Category: travel

Valentines camping at Seaford

On By MashleyIn Camper van, T4 Camper, travel, United Kingdom, Urban Caravan, VW Campervan, vwt4Leave a comment

What shall we do for Valentines I asked Lolly, lets go somewhere in our urban caravan she said, we’ll book Friday off and go for a long weekend, sounds like a plan I replied.

We set a rule that for short weekends away we wouldn’t travel more than an hour or so’s drive, Lolly had also mentioned visiting Beachy Head so I figured somewhere near there would be a good place to stay and so it was I came across Seaford.

I chose Seaford because i’d never heard of it, it isn’t too far from Beachy Head and there was a campsite that was taking bookings in February, most places don’t begin their season till the beginning of March, it’s also just over an hours drive from where we live, perfect.

The campsite stayed at is called Buckle Caravan Park and the description amounted to ” No frills campsite with few rules, like camping in the good old days” – that sounded alright to me.

The first thing that hits you when you arrive is the place looks a bit run down although I am sure it looks completely different if the sun is shining, it’s also a little strange that the campsite warden has built a moat around his twin static caravan and decorated the garden with scallop shells, odd garden ornaments and a concrete pig. The reception building is also a little odd looking completely out of place with everything around it, despite it all looking a bit rubbish we were warmly greeted, shown our pitch on a map, educated about the electric gate and told the shower and toilet blocks nearest to us were being repaired / renovated so we’d have to use the ones near the office, there is also a club house open on Saturday with a bar which we were more than welcome to use.

I also didn’t have enough cash on me to pay for our stay and the deposit for the key fob, no worries, pay tomorrow said the guy at reception which was nice.

We made out way to our pitch, parked up and made a brew.

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As you can see, there are a lot of caravans, most of which seem to be there all year round and as such most appeared empty, the campsite was really quiet, looking ahead is a grassy knoll and beyond that a pebble beach and the sea, it’s not that pretty so I didn’t take a picture.

I’d downloaded a walk which was the first one on this page and on the basis it was dry with no rain forecast we drove to East Dean, parked up at the Tiger Inn and set off on our walk. The guide is a quite old and a little out of date but most of the landmarks still exist and we didn’t get lost, bonus.

We stopped at a national trust spot called Birling gap, we grabbed a beer and a cider, used their wifi and then made our way to the beach which you access via metal stairs from the top of the cliff.

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There are lots of signs saying that the cliffs are a little unstable and there are also the biggest lumps of chalk that are very handy for writing on metal stairs should you feel the need to do so…

We hung about for a while, grabbed a selfie and then headed on our way..

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From here we headed uphill toward the Bell Tout lighthouse, built by a chap called Mad Jack Fuller who had an addiction for building follys he believed he finally made something useful, however he built his lighthouse on the fog line so the light didn’t shine very far when it was foggy and was useless to ships avoiding the cliffs, it’s now a B&B..

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We picked up the pace as the sun was beginning to set, from the Bell Tout chipped down a hill, along a roman road and back into East Dean where we started, our plan was for dinner at the Tiger Inn which has what appears to be a real Tigers head on the wall, i’m not a fan of stuffed animals but i’ve never seen a stuffed tigers head before and felt compelled to take a picture of it.

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The pub is on the green at East Dean, it’s a hotel as well, there are a host of locally brewed ales, a warm fire and a great menu, we had baked camembert to start and then the Tiger Inn burger, I got all excited about the local ales and drunk one of each, I was too drunk to drive home and we were going to stay in the car park, Lolly however elected to drive us home and only had 2 halfs and 2 pints of water. I’m glad we went back to the campsite as it meant I could hook us up to 240V and get the heater going, would have been a bloody cold night otherwise.

We also got to catch up with one of my old raving buddies and best mates Rob, he lives just down the road in Peacehaven and met us for a Guiness.

During the night the rain came and it didn’t stop, we woke in the morning and discovered the van has a leak coming from the roof, most likely where the AA lights were mounted. We decided we’d head home instead of staying another night as the weather wasn’t set to improve and everything are wanted to do meant we would be out in the rain. Before we left we had a shower, whilst the facilities weren’t the best looking they were clean and the water hot.

We drove into Seaford in search of breakfast and came across a place called Sub Station, what a lovely surprise, proper nice breakfast in a sub and the owner is great fun too, left him looking up on Google “was Mary Berry fit” after confirming old Mary has had a bit of botox…

Other than the nice cafe Seaford is a bit rundown, I doubt it’s on any must visit list which is why i’ve never heard of it, it’s not that far from Brighton, Hastings and Eastbourne which are more well known.

What I will say is the countryside around Seaford is really quite beautiful so it was worth staying there for that.

It was still raining when we left Sub Station, we stopped off at a place called paradise park, had a wander round there and then headed for home looking forward to sleeping in a warm bed with no leaks!

I probably wouldn’t go back to Buckle but I wouldn’t say avoid it either, 20 quid a night for a hard standing pitch right by the beach is great value and i’m sure when the sun is shining it’s a completely different place, if you fancy a cheap night away “near” Brighton and Hastings give it a go !

Paris

On By MashleyIn Europe, france, travelLeave a comment

Another trip courtesy of my company has brought me to Paris, who knew IT would work out so well for travelling !

I’ve been to our office in Paris before but if memory serves me right I was only here for one night, I took the customary picture of the Eiffel Tower and went home the following day, this time around I’m here for 3 nights..

Our office is in a kind of apartment block, semi business and semi residential which might seem a bit odd but is quite the norm round these parts. Some of the staff in the office say they dread bringing clients here for meetings as it’s all a bit unprofessional, personally I quite like it, especially as the first thing you come across is this awesome lift, my father in law is a lift engineer and I’m sure he’d agree !

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The office is located a stones throw from the Arc Du Triomphe and a decent metro station, I thought I had booked into the Sofitel which is a short walk from the office but somehow i’d managed to book myself into a completely different hotel nowhere near the office a metro ride away, I was more annoyed that I would have to deal with rush hour to get to the office in the morning  so I cracked on and set about changing my reservation. The hotel I had booked into was the intercontinental right by the opera house, it’s a stunning building but a bit stuffy for my liking, I felt like i’d been booked into the Grand Budapest Hotel, very opulent, heaving and opera themed, not for me..

Due to the late cancellation policy I spent one night there so as not to incur any charges and the next day I checked into the Sofitel. After work I chipped back to the hotel, grabbed my camera and made my way by metro to the catacombs, they’re not close to where I am staying, 14 stops away, I arrived there at 19.02, it shut at 19.00 and they wouldn’t let me in, gutted…

I sat on the metro slightly narked about not getting in but thought i’d head out for a wander in my local hood and see what there was to photograph, I came out of the station and it started to rain.

I’m not too fussed about rain and from a photography perspective you can get some lovely reflections from ambient lighting, I decided to take a walk down the Champs Elysees starting at the Arc du Triomphe end, this is the view.

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That’s about halfway down to be honest and I nearly got killed taking that shot, standing in the middle of the road with a camera and tripod while French drivers who are mental at the best of times fly past you within a cats whisker is not something I recommend. As you can see there is a great big ferris wheel which I’d seen on my last visit and meant to photograph, this was my destination for the evening.

If I hadn’t been risking my life trying to get a photo in the middle of the road then the walk from one end to the other would have taken about 20 mins, after about 40 minutes I reached my destination and set about getting a picture, I decided on a slow shutter release that gives the impression the wheel is going round at a thousand miles an hour when in reality it’s not moving very fast at all..

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Happy with the shot I took I wandered back toward my hotel, somewhere along the line I thought I would take a shortcut and immediately got lost.

Sometimes getting lost works out quite well, it did on this occasion as I came across this awesome veedub parked up outside the Pakistan consulate.

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The paint job was amazing, I particularly like the Pakistan and French flags in the shield at the front, handily I wasn’t that lost at all, my hotel was just round the corner, result..

The next day I was determined to go and see the catacombs, I was also determined to have a Croque Monsieur so I popped out to a café local to the office and had this bad boy for a late breakfast.

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I did everything I needed to do in the office and left for the catacombs in good time.

The entrance to the catacombs is pretty unassuming, there are no neon lights or flashing signs advertising the place, just a guy standing outside a door way and some ropes for queue control, it gets quite busy during the day apparently. The catacombs are the remains of a limestone quarry and this is just a very small part of it, whats interesting about this particular part of it are the bones. In the 16th century the cemeteries in Paris were overflowing and the tunnels in the quarry were collapsing, bone remains were transported from the cemeteries to the quarry to free up space in the cemeteries and fille the cavities in the quarry. The bones were quite literally thrown down a well leading to the quarry with no way of telling whose remains were who and thats how they remained until a chap called Louis-Étienne Héricart de Thury decided to arrange them in a more ornate way.

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There are over 6 million Parisians remains down here, you can’t begin to imagine how many bones that is..

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From floor to ceiling the walls are lined with skulls and bones.

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I visited at around 18.00 on  Wednesday night which I think is an ideal time to visit, it’s a sombre place and deserves a bit of quiet and respect which you might not get around midday on a Saturday when 200 people are making there way through. I’m really glad I got to see the catacombs and i’m going to look up some of the “unofficial” tours I’ve read about urban explorers undertaking, maybe next time I’m here i’ll go on one of those!

I have one day of work left and then I’m heading home, Paris has been fun but i’m really looking forward to seeing Lolly! 

A trip to Coldharbour. 

On By MashleyIn Surrey, T4 Camper, travel, United Kingdom, VW CampervanLeave a comment

Last year Lolly and I bought each other a mountain bike. Whenever we go away we take them with us, occasionally we just hop in the van with the bikes on the back, drive somewhere that entertains mountain bikes and go for a ride.

About 45 mins drive from us is leith hill and just beyond that is Coldharbour, a tiny village you can easily end up at if you go for a walk or ride around Leith Hill. All around this part of the world are bridle ways and tracks for walkers and riders as well as horses and the odd crosser that’s not supposed to be there.

We started at the plough inn as you can park up there and it’s a good reference point if you are using the map below.

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The idea was to go and do some of the trails and then grab some lunch. Didn’t quite go to plan, the next couple of hours ended up as a kind of freestyle ride / hike with the added fun of potentially wandering into a pheasant shoot, luckily we didn’t but we did think someone might mistake us for some wildlife and crack a shot off.
We came across some pretty cool woods well worth a photo of!

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The trails on the map weren’t that well signposted and as you can see below we went a rather odd route.

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Before setting out I booked us a table for 15.00, past experience of the Plough Inn and trying to get a table for lunch was a bit of a failure due to it being heaving. As luck would have it our random ramble brought us back to our starting point at exactly 15.00, below is stravas account of our adventure.

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While I put the bikes back on the van lolly went to meet the two horses and their steer that rocked up about the same time as us.

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The pub was pretty quiet when went to our table but very quickly all the tables were taken. The plough does some great local ales and some pretty potent cider too, we were both fairly hungry so we dispensed with starters and went straight for mains, I had the plough inn burger with added cheese and Lolly had-the same.   The burgers were excellent, really tasty, good size portions and not particularly expensive.

We shared a chocolate brownie with chocolate ice cream for dessert, it was epic!

The Plough Inn is nice pub with a mix of walkers, cyclists, and families, there is a nice garden for when the weather is better and dogs are welcome all year round, if you’re ever in that neck of the woods give it a visit.

We had a really good day out, we’ll be back later in the year to try and find the trails and give them a good hammering.

As is customary with my travel reports, a picture of our van, bumblebee parked up near the pub, the namesake of this blog!

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Istanbul

On By MashleyIn Asia, Europe, Istanbul, travel, TurkeyLeave a comment

Although this isn’t an adventure in the van I like to write about all the places I visit…

In my 9 – 5 IT nerd role, our team support a number of external offices in the EMEA region, we do this remotley but at least once a year we travel to an office and help with any outstanding issues they might have. Over the years I’ve been to some amazing places, Moscow, Dubai, Madrid, Paris, I think the only office in region I have left to visit is Jo’Burg.

We try to rotate where we go so at some point all of the team will have visited all of the offices, this time I chose Istanbul. I’ve never been to Turkey and so many people in the office rave about Istanbul so I jumped at the chance to go, especially at works expense!

The office have put me up in a very nice hotel, the Four Seasons at the Bosphorus, it sits right on the river in the european half of of Turkey. If you head outside to the terrace you can see the Asia side of Turkey across the river.

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I’d naively expected the weather to be scorchio but it turns out Istanbul isn’t blazing hot all the time, it’s wasn’t proper cold tho, you could head out in a hoodie and be warm enough.

I arrived early evening after an early start, I wasn’t up for too much so I headed to the terrace with my camera to grab some nights shots, thats when I saw the massive bridge or as the rest of the world knows it, the Bosphorous bridge which connects Europe to Asia by road.

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You can kind of see it in the distance, it looks further than it is, I wanted to take a look and maybe grab a photo so I took a wander.

It took about 20 minutes walking before I reached more or less where the bridge is, there are a bunch of restaurants by the water and a square, in the surrounding streets are small stalls that sell clothing, jewellery and tourist stuff like fridge magnets. There is also a nice little Mosque that sits in the shadow of the bridge, I took a few photo’s but wasn’t really happy with them so they got tinned. I stuck around for about an hour and then headed back to the hotel.

Tuesday morning I headed to our office, it was nice to meet the people I speak to on the phone and as I have found with all the offices I have visited, I was made to feel very welcome. The plan was to spend a day at the office and then meet up with a colleague from the London office who is over here for a conference and do a bit of sight seeing in the evening. We had planned to head to Sultanahmet square to see the Blue Mosque, grab some food and soak up the Turkish atmosphere, maybe even entertain a carpet seller.

Unfortunately we never got there, first, when I met up with my colleague it was properly chucking it down monsoon style and wasn’t showing any signs of letting up, everything I wanted to visit was also closed. Added to this, earlier in the day a suicide bomber detonated a bomb in a park right by the mosque killing a number of tourists, we had both agreed we’d still go despite the bombing  but with the awful  weather and learning the square was on lockdown making it difficult to get to we decided to give it a swerve and had a couple of beers in the bar instead, dry January got put on hold for the evening.

Before I left for Istanbul a few of my colleagues had suggested I visit a place called the Basilica Cistern as they know I like things underground, architecture and history. It’s located not far from where the bomb went off, I figured it was unlikely there would be a second bombing the following day as security in the area would be tight so I worked through my lunch, left work an hour early and made my way to the square on a tram.

For anyone wishing to visit the Cistern ( or Yerebatan Cistern as it’s also known) with a camera and tripod they won’t let you take the tripod with you which makes long exposures a bit tricky, in the end I improvised and propped my camera on the floor so I could get a shot of the many columns which turned out alright, there are 336 columns in total!

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The cistern is an incredible place, there are huge carp that swim in the water and as you walk round water is constantly dripping giving you the impression you are wandering about a sewer system without the smell! It’s an incredible feeling to be walking around a construction that was built in the Roman era, very much like walking around Bath. At the base of 2 columns there are 2 medusa heads.

One upside down…

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And one on it’s side…

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The general accepted thinking is that these Medusas were recycled from older buildings built before the cistern and were placed this way so the column on top is the same height as all the others!

I’m so glad my colleagues told me about the cistern, well worth a visit. I wandered around there for about an hour and then headed up to the square to take some shots of the blue mosque.

This is the Blue Mosque, it looks a lot more Blue during the day.

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If you turn 180 degrees behind you is the Hagia Sophia

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Annoyingly by the time I reached the square I missed the last entrance to the Hagia Sophia, from what I have heard it’s spectacular inside. The whole area was very quiet which I suspect was due to the previous days events, there were a few people that looked like tourists scuffing about but I am sure that before the bombing it would have been much busier.

My last stop of the night would be a restaurant called Banyan. One of the staff at the hotel had seen me taking pictures and asked if i’d seen the bridge and the mosque, I explained i’d been down there and taken a few shots but been disappointed with the results, Banyan is where you need to go she said, head to the terrace bar and you’ll get a great shot of the mosque and bridge, she was right..

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I had a couple of drinks while I was taking photo’s and then headed back to the hotel, it was kebab night and I really wanted to try an authentic Turkish doner kebab and see if it was anything like the ones we have back in the UK after a nights boozing. It was more or less the same except there was no chilli sauce or mound of salad and it came in a wrap instead of a pitta.

All that remains of the trip is a half day of work and a plane ride home.

It’s been a great place to wander about and i’ve not felt uneasy or wary of any of the places I visited, not like Cairo where i feared for my life daily. It’s also been really nice that the cab drivers don’t try and rip you off though with the traffic i’d recommend public transport where possible, the trams reminded me of the ones back home in Croydonia.

Another thing that I found cool is the call to prayer, if you close your eyes and just listen you could be fooled into thinking you’re in a scorching sand pit middle east country with buildings made out of clay and people riding about on horses with massive swords, then you open your eyes and your somewhere really quite modern.

Hopefully i’ll get to come back one day, maybe for a long weekend with Lolly as there is so much more to see, failing that i’ll do my best to engineer an office visit in the summer !!!

 

Van-X Curtains

On By MashleyIn Camper van, T4 Camper, travel, VW CampervanLeave a comment

There are numerous options for blocking out heat and light and retaining heat in your van when you’re out in the wild. Our current solution is the thermal window blind variety with the suckers you have to lick and stick to the window.

The issue I have with them is they are a ball ache to get out and stick up. Especially if you are just crashing in the van because you got drunk or you are doing a spot of wild camping, ours fall down a lot too.

I’ve been looking at the Van-X curtains for a while and if you believe the hype then the hype says they are the best van curtains on the market.

After our trip to France and a few other spontaneous nights away I’d managed to convince Lolly that curtains in the rear and tailgate was the way forward, she agreed so I cracked on and ordered a set of the premium line T4 tailgate and side window curtains. I ordered on the Friday and they arrived on the Monday.

Christmas happened and then I got a chance to fit them.

Each curtain comes in its own box with its own fittings. I started with the window above the cooker and sink.

Here’s what it looked like before.

You have to look up the instructions online, they are pretty straight forward, these things come in handy.

As different vans have different size windows you’ll need to cut the rails to fit yours which is no real drama.

The thing I found the most difficult was getting the supplied self tapping screws into the body work, I broke two drill bits I was using as pilots but persevered and got there in the end. I also found the curtain stops that plug into the  end of the rail a pain to get in, I pushed both curtains on and left the the last screw out so I could bend the rail a bit to get the stopper in as shown below.

Once the stopper was back in I put the last screw in and pulled the second curtain back to where it should be.

The curtains also totally block out any light.

The curtains also come with a tie back, I didn’t put them in as I don’t think I need them plus the light was fading and I still had two curtains to go, this one took me an hour.

The next curtain went up fairly quick, when you do the sliding door curtain you need to pay attention to the rail.


As you can see, one channel is wider than the other, on the previous window you fix the rail with the wider channel toward the window, in this instance you fit the wider channel away from the window, you do this so you can cut a bit out for the sliding door lock.

This means the curtain can be pulled without fouling on the lock.

This one took about 40 minutes to do, a bit quicker than the last one.


The tailgate curtain has one regular rail and one that doesn’t look like any of the others, the regular rail goes at the top of the tailgate and other one goes just below the window and fixes to the wooden panel, took about half an hour to install.


I’m very happy with the way they have turned out. If I can put these in anyone can!

We tested them out a couple of days after, we went over to friends and stayed on their drive after a few beers.

The curtains lived up to the hype, they kept the cold out, the warmth in and blocked out any external light, as you can see we still have the thermal curtains in the front, more to block the light out than anything, maybe a van X cab divider curtain is the answer!

Anyways, from my experience I would gladly recommend these curtains, well priced, well made and well awesome!

Thank you. 

On By MashleyIn travel, VW Campervan, Writing, bloggingLeave a comment

 It always amazes me that when I write something about our adventures some of our readers like it, even more amazing is people we have never met choose to follow our exploits.

 I have zero writing skills and if you met me in person you’d know I write pretty much as I speak, a south London bloke from Croydon with a slightly cockney accent. 

I enjoy it, I like getting our adventures out of my head and into the blog.  As well as it being nice that people like what I write, I then get to explore what they have written as naturally, I’m curious about the liker. When I visit their site, sometimes I learn something, sometimes I laugh, others take me into a new direction researching something I’d never heard of until I’d just read about it. 

This blog, my readers and the WordPress community have opened up a new world to me and I really like it, thank you. 

Missing the train. 

On By MashleyIn Belgium, road trip, T4 Camper, travel, VW CampervanLeave a comment

Our last morning and we woke to no rain, a bit of sun and a small patch of blue sky, marvellous. We had a few things to see before we headed home so we did our usual morning things, packed up the van and parked it in the campsite car park.

Our first port of call was lidls for breakfast, 2 pain au chocolat’s each, they went down fairly sharpish and we made our way to town. We parked up our bikes by the stadhuis and headed in there to have a look at the gothic hall.


It’s a pretty impressive hall and also the only place you can get married in Bruges, I can think of worse places to tie the knot!

There is a kind of display of coins and notes but understandably, none of it is in English so we had a brief look and then made our way to the Belfry if Bruges.

The belfry is not for the faint hearted, it’s a 366 step climb to the top with a few stops on the way, the stairs are thin and windy and there is two way traffic.

I did take some pictures of the top but they are on my other camera, i’ll add them when I get home.

The highlight for me was being in the bell tower when all the bells started going off, what an amazing sound!

We still had some shopping to do, I was also trying find somewhere that sold a cool little hat I’d seen, food was also required.

After trying various beer shops i’d pretty much given up on finding my hat so we stopped off for some food at a bar we went to the day before, it’s was heaving that day so we’d given it a swerve but today it was ok, we sat at the bar and just out of curiosity I asked if they had any of the Christmas chouffes in stock and the hat you get if you drink three, they only had two left but they also had a hat, they said I could have it for drinking two, result!


We had one each and that was all I could have as I had to drive later, they’re 10% each. Lolly ordered a bush Noel with her food and I had some water. Our food was pretty good, I had Trappist cheese croquet to start followed by rabbit in prune stew with potato croquet, Lauren had scallops in a cheese sauce followed by a Flemish stew, all were lovely.

Time was against us, we still had some beer to buy, a 10 min ride to the van and then at least an hours drive to Calais.

We got the beer, made the van in ten minutes, arsed about with the sat nav and eventually got off to Calais, we missed our train despite my best efforts, no dramas though, we got put on the next one for free.

We had a great time in Bruges, the Christmas market was rubbish but the food, beer, historical stuff and atmosphere of the town was great, when I get home I will update this post with all the places we visited, meanwhile, here’s some pictures of us with beers.


This was near the end of the beer and food night, the beers are starting to take their toll !

On Lollys birthday night I had to order the weakest beer they had as I was half cut when we got there, this beer was cheaper than water….

Proper tourists. 

On By MashleyIn Belgium, T4 Camper, travel, VW CampervanLeave a comment

After a slightly less cold night in the van we got up and had our first shower of the trip, it felt amazing,  after suitable amounts of tea had been drunk we chipped off into town to see some sights and stop by lidls for some breakfast. We forgot it was Sunday and lidls was closed, no breakfast then.

First stop on our adventure was a brewery tour, the brewery is called the half moon or De Halve Maan if you are a local.  From outside the brewery look like any other old building but when you get inside you begin to realise it’s really quite a complex place.


At one time there were 300 brewery’s in Bruges and now there is only one, what’s nice about this one is they have kept mostly all of the old brewing equipment so you get an idea of old vs modern techniques, you also end up on the roof of the brewery looking out across Bruges. At the end of the tour you get a free beer, a blonde called the fool of Bruges, it’s really quite nice and easy to drink.


They’ve turned the old filling hall into a brasserie, the food looked amazing, all that remains of the past here was an old filling machine.


Stop two of the day was the chocolate museum, on arrival you pay your money for the tour and are given a bar of chocolate and invited to help yourself to some giant chocolate buttons, great start!

As you walk in the first thing you are greeted with is an epic chocolate fountain.


You then spend the next hour or so walking between floors learning about the Mayan origins of chocolate, how it fell in and out of fashion over the years and how it was mainly served as a drink before being sold in the form we’re most familiar with today. At the end of the tour there is a quick demonstration of how they make their praline chocolates and you get to eat one of those too. The museum was interesting but we both agreed there was way too much reading to do.

We’d had a late start to the day so by the time we got out of the museum and with nothing in our stomachs other than a cheeky chocolate waffle our thoughts turned to food. Our options led us to a little place that’s more like a museum than a restaurant, it was shut and not opening for 20 mins so we headed over the road to another little place for a drink.

We grabbed a drink and then noticed how they cooked the food here.


All the tables were reserved bar one, a table for two, we abandoned the other restaurant and settled in for some fire cooked grub.

Our table was as close to the fire as we could be!


There is a 3 course meat or fish menu you can have with or without beer for each course, we had one of each with beer!

The food was exceptional, in my opinion the best food we’d had so far and about 100 euros for the two of us..

The only downside to this beer with every meal idea is you end up getting smashed, even more when the couple you are chatting to buy a round, you buy them a round and then the owner buys everyone a round, we were deffo a little on the wobbly side…

For the third night running I have no real memory of the ride home, lolly got us back safely as she always does, we went to bed with full stomachs and fuzzy heads…

Sorted. 

On By MashleyIn Belgium, T4 Camper, travel, VW Campervan2 Comments

Camping at VW was a cold affair, we had no 240 supply so couldn’t plug our heater in. I hope I win the VW heritage comp as in my wish list is a heater that runs off camping gas!

We made some tea, handed the keys to the van over and rose into Bruges for breakfast. We had breakfast at an Indian restaurant that does either full English or continental breakfast, we choose one of each and they were both lovely, halfway through munching the garage called to say the van was done and we should come and get it, a short trip back and we were in the van headed to our campsite.


Finally we are where we’re supposed to be, camping memling, nice little campsite with brand new shower and toilet block, they also said we can have the day we didn’t make it here as a credit to use any time in 2016 which was a nice thing for them to do.

The most important thing about today is its Lollys birthday so our schedule is in her hands.

Our first stop was to have a gander at some windmills, there are only four left, one still works and they sit on the bank of the canal.


From there we went to a museum called Olv ter potterie, a historical hospital complex with its own baroque church and the body of Islebad that after being exhumed after 400 years still smelt sweet, there are lots of historical relics and the church is stunning.


The hospital was run by seven brothers and seven sisters, that changed to just sisters and to this day there are always seven sister resident.

Next stop was my least excited about place which actually turned out to be really cool, the lace museum. Lace was a way the very poor could make a little money, one quote went something like “I’d rather work my fingers to the bone making lace than ask the church for a handout”.

I’d never considered just how difficult lace making is, especially bobbin lace, we watched a video about the history of lace making, how important it was to Bruges and how modern methods can’t copy some of the more intricate designs, there are then examples of different types of lace and the final leg of the tour involves watching some ladies making lace using the traditional bobbin method. The ladies up there most have had a collective age of about 500 but in the corner was one of the ladies from the video, I was going to ask for her an autograph but she looked quite busy.

The last destination was the Jerusalem chapel, it’s next door to the lace museum and is owned still by descendants of the the family that built it in the 15th century. It’s an interesting story of how it came to be, the life and death of Anselm who completed the chapel and why his body is buried in Scotland but his heart is buried here in the chapel, there is also a slightly weird effigy of Jesus tucked away at the back of the chapel, the whole thing is based on jerusalems holy church of the sepulchre which is allegedly built above the tomb of Jesus.

We stayed there till it shut and then went for beers.


This was at a bar called ‘t poatergast, which means monks hole in the local dialect, it’s like a vaulted cellar with 150 beers to try and in this occasion an awesome 80’s soundtrack. We had at least 3 beers and unexpectedly picked up a present for one of our friends back home.


Belgian beer is quite strong, the last one we had was 10%, the Christmas chouff, it was lovely but by the time we left the 10% was working its magic and we both felt a bit sideways, should make riding the bikes interesting!

Our last stop was a restaurant lolly had read about which was part of a hostel called gran kaffe de passage, she wanted to visit as they cooked food in beer, it was heaving when we arrived, we were hungry, we didn’t get to eat anything till about an hour and half after we arrived and the food when it did come was ok. Lolly tried another beer but didn’t really like it, I’d drunk so much beer I couldn’t finish it for her and if I had it would have finished me off.


As you can see by my eyes in this last picture I was well on the way.


We rode back to the van without incident and turned in, one thing I have learnt this trip is lolly is awesome at reading maps, I’m not.

Lolly also assures me she had a great birthday, mission accomplished.

Exclusive camping!

On By MashleyIn Belgium, T4 Camper, travel, VW Campervan, vwt4Leave a comment

Getting off the motorway past the accident was a bit of a bodge, there was no way through so we all had to turn around and go up the emergency lane the wrong way and then leave via the slip road that comes onto the motorway from a local village, we had to wait a while but eventually we got going. 

We were so lucky not to have been involved in that crash, it must have just happened as we pulled up behind it. 

Our course had been diverted from Bruges to the garage  in Oostkamp and we arrived about 30 minutes after we got off the motorway. Long story short, 300 euros to fix then van and the part wouldn’t arrive the following day, after much discussion and possible scenarios it was decided we’d be staying with VW for the night! 

  
We’ve stayed in worse places and to be honest, what else could we do? 

It was chucking it down with rain so we got our waterproofs on, grabbed the bikes and rode into Bruges, here’s a picture of lolly looking a lot bigger than she actually is!

  
The ride wasn’t long and we joked that staying at the VW garage was a result really as it was closer to Bruges than our campsite! 

There is an old fish market in a square, we parked our bikes there and went for a wander, the first place we came across was the ice rink and a load of food and drink stalls, smelled lovely but were probably tourist prices, we carried on wandering about in the rain and eventually came to the conclusion we should drink some beers, we found an empty bar with a window seat and plotted up, here we are with a leffe each. 

  
Something has happened to my wife, when we met she didn’t do booze and certainly not beer, that has all changed now and we spent the next couple of hours drinking leffe, chouff and jupiler, the last being out least favourite. 

Before we came I bought lolly a guide book for Bruges and in it she read about a restaurant that came with a beer to suit each course, Den Dyver it’s called, we agreed that is where we would eat and set about finding it, I was given directions which I was confident I understood, turns out I didn’t and after lolly took control of our course we eventually found the restaurant which was right by where we parked our bikes.

We came across this guy en route, he’s made out of old tyres. 

  
The restaurant was pleasantly empty and they no longer did the beer with each course, the guide book was three years old and they stopped the beer thing a couple of years earlier. The food still looked awesome even though none of the menu was in English, it’s in Dutch or French and I suprised myself as I worked out most of what was on there using French.  

My starter was amazing, it has a name that I cant remember but it’s a traditional dish and it’s brown shrimps, mash potato, poached egg and hollandaise sauce, lolly had carpaccio scallops, they were nice but I preferred mine. Main course was chataubriand to share, epic is about the best way to describe it, we ate all of it and couldn’t possibly eat anything else when we’d finished. 

The meal wasn’t cheap but it wasn’t massively expensive either, London prices really which we’re used to on occasion, well worth it and if you’re ever over here pay it a visit. 

We grabbed our bikes and rode back to the van, the rain had stopped and this time we had rememberd lights for both of us so less tricky than our previous night riding in France. 

We setup the bed and crashed, tomorrow is another day, Lollys birthday in fact!