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.

My Birthday

Yesterday was my birthday. 
I woke up to lots of cards and "happy birthday" wishes on Facebook, opened some amazing thoughtful presents from loving family and friends. Including 3 bottles of Tolkien French wine from my son & his husband (they know me so well), a second hand x-box so I can finally play Morrowwind and some beautiful new pens and interesting paper to draw on.

I've written this post for all the people who have asked me if I had a nice birthday, so don't feel you need to read it, I might even decide to delete it in a few days.

We took to the road for our celebration road trip, we both love driving so always go on a celebration road trip for birthday's anniversary's etc etc

This was an extra special treat as the car has just spent 3 weeks at the garage having 6 new injectors fitted, we'd only just got it back the previous night. We decided to go to Padstow for fish & chips or Polzeath for a pasty, both places we love. 

About 35 miles into our journey Phil noticed the fuel was going down really quickly, the range had been about 230 miles in the tank when we left home, but the reading had gone down to about 170, we'd lost 60 miles while only driving 35. So we turned round to back to the Land Rover garage (25 miles away), by the time we'd driven 15 miles the reading was down to about 100 miles left in the tank, so we stopped to put more fuel in to make sure we got to the garage, and grabbed a service station happy birthday floppy sandwich (not the birthday lunch I was hoping for), by this time the fuel was noticeably pouring out of the engine.

Luckily the fuel lasted till we got it to the garage and they put it on the ramp straight away, a pipe had blown off one of the injectors, so they put it back on while we wandered around the compound looking at broken cars.

Phil took these 2 photo's and posted them on our family whatsapp, the captions are his.

(I wouldn't normally post the one of me looking like a bag lady in my giant pink waterproof, but it illustrates the fun we were having in the rain).

"Queenie enjoying her birthday at the rubbish bins where all the bad land rovers go ... our bad landcover is currently on a ramp in the garage."

"Where the really naughty cars go .. soon to be joined by ours!!"

(They don't look too bad till you notice the weeds growing up round the tyres)

The garage fixed the pipe, washed the diesel off the car and engine and we took to the road again. This time we decided to wander the country roads south of South Molton, aiming for Bideford, to end up in Barnstaple so we could pick up a Chinese takeaway before going home. We'd driven for about 30 mins then Phil noticed the fuel dropping again, so we turned round and went back to the garage, by the time we got there we only had 20 miles left in the tank. The pipe had fallen off again! 

It might have just fallen off or it might have been loosened while being washed, whatever it was it the we decided to go back to Barnstaple, walk the dogs along the river and wait for the Chinese takeaway to open.

We parked the car, got out and Phil couldn't find his phone, I checked "find my phone" and it was travelling north on the M5, so he cancelled all his cards and phoned the phone. The man on the other end said he'd found it at the petrol pump, couldn't find anyone to give it to as the pumps are automated on the forecourt of a empty garage, so he was going to take it home and post it to the address on the driving license.

According to "find my phone" its at a post office in Hereford, fingers crossed the nice man is as nice as he sounded on the phone.

So we walked the dogs along a very wet river band in the pouring rain, picked up the Chinese, took it home to eat with Daisy and Sam, drank far too much red wine, drunkenly recited poetry to each other, now I have a hangover.

This morning Phil went to work in Daisy's car and the Land Rover sits in the naughty corner under the car port, thinking about what it did wrong yesterday. 

We need to decide what to do about the pipe, do we trust that it's been fixed? or do we buy a new one to be fitted which will cost more money?

Either way we'll sell it in November after its had its mot and buy a sensible, reliable car which is both economical and cheap to mend.

I love my Land Rover and will miss it dreadfully, but I don't have the money to waste every time it has a tantrum.