It’s great to get away again. What is new since I last blogged. Well, you will know all the coronavirus stuff that has been happening so I won’t go there. We have had a solar panel fitted to the van. Last month we took the van to the dealers and had the new panel fitted. The intention is to boost our batteries so that we can ‘wildcamp’ for longer without having to hook up to electricity on site, so, that’s what we are doing tonight.
We set off and in the words of the ‘Thunderbirds’ cartoon….”All systems are GO”.
Our journey to the Wirral was arranged in order to meet up with friends, Lin and Norman from Liverpool. We arrived nice and early at the appointed car park near Little Neston. We planned to go for an afternoon walk. The height restriction barrier was open so we drove in and parked up. As we did some woodland workers told us that they were leaving the car park and would be shutting the height barrier as they left….therefore we couldn’t stay. Janice explained that we were meeting someone and one of the volunteer workers who was staying longer said we could stay and he would close the barrier later in the afternoon when we had gone. What nice people. We only wished we could have stayed overnight, it would have been a perfect location.
Lin and Norman arrived and we walked along the Wirral Circular Path. We paused at Parkgate, spotted a place where we might be able to wildcamp later and more importantly stopped for the first ice cream.
You can tell it was a bit windy! The view across the Dee Estuary was to Wales on the other side. I thought I got the faintest whiff of freshly baked welsh cakes but that’s another treat to come. We enjoyed the rest of the walk and returned to the car park for a coffee stop….
Yes, you guessed, I found the stop/go board lying on the floor at some roadworks. I was tempted to divert some traffic the wrong way down a country road but resisted the temptation. We said goodbyes to Lin and Norman and drove to Parkgate for our overnight stop. The Wirral area seems very pleasant from what we have seen. We will have a bit more of an explore tomorrow.
Also new for this trip is a new sat nav for the van. We can set it for the height, width and weight of the van so that we are routed to avoid narrow roads and low bridges etc. So, far it’s doing fine. Additionally I have acquired a new Garmin Sat Nav for cycling. It does all sorts of things to help train me to be an athlete (a bit too late for me) as all I want is to get good directions for my cycle trips. I have only used it once so I am still getting to grips with the technology. Hopefully I will get the hang of it quickly.
So, as I write the blog we are parked on the seafront looking across to Wales being buffeted by the wind. It’s always a little bit exciting to wildcamp but I think we will be fine here, it’s pretty quiet and it is a showery Monday night. As I say, it’s great to get away again.
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