Our first week back in the van!

After a couple of weeks of sitting around in bed I was getting quite restless, so once the van passed its MOT last week we decided to head straight off! We had a wedding in Bournemouth last night so we had to hang around the south coast for just a little bit longer.

To start with we pottered around the New Forest, driving through Hythe, Beaulieu, and stopping in a campsite near the village of Sway.

After that we headed off to the Isle of Purbeck again, as we hadn't got round to seeing everything we wanted to last time we were here in August.

Studland Bay was beautiful, so we went for a long walk here. The weather has been extremely changeable this week, blazing sunshine one minute then pouring rain and thunder and lightning the next.

We were really enjoying the nice quiet beaches and the lack of families and school kids.

Next stop was Lulworth Cove, with a walk along to Durdle Door, a coastal limestone arch. There were slightly more people here, including a few German school coach trips. We had a beautiful walk along the cliffs, with Portland Bill and Weymouth visible in the distance.

I like the fact that we are getting to know the coast so well, we can point to features in the landscape miles away, and know exactly where it is.

Couldn't resist a couple of cheesy shots.

And then to round off our first week back in the van, we headed to Bournemouth, where Nick's cousin was getting married.

For some reason there is a massive deckchair on Bournemouth beach.

The wedding was a good opportunity for Nick to catch up with his close and extended family as it's only two months until we go to Australia!

We had a lovely time and treated ourselves to a B&B on the night of the wedding. We took all our various phone and camera chargers into our room to make sure we made the most of the free electricity! We also had two showers each this weekend which is a rare treat for us!

So now we say goodbye to the south coast and head off for pastures new...

The south coast is familiar to us, it's been our home for years now and we are lucky we got to live there. Due to circumstances beyond our control, we haven't been able to stray too far from our home town of Portsmouth in our travelling so far. But now, the weddings and hospital appointments are done and dusted and we can go explore the rest of the country!

Next we are heading to Wales, probably via Devon.

Fixing the roof (again)

Em's op went well, but she needed a couple of weeks to recover before we could set off again in the van. This gave me time to fix a roof hinge that had broken when we were at the Purbeck Folk Festival.

There are three hinges running along the side of the roof, these attach the roof to the van.

On the back hinge, the old rivets that attached the hinge to the van had been pulled out; I think due to age and the pressure of the horizontal gas strut.

Unfortunately, fixing this meant lifting up the whole roof on one side, i.e. taking off all the gas struts, and drilling out all my wonderful rivets that I put in after reattaching the roof the first time.

I re-riveted the offending back hinge back on and added an extra rivet for good measure.

I also reinforced the other two hinges with a steel plate as I did for the back one during the initial renovation.

After finishing the three hinges, the gas struts could go back on. This was surprisingly easy considering the trouble we had with them before. And now the roof, and the van (and Em), are ready to go.