Sunday, October 30, 2011

The Kampa Travel Pod Story.........

............or how we came by our second-hand, only used a couple of times drive away awning quite by chance.
Go back to Easter 2011.  Remember?  Lots of sunshine, unseasonally warm temperatures, probably the best weather we had all year and our van was still a van with just the side windows and a new roof.  As the weather was so nice and as we like to cycle we decided on a trip to Manchester along the Rochdale canal.  How hard could it be? It turned out to be 27 miles for the round trip and the trouble with living high above sea level is where ever we go it's always very hard work getting back.

It was a nice ride out even though the canal isn't at it's prettiest the closer you get to the city centre.  We met some spring lambs along the way and some baby geese.  We came across someone's idea of modern architecture. I took a picture because Prince Charles'  "monstrous carbuncle" speech sprung to mind when I saw it.  People have to live in these flats, houses, whatever they are.  I don't think they look good personally, Oh and if that apostrophe after Charles is wrong or in the wrong place, please don't correct me, apostrophe's are on the whole a carbuncle of an idea we could well do without in English grammar, they are so difficult to get right.
Manchester Architecture
Once we got to the end of the canal and reached Manchester City centre we found a 'Go Outdoors' shop just across the road so decided to have a nosy round there before setting off back up the canal home.  Lots of assistants were stood around the entrance  asking customers if they were looking for anything in particular.  Kevin asked them if they had any drive away awnings as they have lots of tents there.  They said not, even though apparently 'Go Outdoors' started out as a caravan accessories shop.  As we got upstairs to the sales floor some man was waiting for us at the top of the escalator.  He had overheard us asking about drive away awnings and said he just happened to have one himself that had hardly been used that he was planning to sell on ebay.  It was even used for a Ford Transit campervan so should fit ours. He gave us the name of the awning, his phone number and said he wanted £80 for it and left it at that.  We had a look on ebay when we finally arrived home a good few hours later to find it was quite a good price and even though for me, it seemed like an eternity before we would ever be able to use the thing, we bought it anyway.  Glad we did buy it as it's been invaluable for extra space.

Kampa Pod in Dolgelleau Wales

Saturday, October 29, 2011

Time to move on

This blog was originally on Posterous.  I got so sick of it never working properly, not uploading pictures, constantly changing the format of the way it works I decided to move it.  So if you want to know the story of WV Camper and how it started then visit my old blog on posterous. Read the posts on there then come back here because this is where the story will continue.