31 Monday Dec 2012
Posted in Blog updates, General, Uncategorized
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 37,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 9 Film Festivals
23 Sunday Dec 2012
Posted in Blog updates, General, Trips
Tags
Caravan, Caravan Club, Caravans, Touring, Towing, Travel Trailer, Travel Trailers, Warwick Racecourse
Just a quick post to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy Caravanning New Year. 2012 was a great second year caravanning for us which included our first trip abroad. We’ve now totaled 56 nights away and towed over 4700 miles and the blog is just coming up to 35,500 visitors.
Off to a good start…..
The Caravan Club have already started their 2013 season on a good note for me. Back in October I wrote about our/my problem trying to find Warwick Racecourse site ( The French Connection – Finale) and I posted a picture of the text in the Caravan Club handbook.
Well the club has updated the text in the handbook and on the website. I’ll never know if it was the collective mass of other members complaining or the fact I put a couple of links to my blog posting in surveys sent out by the club that did it, or the fact it was due for a review. But a big well done to the Caravan Club staff for doing something about it.
Updated text on how to find/get to Warwick Racecourse site
(c) Caravan Club
Now if anyone is on pitch 4 at Warwick… just have a look round in the grass, I think my wedding ring might be there somewhere.
Cheers and safe towing for 2013
Simon & Sue
11 Tuesday Sep 2012
Posted in Blog updates, Events, General, Uncategorized
….Sue and I were on our way home from Jersey. We had been staying at the Hotel Christina, our favourite hotel in Jersey where we could sit on the terrace and watch the airshow over the bay.
We had flown down in our Piper PA28 on the Friday morning so we could watch the aircraft taking part in the air show arrive and go through their practice displays. Following the air show on the Monday it was our wedding anniversary.The following day we had to fly back for work commitments.
We took off from Jersey Airport in sunshine and climbed to 5000 feet VFR and received routing direct to Bournemouth, at 50 North we were handed over to Bournemouth Radar, which seemed quiet with only a few other aircraft on frequency. We passed Sandbanks VRP and were given a direct routing to Gloucester and on to Shawbury VOR as per out flight plan. Bournemouth handed us over to Bristol…. and that is where for us it began. Bristol had no other aircraft on frequency, which was unusual. After contacting Bristol, they told us to route direct to SWB VOR and to contact Manchester as soon as able…. we weren’t even north of Bath at this point. By the time we were passing Gloucester, I had managed to contact Manchester Radar and were told proceed direct to Barton (Manchester Barton, our home airfield) without delay.
There was only one other aircraft on Manchester Radar frequency and he was inbound to Manchester. I had never heard Manchester so quiet. We flew down the Manchester low level corridor at 1200 feet and turned to north east towards Barton. Mike was in the Tower at Barton and as we landed and were rolling down the runway he said over the radio we were the last aircraft to land back at Barton. As we got our luggage out of the plane, we could see a lot of people in the Lancs Aero Club clubhouse and Ken Hardy was walking across the field towards us. The first we knew of the events that would change the world forever was when he shouted across to us…… “They have crashed two planes into the twin towers“
S
Copyright © 2011 – 2012 Simon P Barlow
06 Monday Aug 2012
Posted in Blog updates, General, Humor, Maintenance
Tags
You have seen the aircraft engineers reports on the internet….. well I thought I’d do a little rewriting and give you the caravan engineers reports instead. I hope you enjoy…..
Customer : Gas makes a loud hissing noise when the cooker is on. Engineer : Gas told to stop doing snake impressions when cooking. Customer : Water-pump makes an unbelievably loud noise. Engineer : Water-pump noise reduced to a believable level. Customer : Locker door will not shut, even giving it a good slam doesn’t work Engineer : Gave locker hatch a really good slam and it now shuts. Note: hinge is now broken. Continue reading02 Monday Jul 2012
Posted in Blog updates, General, Travelling in the UK, Trips, Web sites
Tags
I’ve been pondering on adding a map for a couple of weeks. Somehow looking at where you have been on a map is a bit more memorable and interesting than just looking down a list, well for me it is. I guess though that’s due to the fact that flying and maps are so intertwined I’ve spent so much time in the past pouring over maps for flying in various parts of the world than I have ever done caravanning.
Actually creating the map was fairly easy using Google Maps and then embedding the map in an iframe in the WordPress page. The only thing that you need to do is create a Google account if you don’t already have one and create your own map and start adding the map pins. There is a lot of useful info to be found on the Google Maps support page. For embedding it into your WordPress theme, it’s quite simple and its all explained on the WordPress support page for Google Maps.
Anyway, if you want to look at this marvellous cartographical creation… the link is on the top menu bar…. or you can just click on Trip Map.
Thanks for reading
S
21 Monday May 2012
Posted in Blog updates, Events, General, Uncategorized
In the spirit of recent events with Facebook floating and issuing shares…. Caravan Chronicles has passed a few milestones its self. It’s now been read in over 58 countries by over 10,000 people. What started as a little project for me at the start of this year has now become official…….. Caravan Chronicles has gone “Dot Com”
From today, the web address is caravanchronicles.com (I just had to hi-light that and put it in bold!)
So what next? Well I guess I’d better keep writing as there seem enough of you out there that seem to like reading my musings.
Thanks
S
PS… in true dot com fashion, I’m going to issue 100 shares in CaravanChronicles.com at £1M each…. Oh look, I’m an overnight dot com millionaire! 🙂
31 Saturday Mar 2012
Posted in Blog updates, General, Travelling in the UK
Tags
Bridlington, Cadac, Caravan Club, East Yorkshire, Factory Visit, One Hairy Caravanner, Really Useful Box, Swift Factory, Travel Trailers
Bridlington harbour in the early morning March sunshine
We have just got back from a three day break at the Caravan Club’s site in Bridlington, which, unusually for us was blessed with the warmest March weather for decades. Now Bridlington is not somewhere that would have sprung to mind for a destination, but there was an ulterior motive… we had been invited on a tour of the Swift Factory. The caravan had been given a bit of spit and polish the previous weekend so was looking like it had just arrived from the factory… apart from one thing, the Swift logo had fallen off the wheel centre on one side. Luckily I spotted it as I was removing the Al-Ko wheel lock before setting off so have put it in my caravan tool box to give it a course of looking at when we get back. Continue reading
23 Friday Mar 2012
Posted in Blog updates, General, Help Guides, LPG Refilling Info, Web sites
Well, I think they did! OK what am I on about? Well, if you have read through my ramblings about the Safefill refillable gas cylinder, one of the comments I had at towards the end was the fact that I had to create my own POI file for my GPS from the map of Safefill accredited filling stations and dealers on their website. I thought that Safefill should have this on their website to make it a lot easier for people that are not quite as savvy on creating POI files.
Well, it seems that good customer service still exists from some companies and they have now made it easy to get a POI file for your GPS.
I tried it out and it’s quite easy, click on the “GPS Download” button on the home page or the Refilling page and it directs you to the contact us area where you fill in your contact details click on request GPS download and click on submit…. a few seconds later a link to the download page arrives in your email in box. Continue reading
07 Wednesday Mar 2012
Posted in Blog updates, General, LPG Refilling Info, Travelling In Europe, Web sites
Following a question that I replied to on Swift Talk, about LPG filling stations in the UK and Europe, I couldn’t find a website that had all of the UK and Europe listed. So I started searching for any website that listed LPG filling stations in various countries as I thought at least if there was a directory with them all in one place, it would be a start.
I eventually came across the French site “Annuaire des stations GPL françaises” or “French LPG stations directory” which seems to have links to sites that cover most European countries. The site is in French, but has a small flag on the right that translates it into English.
The site is easy to use and has current pricing for LPG for nearly all the sites listed. It also has a news section which lists sites that are closed and new LPG filling stations. If you click on the “Download” tab at the top it takes you to a page where you can download POI files for your GPS or Smart Phone.
However, the gem for me and what I was originally seeking can be found listed under the tab “Other Sites”. It’s a list of sites that have details fo LPG stations in 17 countries…. how Australia got in there I’ll never know!
If you have an LPG fuelled tow vehicle, motorhome or refillable cylinders, this is a site to bookmark. It has almost everything you could need if you need to fill up with LPG while in Europe (or Australia for that matter!) and certainly for France, lists the current prices in Euros per Litre. I’ve added it to my links page… you could always just bookmark that instead !
S
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