What are you all up to

It has been dull all day but with a temperature of around 12C not cold. We had a comfortable tow across N Yorkshire, from east, Pickering, to west, Ingleton, to yet another new CL for us. It is fairly basic, no toilet, but with easy access, H/S and EHU at £17:50 pn it suits us fine.

I have just done a tot up and we have now passed 550 different sites during our caravanning years. This total doesn't include all the rally sites we visited when we caravanned  with our children. Hope to add to this total before the year is out.

Nellie

I am a bit surprised you have not done more than 550 different sites? When I started my website in the early 2000's I started writing reviews and if you include the sites we have stayed at and the ones which I have deleted because they have closed, I suppose I have about 350 sites listed, both in the UK and Europe. We started caravanning in 1982 so there are probably 20 years worth of sites not included in the figure. I see you as a much more prolific camper than we ever were, although in the early years of our retirement we did spend quite a bit of time abroad but beyond that only an average number of nights every year. I assume that you perhaps return to a lot of sites you have previously stayed at?

David

Did some garden maintenance yesterday but the weather was iffy so didn't get as much done as we had hoped.

Cleaned the inside of the van and emptied our waste water.

This morning not that much better, weather wise, but after food shopping early on decided to clean the soffit boards and guttering on the front of the house. Will need to do the back sometime this week. So much algae.

Still catching up with admin.

Congrats Nellie. Treat yourselves to a cake or two. Keep going. Over a 20 year period after retiring we must have stayed on about 15 new sites per annum, plus some repetition already visited I daresay and prior to retiring it would have been about 10 new ones each year. Obviously quite a few overseas in that lot. We only kept a diary from 1995 to 2022.

Well that's us back home again after 7 weeks away in France, Spain and Portugal.

 Campsites on the Costas were very busy and full of Germans, who all seemed to have very noisy dogs.

We changed our plans and went across to Portugal. Lovely, nice and peaceful sites, not busy, still the same weather, site prices are generally half the price of Spain or on some occasions a third of the price. The Portuguese people are lovely and friendly what's not to like. Much slower pace of life and simpler to.

We were down the south of Portugal (not the Algarve) planning on what to do next. Neither of us fancied going back to the Costas or to the crowded Algarve. The long range weather forecast didn't look good so we decided to cut our trip short and come back home. Looking at what has happened in Spain I think we made the right decision.

This year we discovered lots of interesting places to visit and are planning to go back and do more next Springtime.

Its good to be back home (didn't think I would say that) the garden is still looking good though some things have gone over. I can't believe I have a clematis coming into flower again. Various other plants have still got flowers and most of the bushes have still got leaves. 

Had a bit of problem, finding a site on the way up that was still open, so many of the sites have closed early this year. We called one that we had used in the past to be told, sorry just closed this weekend. Then she relented and said you can come but you will be on your own. Bliss my kind of site. 

Will need to do some searching out of sites still open over winter if we are to use the MH this year. 

I haven't caught up with things on CT yet so hope I haven't missed anything. I look forward to reading all the threads and posts.

Goodness me!  To be honest, I've never counted, but I'd be surprised if we've been to 350 site, let alone 550!!  Although we tend to go out and about in the caravan for little trips throughout the year, I guess we do tend to go back to our favourite sites quite often.  One of these days I'll try and tot up the number of sites.

We haven't been across the channel now since 2015... before Brexit & Covid...  Now that the dog is 13+ years old, I suspect we won't go back whilst we have her - I don't think she'd cope with the heat.

Before I retired, it was pretty near impossible to get away other than the main school holidays....

However, I now have a 'count the sites' mission - to do in the new year, after all the madness of Christmas Concerts have been put to bed for another year..

David

Nice to hear from you again Tammy. I was wondering where you had disappeared to and said to OH over the weekend that I hoped you had avoided Valencia area.

I know what you mean about "Billy-no-mates" as we have just had our maximum allotted 2 nights on a CS in Shropshire that had no other visitors. Even the owner had gone away!

DK, as we have a caravan, as you know, we tend to stay on a site for mainly 4 or 5 nights, touring from there each day. I think that we would have used a lot more sites, stopping for only a couple of nights before moving on and doing our touring en route from site to site, as tda does. We also tend to use quite a number of favourite sites on numerous occasions in a year, there only being a limited number of sites in certain regions that we would consider using.

DSB, it will be interesting to read what total you arrive at, the numbers soon tot up once one starts to go back through your trips.

The numbers on the CLs have varied a lot this last trip, with only us on the first one, the second one was full for 3 out of 4 nights we were there, roughly the same on the next one and there is only one other caravan on our present site.

It has been a rather dull and dank day, but thankfully without any rain. We visited Kirkby Lonsdale today where we had a walk up to High Casterton in the morning  and then along by the R.Lune and up to Ruskin's View. Unfortunately the path beyond it has been closed off because of river erosion of the bank below. Had to take the photo but it certainly doesn't emulate the Turner painting of the view. I blame the weather!!

We never kept a tally of our CL/Site usage, but it will be in the hundreds down the last forty years or so. When we were working, we tended to have most of our holidays in Cornwall, as we left our caravan on a couple of sites down there most years, a lovely small private site near Fowey, and then a smashing farm CL that had storage for horse boxes and caravans, near Marazion. Hence we would zip up and down sometimes four, five times a year, all seasons, with 28 days in the Summer. We had some other favourite CLs as well, ones to go back to with plenty of lovely and interesting places close by. We took to shorter stop offs with the MH, as we liked to move on. But we have also done a lot of cottages, B&Bs and hotels as well, as so many are very dog friendly in these past 20 years or so.

Good to hear from you TG👍

Busy day at Mum’s today😵‍💫 then zipped across to my SIL’s to drop of some special medical drinks for BIL. Only to find he was admitted to hospital middle of night and is now on a drip awaiting a biopsy🙁 Tomorrow up early to drop OH off at station for train to Leeds for his pre op tests, back home to cater for the demands of our elderly pooch, fit in Mum again, my own annual GP review, pick OH back up from station, sort the dog out, again😁, meal, bed and the Weds we both go to Leeds for OH to be admitted. Each day is a bit of a blur at the moment, but does have its funny moments😁