Monthly Archives: July 2019

First festival

Well, the van has successfully completed its first festival. At the age of 41.

However, concerns about its ability to climb a grassy hill, which had a strong likelihood of imminent muddy ruts, led us to move it on Sunday morning.

Where the van found company.

Other vans were spotted over the weekend; for example …..

This was our fourth Kendal Calling, probably our last though. It’s one of the best festivals I’ve ever been to, but the weather’s just mental. On all four occasions, there has been mud.

Lots of it.

Anyway, the festival was great.

The Glastonbury hammock

During Glastonbury 2014, I think, my beloved and I checked out the shop (then near the viewing hill) selling hammocks. Well, they were’t trying to sell them, but up to four people at a time could try one out.

Naturally, we needed to remove our wellies first. We were instructed as to how we should board our chosen hammock (sideways, sitting down, rather than lengthways, since these were the traditional, huge, Mexican variety).

And, like everyone else else, we loved it.

Afterwards, we searched for the most beautiful hammock, which we purchased. Unfortunately, that did mean that we needed to carry our new purchase for an hour or two until we could deposit it in our tent.

We used the hammock just two or three times that summer. My beloved’s 80+ year-old Dad liked it a lot too.

It’s not that we’d forgotten about it. We were either doing something else or, when we had time, the weather was rubbish.

So, after melting while doing some gardening in silly temperatures this afternoon, I dug the hammock out. It’s still beautiful.

I’m in it right now. With a beer and a decent book.

Just great.

Ramp

Since leaving work, I’ve kept pretty busy, but I’ve not achieved a lot this week.

So, today, I had to ramp things up a little.

Old van

OK, so our new old van has some issues. Mostly rust. But, we’ve done around 300 miles in the last couple of days and it ran great.

We were particularly impressed with the Sat Nav holder.

And the number of people who wave as you drive chug past.

Free Bird

When cleaning the van, I discovered that it previously had a name. Free Bird. I’m assuming that this was Lynyrd Skynyrd related, and that it’s a legacy of the van’s past life in the US.

There’s a trace of old lettering, facing outward on the dash. It has a hand painted look about it, although it’s very faint; I only spotted it when the sun was on the windscreen.

Another new discovery is that the reversing lights don’t work. On searching online for possible causes, it seems that, while the lights appear to be there, they may never have been wired (apparently, they didn’t always come as standard).

It’s nice to have a new interest.

Diet Coke

I have to confess that I’d always doubted the magical cleaning powers of Coca Cola. However, after watching a YouTube video about rust removal from chrome, I felt compelled to try it. After all, we now have a vehicle with a moderate amount of corrosion.

And it does work. Dousing the area with Diet Coke and rubbing with aluminum foil really does work. While more work is needed, this wing mirror was previously almost completely covered with rust.

Home

We picked the van up this evening, so went for a drive. It rattles quite a bit, the engine’s noisy and smelly, and there’s the obvious rust. But it’s just great.

Naturally, we took the van to its first pub on the way home.

And now it’s home.