "outside world". It's been in decline ever since, so I don't suppose we should lament the fact that the houses are unoccupied by locals. At least they're cared for and habitable. Some places on the west coast struck by similar disasters never recovered, were abandoned by the local economy and are derelict.


Crovie has no vehicle access, no piped gas and (almost) no permanent residents







We had a quick look at the village of Fordyce then stopped at Cullen for an al fresco lunch - grilled sausages.

Image result for Cullen Moray
The car park was full apart from the area at the river, but we couldn't get into it because some thoughtful local gauleiter has deemed that vehicles over 1.8 metres high should be excluded by placing a barrier over the road. This left us with the option of squeezing into a corner or going elsewhere. We opted for the latter, drove around to the other side of the river and parked on the stony beach just across the road from the car at bottom right of the picture. A sea view and Splendid Isolation. We did get some disapproving looks from some passers-by, though, but I couldn't see why - it wasn't as if we were spoiling anyone's view or getting in the way.


So, a really relaxing 24 hours. We'll do that again.