Tuesday, 29 July 2025

Sunday & Monday 27-28 July - Kendal

Where was Bertie? He spent Sunday night at Spittal Caravans on the edge of Kendal at a price of £23, including electricity. He spent the daytime on Monday in the Cricket Club car park (honesty box)
Weather: Sunday showery; Monday largely dry.

I probably should have said right at the beginning of this set of posts that our original intention had been to do this trip in Erica. Erica is, however, still out of service, hence we found ourselves in Bertie. Had we been in Erica we would have based ourselves in Coniston. However, we didn't really want to be driving around the Lake District's roads, in the summer holidays, any more than strictly necessary in a vehicle of Bertie's size*. Had Ali still been in the race then we would have driven down to Ambleside during the night, seen Ali through, then continued on to Coniston before dawn. As it was, we opted not to go to Coniston. We would have liked to have gone to Ambleside, but having read reports about how chocka both its roads and car parks had been on Saturday, the risk of arriving and finding there was no room for us at the Rugby Club (currently the only overnight motorhome parking nearby) was too great, and left us nowhere as a fall back. 

So, to Kendal we went, but with a stop just S of Shap on the way so that I could go and run a circuit of Wet Sleddale Reservoir. 

It started raining just after we left the campsite in Clifton, and it was at this point that we discovered that, without any warning, Bertie no longer had functioning windscreen wipers (as in they were completely dead; when Erica's failed earlier this year they gave us plenty of advance warning signs, and only completely failed when she was on her way to the garage to have them fixed). My run was postponed whilst I checked the obvious causes (fuse; disconnected connector), then off I trotted.


For the last 25 years, if I've had a fit of histrionics, Mick has exclaimed 'Don't be such a melodrome!', making this an absolutely perfect photo opportunity.

Back from my outing, down to Kendal we went, encountering just one more shower on the way (it had stayed dry whilst I'd been out; it seemed like the rain was saving itself for when we were driving, like it knew of our wiper predicament). The campsite there turned out to be another good one. Very tidy, with hard-standing pitches, each with tap and electricity (not optional here), and it was only a mile out of the town centre, so an easy walk. That said, we didn't walk it, because Ali & Adrian came to pick us up to take us into town for tea and a race debrief from Ali. 

By the end of the day, based on the weather forecast and our need to drive home in dry conditions, we'd decided we would stay on the site in Kendal until Wednesday. By good fortune, someone had already booked the pitch we were on for Monday night - which was fortuitous, because if they hadn't, I would have extended our booking on Sunday night. As it was, I was just walking around the site on Monday morning, deciding which of the empty pitches to move to, when it occurred to me that I should check the latest weather forecast before paying for the extra night. A change in the forecast said that travelling at 5pm on Monday gave the lowest chance of rain, which in turn meant we needed to move off the site by 10am (as we were meeting Conrad in town at 11). 

So, to the Cricket Club we went. Unsure of whether we needed to pay the £10 motorhome rate (which includes an overnight stay) or whether we qualified as a car (as we were only staying for a few hours and only taking up a car-sized spot), we deferred the question until we got back (hoping there would be someone there to ask by then - there was - they said to pay the lower rate of £2).

A very pleasant few hours were spent with Conrad in Booth's cafe where we didn't receive a single disgruntled look for our long stay (we did pepper it with food and drink), only leaving when we realised that Conrad needed to move his car.

Back at Bertie another check of the weather forecast suggested we were safe to leave immediately, and so we did, arriving home with not a drop of rain hitting the windscreen. In fact, the only rain we'd had all day started the moment we left the campsite and ended a couple of minutes after we arrived at the Cricket Club. Really!

We now have both Bertie and Erica booked in at the garage next week. Erica's stay may be of some duration, given that a) her failed part is no longer in production, so we need to have the failed one repaired or a new one custom made; and b) she has to be significantly dismantled in order to access said failed part.  

(*Bertie isn't actually that big (6m x 2.1m; many motorhomes are 2.35m wide) and fits nicely down all of the roads we would have needed to use, but we've observed that the number of people we meet who think that their small car is 8-feet wide and who stray onto our side of the road at busy times of year is too high for a pleasant journey on wiggly roads. Erica isn't massively slimmer than Bertie at 1.9m, but those 20cm give more flexibility to dodge out of the way of errant oncoming cars - plus we don't care about her bodywork as much as we do Bertie's, so scraping along hedgerows isn't such an issue (I would say "but don't tell her that!", if it wasn't for the fact that the multitude of hedge-rash witness marks along her nearside may have already given her the message)).  

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