A Quick Visit

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With no overtime this morning I decided to go over to the storage site and pay a quick visit to Patsy to ensure that she was ok after ‘Angus’ whipped through the south-east over the weekend. It would provide a good excuse for not doing some housework and I could tick a few more things off the list on the way – drop some unused wine glasses off at the nearby charity shop. Yes, believe it or not there was such a thing in our household. Rosie needed some sustenance too and the proximity of Sainsbury's to the storage site meant I could deplete my Nectar points in so doing. We don’t actively collect Nectar points when shopping but they do add up when you are required to replenish thirsty minibuses every few days or so and I can usually knock up around seventy-five quid's worth in a school year with very little effort.

Also on the agenda was changing Patsy’s pads. Not unusual when you're an old lady I know but in this case we’re talking about the friction pads that sit in the hitch head to minimise snaking. I’d scoured the net looking for the cheapest supplier which turned out to be the manufacturers themselves – Al-Ko. Delivery was a little pedestrian but that didn’t matter, not least because it was free and they’ve been sitting in the ‘Patsy Pile’ in the spare/dining/laundry/study room for at least a month.

Changing them was easy – I’ve done it before on Patsy 1 – but if you want to have a go yourself and are at all unsure then you might want to take a look at this video on You Tube from fellow caravanner and friend Dan Trudgian. In fact while you’re there check out some of his other videos too. There is some great advice, ideas and tips for both novices and more experienced campers alike and the videos are entertaining, informative and very well put together.

I won’t know for certain whether the pads were the source of the excruciating noise when turning until our next outing in just under three weeks. But comparing the old and new pads side by side, I think the old ones – on the left here - were pretty worn. I’ll let you know how we get on.

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That just left a little experiment to conduct. The subject of ‘QR’ or quick response codes had come up amongst fellow caravanning bloggers on social media. You may have seen them dotted around and they look a bit like this (though without the Legs Down logo!):

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For the uninitiated, you point your phone or tablet at one and it takes you to a website or other link – maybe a video or information about a particular product. And they can be printed virtually anywhere.

I had a idea to have one printed on to a vinyl and put on to the caravan – allowing passers by on site to easily access my blog. The question was though, how large would the code have to be so that said passers by wouldn’t have to encroach on to the pitch to scan it. Well, quite large by the looks of it. I printed out a code 15 x 15 cm and it was only readable up to around six feet away. This would probably do but I’m not sure we’d want something that big on the ‘van. Food for thought though.WP_20161122_10_22_04_Pro

Right, that’s it for now. Unless anything else crops up, the next blog will be from Hertfordshire and the Camping & Caravan Club site at Theobalds Park – the first stop in our ‘Festive Threesome’. So until then….

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