Thursday, 19 November 2009

Hooray for UK stopover information for motorhomes!

Just found this site listing - fantastic! At last there may be an increasing number of councils giving some consideration to motorhome overnighters (and overheighters!) Here's the overnight parking link, keep up the good work, let's use these stopovers when we can and make our needs known!

Wednesday, 18 November 2009

I love the AA

Had a great weekend away in Gloucestershire. Despite the forecasts of gales and squalls, there was a bit of good weather as well as the good company of friends.




Oddy the camper decided to show a red warning light on the way there and as the handbook said 'stop immediately', we thought we had better do just that! The really heavy traffic meant it was about an hour and a half before the the Automobile Association could get to us.  By the time the motorhome was on the back of the relay wagon it was chucking it down. It was OK for us, tucked by then in the AA truck, but who'd be an AA man in that weather?

Half an hour later in the services, it was checked over and all found to be OK - the verdict was an over-sensitive warning light! All that and we still arrived in time for lunch. Thank you AA men everywhere. I salute you!! I notice you received the Which Best Buy award this year - you deserve it.

Tuesday, 17 November 2009

More on funghi/mushroom/toadstool

More toadstools pics..... still no idea what it is.
 

Friday, 13 November 2009

What is this toadstool?

The other morning on our lawn I found a greenish grey toadstool growing. Having ploughed through my book on fungi, I can't see anything like it, so I'm just curious to know what it might be.






If anyone can enlighten me, that'd be great! I'll take a few more photos of it till it disappears.

Thursday, 12 November 2009

Ibiza Memories

Taken a holiday and it seems like light-years ago?


This year, we sent ourselves a postcard to ourselves just before we left to come home! It arrived about ten days after we got back.



On a cold and damp morning it was a quick reminder of the sun, warmth and relaxation we had been experiencing only a couple of weeks back in Eivissa town.


Roll on the next sunny break together!

Monday, 9 November 2009

Getting that sinking feeling!

I've had my lovely Apple MacBook for about ten months.

Winging on luck, I have done no back-ups. Syncing my phone with it the other day, I gave myself one of those frights that makes your skin run cold. (It's not an iphone, if only it were....)

Where was my music?  My library was empty. EMPTY. Fighting back the desire to scream, be sick, turn back time and so on, I searched the help files.  I also, with a racing heartbeat, went to open my photos folder......

To cut a long panic-stricken day short, I managed to reconstruct the library and the photos were all there.

The lesson had been learnt. Back-up!  I've gone for the Carbonite back-up. Once the first back-up is done (and it's still running more than 48 hours after it started at the moment!) Carbonite just checks for updates and changes on an ongoing basis in the background so no bother to you whatsoever.




I should have done it months ago!

Friday, 6 November 2009

Wouldn't it be useful if......

......there was a device that cooled things down quickly!

Microwaved some porridge this morning and landed up having to chuck loads more milk on it just so it was cool enough to eat before catching the bus to work.

Clearly the fridge is not fast enough - anyone any other ideas?

Wednesday, 4 November 2009

Ibiza - we love you - and your buses!

If you are on holiday in one of  Ibiza's main areas and not in a haven of rural isolation, help save the planet (and money). Get around using Ibiza's fantastic bus service rather than hiring a car.

We were in Eivissa (Ibiza town) and found that we could get all around the island even out of season. The buses don't go via all the housing estates as they seem to in England so the journey times were good.



Fares were, with a few exceptions,€1.75 each one way, regardless of destination. (The airport bus was more) and the buses run every half an hour or every hour (airport bus is every 20 minutes). Also they all seem to go at the same time - it really was true that no buses come at all and then three or four come at once!

If you're going from Eivissa terminus, note that you often need to buy a ticket before getting on the bus. Not only that but you need to go to the right place to buy it. It's easy once you know!

There is a main obvious ticket office covering for instance, Portinatx and San Antonio and then a ticket booth in a bar about 100 metres down the street for other buses (including the airport bus).

I guess this keeps queuing to a minimum in high season and makes for more employment in the area too, so all in all seems a good idea once you understood it.

For a return journey, ask for "ida y vuelta" (which means going and coming back).

If going out of season, it is a wise precaution to ask the bus driver what time the buses return, rather than relying on the timetable at the stop.  Though most were up to date, we did find one or two that had not been updated to the autumn schedules, which could have left us with an expensive return taxi bill!

Monday, 2 November 2009

More on Cabin Baggage

Ha, ha, the last laugh is on us.

I had not noticed that the luggage scales I bought to weigh our luggage allowance of 10 kilos for our cheapo RyanAir flight  to Ibiza was actually marked in lbs., not kgs.

We went on holiday with about 2/3rds of the luggage allowance we could have taken!

By the way, here is a useful site for converting just about anything to anything else, though it can be a little confusing at first. (It doesn't yet convert base metal to gold though!)