Photo's on my phone - 16th to 25th of June 2023 (& Birthday do over)

 It's been another eventful week, not so much stress, just our normal chaotic existence.

I did the craft fair at the the National Exmoor Park centre, as you can see, it's a big reason for my decision to stop trying to be a business. The highlight of the day was the Waverley paddle steamer sailing past Lynmouth, apparently its the last paddle steamer in the world and regularly visits Ilfracombe, one day we will finally organise ourselves to book a trip.

Last Monday we drove the beast to Wales for its last trip and came home in a new car. I cried a lot, I hope the Beast has a happy new life in Wales and that someone will love it as much as we did. The new car is a Honda CRV and the best I could say was it's ok, so has become the Okcar.

We will have another Beast, just not now, maybe when we've retired and Phil doesn't need to commute every day.

The compensation for losing the Beast is the promise to finally replace the Zoom in a couple of years time. We want to take our new Zoom on a big European road trip for our 40th wedding anniversary.

The original Zoom was a Mark 1 MX5. In 2006 we drove it solidly for 10 days, from home in Suffolk, down through France, Germany, Switzerland, to Alassio on the Italian Riviera, along the coast through Monaco to St Tropez, where we ate fish soup & Tart Tropezienne in a cafe on the harbour for our 20th wedding anniversary and then back up through France to go home. It was the best holiday we ever had and have always wanted to do something similar again.

This time it will be in a posh Zoom, we're going to be 20 years older, so need a bit more comfort for our old achy bones. I've made the above image to look at every time I feel sad, it won't be this car, but it will be something similar and will have to be black to honour the original Zoom.

(Thanks to auto trader for the Mercedes photo, I would link the page, but can't find it, maybe some lucky person has bought the car.)

Anyway back to reality. 

Our first dog walk in the Okcar was up to Countisbury, the wild foxgloves are out. It was a lot warmer than it looks.

The next day the alternator broke on the Okcar, so much for buying a reliable car!!! But repairing it was a lot cheaper than having to repair it on the Beast.

Yesterday we took the Okcar on its first road to trip for my birthday do over, we drove across Devon, over Dartmoor to Slapton Sands on the South coast. 

It was the site for the disasterous rehearsal of the Normandy landings in 1944, a lot of men died in friendly fire, then German E-boats turned up and killed a lot more. 

Now it is a peaceful stretch of shingle in an idyllic setting, hard to imagine what happened there.

Yet again I didn't take many photo's, I was too busy enjoying the day.

I surprised myself to discover I really enjoyed driving the Okcar, its seats are really uncomfortable, but it makes up for it by being light, bouncy and very responsive to drive. Maybe it will be ok for the foreseeable future.