Our visit to Wales has ended and we are now heading towards Cornwall, where we will spend the next couple of weeks before staying at Lundy Island, our final destination in the UK.
During this time, we will stop at Exmoor National Park and Dartmoor National Park to do some trekking. Then, we will head South West towards St Ives and, gradually, drive northwards along the coast to Bideford, where the ferry to Lundy departs.
Over the last three days we’ve had a few “aventurillas” with Dora (small adventures with Dora) which, although stressful, they are inevitably part of the learning curve of living in a motorhome.
The day we did that lovely walk from Port Enyon to Casewell ended up being a bit of a disaster. We have learnt pretty quickly how most of the van’s systems work: the electricity, the gas, the toilets… However, we seem to have a problem in understanding our water consumption. To maximise the number of nights we camp free, we have kept an eye on how much water we use daily for showers and washing ups. We think that the tank is between 80 to 100 litres capacity and that a full tank will allow us to have four showers (one each per day), and four washing ups (two in the morning and two in the evening), which equates to two nights camping in the wild. As this was our second night, we didn’t think water was going to be a problem. Well, we were wrong.
As we normally do at the end of the day, we uploaded the photos and updated the blog whilst waiting for the water to heat. I jumped in front of Gary for the shower and, when I was in the middle of washing my hair, cough, cough, cough, splatter, splatter, splatter, the water ran out. It was 21.00 and we were miles away from the nearest campsite. “Fxxx!” I exclaimed 
. I was furious and so was Gary, since he ended up having a northern shower (i.e. deodorant). Annoyingly, we had to wait to the next day in the afternoon to get to a campsite since we had planned to do the laundry in the morning and, skipping the laundry was out of the question as we were running out of clean clothes to wear. So, I removed as much shampoo I could from my hair and, incredibly frustrated, I went straight to bed. The tank looked okay when we checked it the next morning, so I believe we just used more water than we thought. To prevent this from happening again, we have decided to buy two 20 litres plastic containers for £10, available in outdoors shops.
Our first laundry experience went smoothly. Overall, it took about one and a half hours to do all the washing and it cost us £12: £8 for two big loads of washing and £4 for four sessions of five minutes in the tumble dry; not bad. Our outdoors clothes got dried pretty quickly but the natural fibres-based clothes were slightly damp, so Gary put a line up within Dora to hang them up. As we drove along the laundry waved frantically around the motorhome.
We left Wales and drove down to Somerset looking for a campsite. We found a very basic one in Bleadon for £4 a night with no facilities (who needs them when you have a motorhome) but, more importantly, with plenty of water. To make the most of it, we spent the afternoon thoroughly cleaning Dora and the walking boots before we had a nice and long shower. After such a busy evening, we finally relaxed.
The next morning we continued to drive towards Exmoor and stopped at Minehead on the way. We parked at the top of the cliff, walked down through the woods and ended up at the Harbour of the village, where we spent another hour walking around before going back to Dora.
We arrived at the car park of Exmoor National Park at around 19.00 and, before dinner, we took our binoculars and went out for red deer spotting. Luckily, we did see a few but unfortunately, they were too far away for a photo.
The next morning, on our way to the starting point of the trek, we drove through Porlock where a carnival was going to take place that evening and we thought it’d be fun to attend.
We finished the trek at 16.30, with plenty of time to get ready. The carnival consisted of a procession of floats and marching bands with people dressed up in different costumes. Below there are the photos I took. They are hilarious.
Some of them made an effort:
Others, however, didn’t make an effort at all:
A beehive perhaps?
The Smurfs (Los Pitufos), I think:
She is my favourite:
Not sure what these ones with pink wig were all about:
They were the best:
What do you think overall? Not precisely Notting Hill carnival, is it? Still fun to attend though.
The carnival meant to be going on for another half and hour and, as the village was closed to traffic, we took a toll road which went around it. After a few miles of narrow country lanes, we got to a gate house with a locked gate. We couldn’t go through the gate as it was not wide enough for Dora and we couldn’t do a three-point turn as there was not enough space.
We noticed that there was someone in the gate house watching TV who could have potentially helped us but he had shut his blinds down. “You got yourself into this mess, you sort it out” He probably thought, understandably.
So, we had no choice but driving backwards to the next lay-by, which was a couple of miles away. To add more stress to the situation, we were running out of fuel and the nearest petrol station was 20 miles away.
Eventually, we reversed Dora and found the nearest campsite we could, still in a beautiful location. When we got to the campsite, we noticed that the narrow lanes had had an impact on Dora. She was now wearing some branches that hang from her roof and she was also missing a light, probably stuck in some hedge.
SM
Thanks for your comments and following us. We really appreciate it.
Regards
Gary
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Gary
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Gary
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Yours is the first such comment, so would be grateful to know if there are others experiencing problems that we can then attempt to sort.
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Gary
Thanks for following us. We were unsure of your comment, we are hoping you are liking the site, but from your comments, as yet unsure. Let us know.
Regards Gary
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Gary
Hello,
Glad to hear you are having fun with our stories. More to come so please keep track on us.
Susana.
Hi Enrique,
Thank you for your nice comments. Glad you are all enjoying the blog because we absolutely love writing about our travels.
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too many adventures shortly!!! Paradójicamente no todo va sobre ruedas 🙂
No. Habra que escribir sobre lo bueno y lo malo. Sueno como en las bodas 🙂
Expericencíás añedidas a vuestro viaje, para escribir un libro, titulo: ( dos locos vagavundos en apuros).
Los trajes del carnaval no parece estar muy definidos, solo podemos suponer lo que pueden ser.Por lo menos estuvisteis un tiempo con la civilización .
Las fotos siguen siendo muy bonitas, personalmente lo que más me gusta.
Te enteras bien con la traducciono en español?