June & July 2012

Time for a catch-up after what has been a hectic few months in the lives of T, K and The Rosabella.........

The House Move(s)

To pick up the story where we left off, T needed to vacate his cottage by the end of March so The Rosie was duly loaded up for half a dozen of the thirty five mile trips to K's house at Cleeton St Mary. It was chaos! Twenty years of stuff collected by two people all crammed in to a space meant for one and with no storage space.

We'd set our hearts on a cottage not far from T's old place at Bentlawnt and the plan was to rent it and also let the Cleeton house to offset the cost. The owner of the place we wanted was dragging his feet a little but we were prepared to wait - it meant that we were only paying for one house so we would have a bit to spare for the wedding, and we were coping with the mess at Cleeton. Even the journey to work was manageable as we were now based in offices about five minutes apart and could car-share.

One evening whilst dining with friends, one of them mentioned that the place next-door-but-one to them was on the market - we snuck up the road and had a look. It was a biggish place, not particularly attractive from the outside but a squint through the windows revealed a very interesting and unusual interior.

K was immediately interested, T a little more circumspect - it was completely different to what we'd had in mind. Nevertheless, we rang the agent on Monday morning and arranged a viewing that evening.

We were knocked out by what we saw - a beautiful place, designed and built by a Danish architect in the late 90s, made of cedar and looking like something from grand designs. The situation is fantastic with views down the Vale of Kerry and the whole plot is surrounded by trees, giving the feel of a house in a forest. It didn't take much thinking about - we made an offer on the Wednesday, met the owner on the Sunday and moved in the following Wednesday - 10 days from first sight to moving in!

Kim, our new landlady, is just lovely and we count ourselves very blessed to have found Cedarwood at just the right time.

Now starts the work to make Cleeton lettable, but what a lovely base we've have to start our married life from!!



Cedarwood

Devon, Easter 2012

At last! The Rosabella was ready for our first proper trip for nearly a year!

Well, when we say 'proper', we mean a trip of more than one night and to somewhere other than a garage forecourt!

As K's last day at the Royal National College for the Blind approached we decided that we'd mark it by spending Easter at the same place we'd been on the two Easters before the ill-fated 2011 trip to France - Bolberry, near Hope Cove, one of the few campsites we were happy to use in the UK.

T added the Wednesday before Easter to his holidays in order to get the jobs he'd promised himself would be completed on The Rosabella and the plan was to pick up K from her leaving do on Wednesday evening, and head south.

Wednesday dawned with a howling breeze and snow in the air. K went off to Hereford and T snuggled down again waiting for the day to get a bit lighter and, hopefully, the weather to settle.

No such luck though so he ventured out into the increasingly heavy snow to start work - topbox to be drilled and fitted, canoes to be secured to the roofbars and bikes to be loaded on to a newly adapted bike carrier.



Rosie in the snow at Cleeton

After 45 minutes on the roof, messing about with all the fiddly nuts and bolts of the topbox doing what should have been a quarter of an hour's job, T retreated to the house to warm up. Ten minutes later, in full winter gear, he was back up on the roof fighting a losing battle with frozen straps and boats that were in imminent danger of becoming airborne and taking him with them.

After half an hour he gave up the struggle, lowered the kayaks back to the ground and beat a retreat again to The Old Schoolhouse. This time there was real pain as the blood returned to his frozen fingertips. Another look outside sealed the decision.

"Hello love. Look, I'm really struggling, the weather's ridiculous and I think we should stay put tonight and go tomorrow".

K realised from T's tone that he'd been suffering and readily agreed to another night at home - the gas fire in the van was a bit iffy as well so we couldn't even be sure of staying warm once we were on site.

T continued tinkering inside the van - the hot water system needed bleeding, a light had become detached and needed sorting and the wardrobe needed the clothes for the weekend to be loaded. Eventually he'd had enough and went and sat in front of the log burner until K came home.

It proved to be the right decision as the snow set in again, but next morning was a little warmer, and two pairs of hands made light-ish work of the remaining jobs on The Rosabella, although it was still midday by the time we left Cleeton.



Van-face!

An uneventful run down to Hope Cove, with ears cocked for any strange noises from the gearbox, and by evening we were esconced in the familiar surroundings of Bolberry and the added luxury of a hook up to power the electric radiator that we'd brought to cover for our dodgy heater.






T does his Cyclops impression

Salcombe

It was good to bed down for a good night's sleep in The Rosie and, although the weather was cold and showery for the weekend, at least it wasn't snowing. We had a good relaxing few days, talking and planning for the wedding, watching MotoGP on a very in-and-out mobile broadband, and introducing ourselves to the joys of off-road, night-time mountain biking - lots of squeals and giggles ensued (and that was just T!) but a great time was had despite the fact that the canoes stayed firmly in their place on the roof!






March 2012

Well, considering this is supposed to be a blog about our adventures in The Rosabella, we don't seem to be reporting on much adventuring but have a surfeit of gossip. Probably because with all the other stuff going on in our lives we don't seem to have a load of time for going away at the moment. Anyway, here goes with the last couple of months' stuff:

The Rosabella
The juddering from the gearbox, which K had tried to convince us was due to 'bedding in' became worse and, additionally, the steering seemed to have a big issue - it felt as if the wheels had minds of their own and would decide to plot their own course down the road at entirely random moments. T had a quick look and discovered a lot of play in the drive shaft, which may explain the juddering, and possibly the weird tracking of the wheels. Reverse was also still hugely difficult to engage and the column shift was very sloppy with a lot of free play.

Back she went to the mechanic who had fitted the gearbox. A week later she was ready for collection again with a bill for a further £100-odd pounds for the replacement of circlips on the shaft and shims on the steering rack. The gear lever had also been reset and when T drove away The Rosie felt like a new vehicle - a pleasure to drive. Alleluia!! And it was a good job too because.........

The House Move
In early February T's landlady dropped the bombshell that she wanted to move back in to the cottage at Bentlawnt. It came completely out of the blue and after ten years T was pretty dischuffed (not wanting to share his home with the landlady!). Of course, renting a property privately means that there's always the risk of this happening. The fact that we'd also decided to get married (T and K, not T and the landlady!) also went in to the pot - we'd decided that there was no urgent need to change our living arrangements and that we would move in together when the right place presented itself - this new situation merely moved things on a little. Add to that K's house and altogether it wasn't a complete disaster. There were a couple of irritants about the way things were done but apart from that, well, we could cope.

We decided to use The Rosabella as a removal van and started shifting stuff the 35 miles south to her place. Have you ever seen the amount of junk a confirmed bachelor can accumulate over twenty years? And can you imagine trying to fit it all in to a house designed for one person who also has twenty years of singleton rubbish already filling every space? The Old School House now looks like a Dali-esque take on the Mad Hatter's tea party.



The Old School Room (K's house)




The view from T's terrace, Bentlawnt














We have decided to let K's house and find somewhere to rent for ourselves. We currently have a possible tenant, and we've seen a place we have both fallen in love with - back at Bentlawnt! So we're now faced with the prospect, if everything works out, of dragging all our stuff back to about half a mile from where T's stuff has just come!

Work
T is having a grand time in semi-retirement, but K's job as a manager at the Royal National College for the Blind at Hereford wasn't really giving her what she needed. She applied for a job leading a project at Shrewsbury College, fluffed the interview and was promptly offered the post.

Again, Sod's Law. We'd often thought it would be convenient for her to work in Shrewsbury because of the amount of time she spent at T's cottage, 11 miles from the town. When she's finally landed something suitable we've had to move to her place at the other end of the county!

And of course there's the small matter of.........

The Wedding
With all of the other stuff going on, not to mention a celebration of a big birthday for K, an even bigger one for T, and a world tour of South Wales for the band, we've managed to make a little progress with plans for the society occasion of the year. The date has been set (July 19th), the banns read (or whatever they do at a Register Office), the reception booked (a garden party followed by a barbecue at The Old Mill, Clun - cue torrential rain throughout mid-July) and the cake designed. That's it then - sorted!

We've decided that we're definitely gong away for Easter in The Rosabella (exactly a year since our last big trip and the incident of the gearbox), so hopefully the next entry in this blog will be more travel and less hassle. Fingers crossed!