Friday to Monday, 6th to 9th December

As I prepared some lunch and a cup of tea on Friday it was, for the first time since June, to the pleasing lack of any knocking coming from the gas cupboard. That gas cupboard was, by then, the home of a new regulator, although that piece of kit turned out not to be the problem. Rather, some oil (from the LPG) had settled in the low point of the gas pipes. The thrumming and pulsing was the gas pushing its way through that oil. We now have a spare regulator as given the choice between having the old regulator re-fitted (which would have involved having to take the whole refillable gas system back out and then refit) or having the spare, it seemed the better option.

That lunch was had in the uninspiring location of a retail park, shortly after I’d given Decathlon a bit more business by buying myself a nice fleecy-lined pair of winter running tights (oh, I miss those summer runs in southern Germany!). Then we found ourselves with a lack of anything to do for the rest of the day and little idea as to where we might spend the night.

After a few false starts, a number of height-barriered car parks and a bit of driving around, we resigned ourselves to a night on the side of a street in Wolverhampton, finding ourselves a spot that wasn’t outside anyone’s house. We had a surprisingly peaceful night, after a late afternoon walk around the local streets, ogling some impressive houses, but not quite dodging the regular showers.

Saturday morning started with Wolverhampton parkrun, which (surprisingly) we’d never done before. It’s three laps on tarmac, around West Park, which sits a few minutes walk from the city centre. With just the smallest of inclines on the perimeter path, it’s a fast course, allowing me to achieve my best time since early September. Mick resolved to take it steady, having only just recovered from the injury he incurred in Stirling in October. That resolution didn’t come to fruition, but I can’t blame him for his accidental speed as he did exactly what he said he would and stayed behind the 27 minute pacer, who came in a minute and a half ahead of schedule.

We had no time to hang around after the run, needing to zip off to my Aunt’s house for the first visit of a busy day. It was whilst we were there that I had a search around Bertie for my fleece jacket only to remember that I’d left it at the start of the parkrun. Doh!

The second activity of the day a low-key party (for ‘party’ read ‘sitting around a table eating cake’) with various family members for my grandmother’s 98th birthday. I hope I don’t need to point out the birthday girl in this snap:

Various family members with my gran. She lost her hearing aid last week, so communication was difficult, but we all came away feeling sure she’d enjoyed herself.

By the end of the day we’d stopped for a meal at my sister’s house near Stoke and made our way up to Halifax to spend a couple of nights on Ma-in-Law’s driveway. Mick’s older brother and his wife, who we don’t see very often, was up visiting, so we thought we’d nip up to spend some time with them. I intended (but failed) to take a photo of the two boys with their mum.

The main activities during our 2-day stay were chatting and eating, although I did also take myself out for a little jogette on Sunday morning. With Bertie having been lashed by wind and rain all night, Mick questioned my sanity, but I think my reasoning was sound: I needed some exercise at some point during the day and by running I would be out in the weather for less time than if I went for the equivalent walk. I had rain, hail and stop-you-in-your-tracks wind on my undulating route (there are no options from Ma-in-Law’s house that don’t involve noticeable undulations). I arrived back refreshed and wishing I’d worn those new fleecy-lined tights!

We’re now back home, but it’s only a month before we’ll be off again. I must book our Channel Tunnel crossing…

Wednesday and Thursday 4-5 December

Where's Bertie? He's enjoying a couple of days in Ironbridge.
Weather: Wednesday: foggy till early afternoon and very cold; Thursday: overcast with a frosty start but gradually warming up.

"Theory has it that the next trip isn’t going to be until January."

That was the very last statement I made in my last post. Then we booked Bertie in for his overdue gas check/fridge service*, and with our chosen service location being an hour's drive from home and with our appointment being at 8.30 on Friday morning, it seemed more sensible to leave home on Wednesday and make a short trip of it than to have an early start on Friday and battle rush-hour traffic.

Our first planned activity of the trip was a visit to the RAF Museum at Cosford, which has long been on the 'must go there' list. All things considered, it's impressive that we've managed not to go until now.

Alas, it wasn't the best day for it. The night had been colder than forecast, such that when I went out to Bertie first thing his internal temperature was 0.2 degrees. I popped his heating on, but it took a while for the boiler frost-protection valve to warm up enough to stay reset (I reset it a number of times, but every time I tried to fill the hot tank the valve would pop again and out would pour the water). On the road only half an hour later than intended (which, all things considered, was pretty good going), all went well until we reached the M54 when suddenly the gloriously sunny day was replaced by thick fog. Arriving at the museum, we could barely see the planes dotted around outside and the temperature was such that it was clearly an indoor-activity sort of a day.

Fortunately, there are four hangars of stuff to see (and the planes outside aren't open midweek at this time of year anyway). Unfortunately, the heating in the hangars is variable and on the cool side of comfortable, even with outdoor layers on. The combination of the weather, not being able to go inside any of the planes, there being so few visitors (i.e. no atmosphere) and having already been to other (excellent!) plane/automobile museums this year, meant that it wasn't a stand-out day, but we won't write the place off and will make an effort to go back sometime in summer.

One benefit of there being so few visitors was that we could play with the interactive exhibits without getting in the way of any children, for whom they are intended.

Planes

Just before dusk we left Cosford and headed to Ironbridge, by which time the fog, which had only cleared a couple or three hours earlier, was building again. It was only as we started descending towards the town that it struck us that spending the night next to a river in a steep-sided valley wasn't going to be the warmest option.

By this morning the temperature had risen a little (still a frosty start, mind) and the fog had lifted, but at the cost of it being overcast.

Snaps from our morning run

A run along the Severn Valley Way (using the bed of an ex-railway line) started our day, but with the impediment of Severn Trent Water having closed part of the route for major works. 'Cycleway and Footpath Closed - follow diversion' said the signs at each end of the closed section. Ha! What diversion signs? We saw not a single one. We did manage to find our way around (up 100', down 100') albeit on the way back we had to fight our way through some barriers.

My original intention for today had been to visit one or more of the Ironbridge Museums. Earlier in the week I did some research and looked at buying an annual pass for the entire museum network (by far the best value option). For some reason that now escapes me, I decided against. An odd decision, I thought today when the weather was still cold enough to make me think that the inside of a museum would have been the perfect way to spend the day.

Admittedly we could have paid the small penalty of the walk-up price of the tickets, but instead we've had a quiet day. Aside from the period spent inside The Tea Emporium...

We placed the exact same food and drink order as when we were last here (6 December 2015) and it was still just as good. My breakfast included grilled halloumi and bubble & squeak.

...the whole day has seen us wrapped up warm. As I type this I'm wearing a hat, fingerless mittens, a fleece jacket and a blanket, and have just spent a period researching the options for fitting Bertie with a larger capacity leisure battery. His existing 100Ah, in combination with his solar panel, is almost always adequate. It only fails to be enough when it's very cold (such that we want to run the heating lots), it's December/January (sun too low for much solar energy) and/or we're sitting in a forest or in the bottom of a steep-sided valley. That set of circumstances has only happened a small handful of times in 3 years, but it's enough to make us think that a little investment would be worthwhile.

I took this photo at around 2pm today. At just gone 11am tomorrow those cooling towers are due to be gone. Such a shame that we won't be able to be here to witness their demolition.

^{(*We probably need a new gas regulator too. The existing one has been knocking and pulsing since May or June. The greater the demand for gas, the worse it is. It's still working, but better to get it fixed before it fails completely. Unfortunately 'fixed' probably means 'replaced' and a replacement for our model (with a crash-sensing isolator, so that we can drive with the gas turned on) isn't cheap.)
(As an aside: Amazon Prime Video streamed a number of Premiership football matches last night and it was an unusual treat for Mick to be able to watch a Liverpool match live. At half time, I checked how much data the first half had used and had to pick my jaw up off the floor when I found that it had taken 2.1GB. A quick rummage in the Prime Video App's settings and I discovered that there are separate quality settings for Download (which I already had set to 'Good' rather than 'Better' or 'Best) and for Streaming. Having made the necessary modification, the second half used a far more reasonable 300MB. At least I discovered that in a month when I have no other use for my data allowance. It would have been a more painful lesson had we been on an extended trip.)}