Tuesday 24th October - Shropshire to Herefordshire

Up early as usual, and pausing briefly to take some arty photos which will look rubbish when I get them home, we crawled our way out of the site, and down the muddy muddy lanes. We were heading to Mary and Ivor’s house, to see if the van would fit on their front drive, for a future visit.

Gladys was still in a funny mood. At one point during the hour-long journey, it occurred to me that I should check the route she plans for us when we’re in ‘narrow lane’ country. However, there were no major incidents, and we arrived exactly at Mary and Ivor’s house. After a couple of false attempts, we were able to back Polly in through the gateposts, and sit her by the side of their house.

After a cup of tea, we were on our way again, this time heading for Herefordshire, and a posh campsite between Ross on Wye and Hay on Wye. The roads were quite good, and we stopped for diesel, and also for a replacement gas cylinder en route. With less than 10km to go, Gladys had a fit.

It’s not that she stopped working, or started talking in Russian or anything. She was now really getting her own back for not navigating us to Birmingham. She sent us down a couple of narrow lanes, then up a steep hill, and then down a steep hill the other side. We were unfazed, and Polly trundled along happily. With one last throw of her little electronic dice, Gladys hurled something really nasty at us. The sign said “Unsuitable for articulated vehicles.” What it should have said was that the road was unsuitable for anything except a Chelsea tractor (a 4X4), or maybe a real tractor. Another sign said 25%, which to me means you go horizontally four for every one you go up. I swear that sections of that lane were 1 in 1. And the hill went up, and up, and then up further, and then a bit steeper … and then we met a mail van coming the other way.

We had just passed a gap in the hedge, where a track led off somewhere, and there seemed to be nowhere for the mail van to go. I could see the driver’s expression, which said: “what the f*** are you doing coming up here in that thing?” I did wonder that myself. All would have been revealed if he’d seen the TomTom on the windscreen, as I’m sure all TomTom-controlled motorhomes would have been sent up here. Or maybe it’s just our Gladys, who likes to have a little fun with us from time to time.

We stopped, and slowly crept backwards, and backed into this track. The mail man waved, and he was on his way. We weren’t. I wish I’d turned Gladys off, and turned right, down the hill. But I thought we should continue, because I was sure that the summit of Kilimanjaro … err, this hill, was just around the corner, just a few yards away.

We came out of the wide part of the road, and attacked the hill again. First gear was too low, and the poor engine was racing. Second was too high, and the speed dropped. So we continued up in first, engine racing, front wheels scrabbling for grip on the muddy and leaf-covered road. I don’t pray, but I sincerely wished that no other idiot would be attempting to come down the hill at this time. The temperature gauge climbed as we did. Beyond the normal running temperature, beyond the halfway mark up the dial, and then one, two graduations above halfway. The engine seemed to be starting to struggle, as it got hotter. The power seemed reduced. Still we climbed, the poor van shaking and rattling over the potholes and bumps and dead God-knows-whats in the road, until the overhanging trees parted, the gradient lessened, and I was able to grab second gear, dropping the engine revs, and climbing still higher.

Then we were at the top, and the relief of making it was tempered by the realisation that the hill had a ‘down’ bit too. And just as steep. As we started to descend, I could stop worrying about the engine giving up the ghost, or a pothole jerking us sideways into a ditch, and now I could worry about the brakes overheating. I didn’t want to use the engine to brake us too much, as I wanted it to cool down, but I kept ‘feeling’ the braking effect, making sure the brakes still responded to the pedal as I steered us towards our destination.

To cut an even longer story short, we got to the bottom, and hit the blessedly flat main road, and suddenly we were 6 kilometres away from our destination. We cruised along the smooth and flat tarmac, everything on and in the van cooling down. We got to Peterchurch, and Gladys announced that we had arrived. Well, we hadn’t. The postcodes matched, but there was no sign of the campsite. Fortunately, Gladys knew about some campsites through her Points Of Interest, and she took us through the town, to arrive at the campsite a minute later. She seemed satisfied that she’d had her fun for the day, and she had calmed down.

It’s a very posh campsite, all flower borders and mown grass and campsite employees buzzing around on golf carts. We got our pitch, hooked up, and had our lunch.

After lunch, we followed the signs on the campsite to a local farm shop. The fine array of meats on display wouldn’t suit Annie, but we bought some home-made marmalade, and walked back via the road. On the campsite, once again both mobile phones had no signal at all. You don’t realise how much you rely on these things until you haven’t got the use of them – this was the second day without mobile phone access. Anyway, walking back from the farm shop, we found a spot where I got some signal, and we made some calls. Rather strangely, this was outside the village church – maybe we had some divine intervention in the Orange mobile phone network? Or maybe the signals were amplified by the steeple on the church? Spooky, anyway.

We got back to the van, and made a vain attempt to get some signal on the TV. Nothing doing. On the campsite guide, there was a price for cable TV to the pitch, and on the electric hookup pylon, there was an aerial socket. I went to the reception building, and hired a long TV cable for the princely sum of £1. Good value, and we had am eclectic mix of TV channels for the evening.

All the while, we had flies around the van. These weren’t just flies buzzing around, because on the site generally, there weren’t any flies. But as we ate lunch, flies were banging against the side of the van, as if trying to break in. Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” had nothing on this. I don’t know where they came from – maybe they were from the little brook which ran about 30 metres away from the van. But when we walked by the side of this brook later, there were no flies. I think maybe they were all attacking our van. Nasty.

There’s a pub/restaurant on the site (“The Mill”), and the temptation was too much for one of us, so just after six o’clock, I (oops) strolled up, to sample the ambience, purely for research purposes, so that I could report honestly for this blog. I can report that the ambience was convivial, and the beer tasty. I spied the ‘specials’ board for the restaurant, and there were some nice things on there, so I returned to the van, managed to persuade Annie that we really did need to eat out again, and we returned to the pub, where we both had feta cheese and red onion marmalade (yes, really), and Annie had smoked haddock with spring onion and coconut, and I had lamb sausages with mint gravy and vegetables. All were very lovely. We couldn’t resist desserts, so Annie had something chocolatey, and I had apple pie and ice cream. A very gorgeous meal, and highly recommended.