Beating the Bushes.

Panhard Rod bushes. Little bits of rubber and a steel tube, all encased in a tin skin. Ought to be easy to change, I thought, until I read the Haynes Joke Book and realised that a 20 tonne hydraulic press might be a good tool to have lying about the workshop...

Yeah, OK. That aside, I decided to go ahead and try it myself. Getting the rod off wasn't too difficult but there isn't much room underneath the engine and one of the nuts was 'kin tight. There's not enough room to get a socket onto the nut so I used an adjustable wrench on that end, and a 22mm socket and breaker bar on the bolt head. Not recommended practice, but I was going to bin the bolts anyway. All out, and the bolts were "shouldered" and well in need of a change. The soft bits, once I'd cleaned the dust off, turned out to be blue Polybushes. These are often considered to be "better than the originals", partly because they're easier to fit without the need for the aforementioned 20 tonne press.





The bush at the chassis end had a tiny amount of play in it, but enough to hear a "click" when I was swinging on the rod underneath. From what I've read, this might be a source of the "wobbly wheel" we've been trying to cure for months. As the cost of a genuine new set, plus bolts, was less than getting all the wheels rebalanced, I thought it was worth a try. At a guess and based on what little reliable evidence I uncovered during the saga last year, these bushes had done about 20,000 miles.






They wouldn't push out so I burned them out with a blowlamp. A smelly, messy job but simple enough. Now to press the new ones in. Being the original rubber ones, I reckoned I could get them in using a bench vice and a couple of suitably sized sockets to do the pushing. Now, unless you've got a nice big vice, I wouldn't recommend this - as I turned the screw I could almost feel the metal wanting to explode under the pressure. However, it worked right up to the last 3mm or so, when I had to change to a slightly different diameter pusher...This then slipped and crushed the sleeve of the bush....oh dear! Or words to that effect.

Now, if I'd been anywhere remote then I'd have cleaned up the damage and carried on, but clearly not in this case. Once I'd got the damaged bush out - and this took an hour and a lot of smoke and chiselling - I was now faced with a choice - use the Polybush kit that I already had or have Ian Watt's team get another "proper" bush and press both of them in using a proper press. I chose to let the professionals do it. This involved a 48 hour delay as not one motor factor or dealer within 50 miles had another bush except the local Landrover dealer. And it cost FOUR times the price of the one I'd damaged, the alternative being to wait until I could get another by mail order.


Refitting the rod was simple enough although since I couldn't get a socket onto the nut I'd need a better way of tightening it - putting the torque wrench onto the bolt ain't a good idea. This required another investment of nearly a tenner at Halfords for a 22mm ring spanner. As there wasn't enough room underneath to get a decent swing on the thing, we had to get the front end on ramps and make a lever to put on the spanner...

...and since I didn't have a Sorcerer's Apprentice handy - Sue was busy - I needed a 3rd hand....

You can see that there's no room for a socket on the nut (at the back).

I had to guess at the 88Nm the nut needs. When I took the rod off the NS was quite loose compared to the OS, so I gave them a half turn past "V Tight" to make them "F Tight" and I think that'll do. A quick test drive and ....result! The wobble is no more! Cost? Well, given the need to buy the spanner and the very expensive new bush the bill came to very little less than if Sandy had done it all, but I've learnt a little bit more about Landrover fixing and that's always a Good Thing. He made no charge for the work he did, either. Polybushes? Despite all the hype I don't think that, in this case anyway, it's worth fitting them unless you happen to have a problem away from a decent workshop. I'll carry mine in the spares box because I won't need a press to fit 'em but I probably won't need to repeat the job for a long time yet.





Another good reason for doing the work myself is here:

This is the NS track rod end. If I hadn't been underneath doing the Panhard rod, I'd never have seen this. Given it was cold and wet I almost put this job off but eventually persuaded myself that I might as well get on with it since my hands were dirty anyway. Because at least one of these things seems to need replacing before every MoT test, I had a stock of spares on the shelf and the job took less than an hour. I'll still need to get the wheel alignment checked properly, though, since the outside of the NS tyre looks like it's getting a scrubbing, more so than the other side, anyway.




The last task was to clean off the oily gunk under the sump and oil filter. The reason for this was stated by PITA as a "leaking sump gasket". I discovered a few weeks ago that the oil was actually coming from a split in the crankcase breather hose so this has been replaced and we no longer have a little spot of oil underneath everytime I park. Cured? We'll wait and see but it looks good so far.

Oh the joy of a frosty morning and a cold spanner....

It's getting to that time of year again, cold and damp, and any thoughts of major work have been put on hold. With Elly in the garage there's only just room to close the door so working around her is difficult. However, there are some jobs that'll need doing before our trip next year so the local garage might get some more business since any major, or even minor work has to be done outside on the gravel and with little protection from the weather....

Fairly high on the Job Priority List will have to be the persistent fuel leak. Having chased this leak all over the place and sorted out various points that were clearly not as tight as they should be, we found that when we filled the long-range tank there were drips from the forward edge of the main tank. When the fuel in the LR tank dropped to about 10 litres - a guess since there's no gauge for it - then the drips stopped. Mike proved this by filling both tanks, moaned about the leak again and siphoned about 25 litres out again. I'll tell yer, sucking diesel through a plastic pipe is unpleasant enough anyway, but when you've got a beard for the stuff to splash into, well....makes a glass of wine taste a bit odd for a while. Anyway, the leak is coming from the top of the main tank where the fuel return goes in - or not, in our case. 

this diagram came from  https://www.landroverworkshop.com/diagrams/fuel-emission-systems/fuel-air-inlet-systems/fuel-tank-pump-and-mountings_53500

The cause is either a broken pipe - part 20 in the diagram, a broken seal (part 21) or a loose connection, all of which need the tank dropped to fix. With no ramp or sufficient muscle, this is a professional garage job. We'll just have to pick a time when the tank's almost empty. It's going to be expensive but the alternative is a smelly rear end, just like last time and not pleasant to sleep and eat with the smell of leaking fuel even if it's only a drip every minute or so. The fuel spreads out over the base of the tank and soaks up dust, which soaks up more fuel and so on until the whole of the underside of the tank, chassis and crossmember are thick with it. It'll be a good time to renew all the rubber pipes since they don't look too great either, and we'll do a proper job using proper parts on the tank breather (25-27) which we had to sort out in France this year.

Now that we've moved the Engel onto the "middle shelf" the Stealth Camper option is open again. With that in mind we've had another thought about blackout curtains. The curtain rod arrangement between the front and back worked but it was untidy and awkward to use. We need something that just fits onto the windows. Mike raided the scrapyard at work again and came home with a few metres of what looked like brown string. This is basically a fridge magnet - quite literally. 

If you strip the seal from a fridge door and cut it open the stuff inside is a strip of magnetic rubber that is strong enough to hold thin material against steel surfaces. Et voila! - the new blackout blinds! Made from bits of old tent - the really light stuff. The bits of Elly that aren't magnetic just had some bits of the brown string glued to it to fool the magnets that hold up the blind. If carefully fitted we've checked from the outside and no chinks of light leak out and because they're black the telltale sign that there's folk in residence isn't so obvious.
 

 We'll do something similar to hold midge netting in place as well. The doors and side windows get this treatment while the windscreen has a foil heat reflector painted black on the outer side and held in place by the sun visors. The blinds don't offer much in the way of heat insulation though, so we may still have to make some radiator foil - type liners for cold weather living.

Moving the fridge has meant we've lost the storage space for the spare gas bottle.

 We saw some very neat external carriers on some of the rigs at Stratford so we've made up something similar - but much simpler - that uses the ladder as a basic frame. The rest is made up from mild steel strip bent up on the bench and the hinge is a leftover from some DIY project.

The whole thing is rock-solid when closed with a bolt and wingnut, the other nuts are the anti-tamper square ones and there's a padlock to make sure we stay the rightful owners. With the roof tent in place we don't use the rear ladder anyway, so now it's working for a living.

The doors have had the security lock treatment but the windows are still vulnerable. Not much we can do about the front windows but a bit of work with the welding torch and Mike made up some grilles for the back that should at least make a casual tea-leaf have second thoughts. 

It was also a good time to finish off the inner door paintwork to match the outside and get rid of the previous owner's attempts to do the same but with a pot of Dulux and a yard broom. This aspect isn't really very important, but it's just a lot more rewarding to do the job properly instead of getting a little bit more irritated every time we look at something that we just didn't bother to do right the first time.



We've had yet another try at fixing the roof lining....this time we had to strip off everything previously glued - or rather, not glued - to the rear roof panels. We looked at buying some self-adhesive "egg box" sound insulation from Noisekiller but it's quite expensive and probably not very easy to clean either, so with loads of thick closed cell foam lying about we've tried again using that and some different glue.

This'll be the 4th attempt, having tried just about everything short of tile cement!

The bit over the cooker has radiator foil glued to it to provide a wipe-clean surface. We'll see how long it takes for this latest attempt to fall off!

Our requests for stickers to a number of off-road equipment suppliers has had some success. It'd be unfair to name those who didn't bother to respond - not even a "no, go away" - and that's disappointing. It might make the decision easier when it comes to spending money on replacement parts, though. Those who did respond - and some were very generous with their stuff - will get a mention at some point, either directly or in pictures, as well as some of our cash. A big "Thank You" to everyone who helped make Elly a little more "personalised".😎

Mike's been wanting to do a bit more painting - adding a stripe or two to Elly's flanks, but that will have to wait until the weather gets warmer/drier/less windy....next summer, in other words, and perhaps not even then. Oh, for a bigger garage!

....and finally....the Wobble is back. Despite having had both front wheels balanced there's still a really annoying "steering wheel wobble" at 50-55mph. This is just the speed we tend to spend most of our time. Having checked everything else, Mike is homing in on something called a Panhard Rod. I can see his legs sticking out from underneath, on the gravel, in the rain.....

Show Time

Last weekend we took Elly on an outing. A 1200 mile round trip to Stratford-on-Avon and the annual Adventure Overland Show.

We last visited this venue 2 years ago and weren't greatly impressed with it. Having decided to give it another go, we were pleasantly surprised at the number and variety of trade stands, seminars and attendance from "PLU" - People Like Us - who really make an event like this special. Swapping ideas and experiences with fellow travellers opens up all kinds of possibilities and options.

There was so much going on we forgot to take pictures, so I guess you'll have to go to the site to get a feel for what was happening. Given the distance we had to travel we couldn't spend more than a day at the show, arriving on Friday evening and leaving very early on Sunday and some might say that the journey is too long for just one day, but what else is the truck for? We could've just gone down the coast and camped near the beach again, but this is a one-off and, as it turned out, worth the expense. It's certainly grown as an event since our last visit and we're glad we made the decision to go again. The only disappointment was a seminar that Mike especially wanted to listen to. Unfortunately what promised to be a valuable and informative session turned out to be nothing more than a "sales pitch" for the presenter's business. If that weren't enough the PowerPoint slide show was a shambles, with members of his support team trying to resolve it by crawling about the floor around his feet, pulling out wires, muttering suggestions and trying to be invisible. After 15 minutes of this we left, wondering whether we'd missed the point and it was supposed to be a comedy show....




We went down with a few bits and pieces of expedition gear that we had no use for - spare waffle boards, camp cots, ground anchors and the like that we hoped to sell. To carry the boards Mike made up a suspension system on the side, which is needed anyway as the only other place to put them is on the roof. We've found that if something is difficult to get access to, it doesn't get used, and having them on the roof makes this more likely. Moving them to the side means we're more inclined to use them than trying to manage without.

The side rails were put on a while ago, and the waffle board "sand ladders" are now hung between the rails. We started by fixing 2 gate hinge pins to the side, suitably backed by aluminium plates to spread the load. The slotted angle bracket is for a locking cable. 2 x12mm pin eyes fit over the hinge pins like this:

A bit of plastic pipe stops the thread from cutting into the board and the washer keeps the abrasive board surface from damaging anything on the hinge. The pins are long enough to pass through both of the 50mm boards and then large retainers - made from cutting discs - and wing nuts hold everything on. Extra support and security is provide by cam straps and a lockable wire. When not in use the pins lift off.

Extra support will be used with straps attached to the cargo rails.

Sometime I'll get around to drilling holes for R-clips in the ends of the pins, otherwise we'll inevitably lose the wing nuts at some point.



We sold the spare boards and invested some of the cash in a side mounted jerry can holder. We made some of these out of steel mesh for Daphne and they worked well enough for us to consider making some more. Luckily - and a bit cheekily as the show wasn't officially "open" when we descended like vultures- we found a Front Runner carrier that was also being offloaded by someone else. It was a bit ratty and rusted, but since these things are well made to begin with, this wasn't going to be a problem. A couple of hours cleaning and painting and it came up like new. These things are quite expensive so we got a bargain, I reckon. It needed a bit of modification to fit our set up since we have a full length rack and the top clamp is designed to fit the roof gutter so with the gutter already full of roofrack rail it wouldn't fit, to begin with, at least. We changed the clamp around a bit and, with the bottom brackets bolted through the side panels it's as firm as the DIY versions we made for Daphne.

We had to mount it partially over the driver side rear window since the waffle boards take up the rest of the space along the side. Luckily this window isn't necessary for clearance at road junctions, unlike the one on the other side, so this isn't much of a loss.
The set-up now looks a lot "busier" but at least more accessible in a hurry.

This retainer can be locked and the cap can't be opened without taking the can off the carrier.

One little problem we've been fighting with is how to fill the onboard water tank. Because the tube between the filler and the tank has a curve in it, the air in the tank can't get out as fast as the water from a hose or other filler is trying to get in. The result is a lot of spitting and farting with a lot of water coming straight back out again unless we fill the tank really slowly.... We needed some means of venting the tank during the filling process. I tried a breather tube alongside the main filler tube but all we got was water spilling inside which largely negated the advantage of an outside filler neck. There was also no way of judging how much water was in the tank or when it was properly full.

Mike fitted a push-fit pipe union to the top of the tank under the wheel arch. The "plug" is dead easy to pull out when filling the tank and lets the air out nicely. It also lets us know when the tank is nearly full. It might be a good idea to remove the plug when using the pump, too, as the breather in the filler cap is tiny - not much more than a pinhole -  and will probably get clogged eventually.









Having deliberated for weeks on the solution to heating the awning with the Frontier stove, we made a protective "register plate" for the flue from aluminium sheet and fitted it into the side panel ...

It's cut into an elliptical shape so the flue pipe can exit at a 45 degree angle. There's a waterproof cover for the plate for when we're not using the stove. I should've taken some photos of it in use at Stratford, but it works perfectly. The only addition might be some kind of "drip catcher" to stop rain from getting around the side of the flue and dripping onto the floor inside. This will only be an issue if we bother with a groundsheet, which is unlikely under the stove anyway.

The Engel fridge got it's first real outing as well. It's very efficient but heavy and large compared to the Waeco we've used before, so this limits the options for using the "double bed" sleeping arrangements. This is a very useful feature which we've used several times and around which the entire interior was designed, so we wanted to have this option restored. Mike cut a 50mm strip from the end of the kitchen worktop and built a shallow support that covered the water tank filler. This gave enough room to let us have the Engel along the side instead of the centre.

A trial run for the Engel in it's new stowage. The platform underneath it could perhaps have some drawer runners added so it'll let the fridge slide out...heavy though.

With the Front Runner Wolf boxes down the middle we have the double bed "Stealth Camper" option again. It would be nice to have the fridge slide out for easier access so we might look at some heavy duty drawer slides like we used before. The only real downside is the loss of access to the storage and, more importantly, fuses underneath. For that reason we'll probably only have this configuration when we definitely plan on using it. The rest of the time it'll be a possibility but would mean emptying the fridge before we can move it....lightweight it ain't! While we were messing about we moved the solar panel connectors for better access and tidied some wiring - all little snags discovered over the weekend. In this position the fridge does cover most of the blindspot window, but I can see enough over the top - just. Obviously we can't use the cool box extension on top unless we don't need access to the fridge at all, which isn't likely - the cold Prosecco needs to be available!


The heat insulation (camping mat) is beginning to fall off the roof. The bits towards the front seem to be OK but those over the stove don't want to stay in place. We'll have to experiment again with adhesives since the double-sided tape hasn't worked and neither did the spray-on "heavy duty" glue we tried after the first can ran out. That can worked well on the front pieces but the manufacturers have now changed the composition for (yawn) Health and Safety reasons and the new formula is hopeless.

Finally this month we gave some more thought to security. With Defender door locks being, shall we say, less than perfect I fitted a combination lock/sliding bolt thing to Daphne's driver's door, but this was troublesome if not used regularly as it tended to corrode just enough to make the tumblers tricky to operate. This time we decided to go down the "ugly but functional" route and use old-fashioned padlocks.

So, not pretty but pretty obvious (= deterrent) and needing some determination to break through. Quick and easy to use, too, so we're more likely to. We'll still use the Landrover door locks but the extra security defends against someone breaking a window and releasing them.
The back door has a similar arrangement but rather more robust. I'd have preferred similar locks for the front doors but there just isn't the room to fit them.




Next month we'll be starting the prep - slowly - for the next trip south to, well, hopefully the bottom of Western Sahara. We still need to do a bit more "camouflage" since some of the police in Morocco obviously thought we were something more than the usual tourists and we'd rather not make anyone suspicious enough to have us unpack the truck. Quite apart from the hassle, a few slabs of San Miguel exposed to the sunlight might get us attention we can do without. A few advertising stickers might do the trick so we've written to a few places in the UK who might be kind enough to help. 

We began to collect flags and the like this year to enhance the "I'm just here for the beach" image, but I think we might cover up the Catalan sticker we picked up in the Pyrenees before getting to Spain next year. Might not be popular or even legal by then.


We're also starting our collection of stuff for the First Aid kits that the chap in Mhamid and elsewhere asked for.

 

 I know a lot of us have a pretty cynical view of giving things to people down there and to some extent we agree, as you'll see from previous posts. However, our experience in 2016 suggested that there is a place for some carefully directed help. Have we, in our comfortable existence, ever been faced with a fifty mile walk to the dentist with a raging toothache? How about being stuck up on a desert plateau guarding the wildlife with a severe case of gutrot and nothing to help relieve it? A nasty cut on your foot that isn't going to heal unless you can keep the dirt out of it, but the closest Elastoplast is a 2-day hike away? We think a few carefully-targeted packages could make someone's life a bit easier. What's to lose?

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....

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.

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.