At last the day has arrived when we drive over to Warmington to pick up our new home from Camper King. We had searched high and low to find a van that met all our requirements and was within our budget and this is she – Freedombird Mark 3…..

All sparkly new (new conversion on 2017 van) and waiting to be occupied.

After showing me how everything works, I’m so excited to drive her out of the showroom to my car, where I transfer my life across (including Poppydog) and we are ready to venture off….

Before joining the motorway south we fill up with diesel after a brief fight with the diesel flap before realising that you need to open the passenger door to release it and parting with £77 pounds eeek! We are on our way.

It is mostly motorway all the way to Burnham on Sea, we are bound for Hurn Lane CAMC site at Berrow. It is a site we have visited before and knowing that a long wide Sandy beach is only a few minutes from site, I thought it would be an ideal place for us to settle into our new home.

On arrival our first plan was to put everything away – anywhere to be honest as there is not a lot of space to move around at the best of times. That done and a semblance of order taking place we decided to tackle the basics of can life – fill the water tank, plug in the electrics, switch on the fridge and make a cup of tea! Simples…. not so, I could not for love nor money get any water to come out of the tap and what I assumed was the water pump was making quite a racket – for well over an hour I tried removing fuses, disconnecting and reconnecting the electrics and fairly quickly exhausting any ideas, I read the manuals, rang the dealer to see if they had an out of hours number – nothing worked. So my solution, as dusk was beginning to fall – lock the van up, walk away and take Poppydog for a long overdue run on the beach….

It really was getting quite dark but fortunately the tide was partly out and there was just sufficient light to let Poppydog run and run…..

Feeling better after a bracing beach walk we returned to site.

On entering the van I switched the lights on and guess what? The tap started working – on calling the dealership in the morning they explained that the light switch is also the power on and off button as each of the lights can be switched off independently! The noisy pump (quiet on our return) also turned out to be the fridge protesting a bit at being switched on after a while (haven’t heard it since).

Too late and dark to start fiddling with the gas bottle to make a cup of tea – but hey a glass of wine works!

So the world can be righted after a walk along the beach.