Motorhome obsession (and a couple of roses)

Summer is pretending to be back. It's balmy outside and the roses are blooming again. I just picked these two beauties from the garden. It's also clearly autumn as the haggard is full of fallen apples, and there are more rosy beauties coming down every minute on this blustery day. There are ten carrier bags of apples in various stages of being frozen and unfrozen ready for pressing to make juice. I should have been doing it today but there were tomatoes to deal with - soup - and a general sort out.

There was an article in the Guardian last Saturday about decluttering and that's what I've been doing with clothes, although not in quite the extreme way that Oliver Burkeman describes. The extreme bit came in earlier in the week when we got back from our trip to the Royal Canal. On Sunday afternoon we had to clean and empty the van ready for someone to view it on Monday. It was unbelievable the amount of stuff we had stowed away in there. It shows how well designed these modern motorhomes are. Lockers everywhere and stuff everywhere.

We'd had three serious phone calls and two people waiting to see it. Joe was lecturing down at UL on Monday so he arranged to meet the first caller there with the van.
'You'd better take the registration stuff,' I said. 'He might turn up with the money.'
'Don't be silly,' said Joe.
At lunchtime the phone rang.
'Can you bring the documents,' said Joe. 'He turned up with a credit union cheque and some cash. He's giving us what we asked for the van.'
I didn't, of course, say I told you so.

So here we are vanless. Our evenings have been spent on the internet. We also went to a motorhome place at Birdhill on the way to Limerick - handy for Joe - and had a good look around. We very nearly put a deposit on a Laika. A lovely van that pushed all the right buttons. But then we caught hold of ourselves. We'll save that one for retirement time when we want to go abroad. For now we need something a bit bigger and a bit newer than the Autosleeper Executive we had. Something in which we won't have to construct the beds before we get into them. Something with an outside locker for tables and chairs and wet stuff.

More research.

And there it is. The perfect choice - we hope. An Autocruise Stargazer. But you don't find them in Ireland. It was looking like an import from England job like we did with the last yoke. As it happens I'm off to Blighty on Sunday to visit the parents. I hope they don't mind a couple of little jaunts out, one to Chorley (up the M6 from Nantwich) and one to Prestatyn (on the North Wales coast). The Prestatyn van has a Fiat chassis and cab and is the newer of the two. The Chorley one is built on a Peugeot Boxer like we had on the last van.

The Chorley van

I'm a bit nervous about this. Both vans are from dealers so hopefully they won't be trying to sell us something with a crap engine. But will I get the blame if I buy one and it all goes wrong?

Fingers crossed on all counts.