No Morgan, but......

.....some of our wonderful memories of Corfu.

Oh, what a day!

Bank Holiday Saturday dawned sunny, bright and cloudless, signalling the chance for us to go on our first picnic of the year.

First though, I needed to visit our local tyre dealer to check out the nearside front tyre that is showing uneven wear, due I think to a maladjustment of the tracking. This was confirmed, so a new 'Continental' has been ordered and some research is taking place to find out the tracking settings recommended by Morgan....because it's not every day that a 4/4 turns up on their forecourt.

Coffee stop!

With a promise that they would get back to me after the bank holiday, we set off, down what was at that stage, quite a traffic free road, considering it was a bank holiday.

Up into the hills we went, where I was convinced most of the population would not venture, out to the A6, at the little village of Churchtown and on into the Forest of Bowland via Chipping, stopping briefly at Bashall Barn http://bashallbarn.co.uk where I spotted a very desirable Austin Healey 3000 with a rather menacing exhaust system that we heard echoing through the countryside during a coffee stop sometime later.

The 'Lower Buck' Waddington

Climbing out of the delightful village of Waddington, we reached Newton in Bowland where we had the most exquisite picnic by the banks of the River Hodder. While I was unloading the picnic chairs from the luggage rack, an MX5 pulled up and the driver commented that our Morgan was looking particularly beautiful. I thanked him and said that his car wasn't looking so bad either, to which he replied that ours was the business though and the real thing!......how very true!

The beautiful Ribble Valley

This was perhaps the nicest location in which I have read my Saturday Telegraph, but after getting to the 'Obituaries', and feverously checking to see that there weren't any of our lot there, we moved on.

Newton in Bowland

Once more through Dunsop Bridge, one of the main contenders for the geographical centre of Britain, and then through the Trough of Bowland, a fairly narrow country road ,which on Saturday was full of kamikase cyclists sweeping down the steep bits at high speed, regardless of the fact that, unlike the mountain sections in the Tour de France, there is traffic coming in the other direction.

Not a bad picnic spot eh!

What with them and motorcyclists, who lean out over the opposite carriageway when negotiating bends, always at speed, to say nothing of the particular difficulty of spotting potholes through the dappled shade under trees, it is a wonder that we ever complete a trip on rural roads without incident. As for the major roads, well that's another story.........!

Doesn't get much better than this!

On the subject of potholes, I despair. What the roads are going to be like in 10 years time, God alone knows....probably barely driveable! I am convinced that it is the constant thumping into these infernal things that has beggared the tracking on the Morgan.

After the summit of the Trough we were in Duke of Westminster country, listening to the Lapwings overhead that seem to be quite common thereabouts, then down through Scorton to the A6 and back home.

After a wonderful day the Mog was washed and is now back in the garage with a mileage of almost 20000 on the clock, completed in about five and a half years. We will be adding a substantial amount to that very shortly when we venture on to the 'Emerald Isle'.

Does it scare you?....

.....well maybe not, but I hope it will scare the cats that use my vegetable garden as a lavatory and also the birds, who I hope will be deterred from eating, what just might be, an excellent blackcurrant harvest.

The construction of this menacing device has taken a couple of hours and has demanded the selfless sacrifice of a plastic washing up bowl (the pelvis and lower regions), a plastic container (the chest) and two round plastic pool plant containers (the head).

Apologies must be made to the local newspaper, the Blackpool Evening Gazette, whose high visibility coat has been used and also to our new neighbours who look out on to this garden. We haven't met them yet and  hope that they will understand what its main function is and not read into its appearance, some sort of criticism/comment obliquely levelled at them!!

Incidentally, the high vis coat was once regularly worn by yours truly, during inclement weather, to complete newsrounds when a Newsdeliverer failed to turn in, at our former Newsagents business.

...and a fracking we will go!

Not really, but my latest little drive brought me very close to the site of one of the first UK fracking sites scheduled to begin extracting shale gas. The first exploratory drilling operations caused two minor earthquakes in the Fylde and one does wonder about the future effects it will have on the local area.

Raring to go!

Anyway, enough of that. It is a long time since I put pen to blog, due to the fact that the weather has not inspired me to sally forth in the Morgan, the garden has taken up a lot of my time and my wife and I have also spent a delightful week in a villa at Nissaki on the island of Corfu. Sadly, for only a week, six would have been better!The weather was for the most part idyllic and as it was early in their season there were very few fellow tourists. It has certainly whet our appetite for more similar Grecian holidays.



Very close to the 'Fracking' rig.

The moment came yesterday when temperatures soared to a whopping 12 degrees and I had the urge to get out for a drive in the Morgan which, a few days previously, I had cleaned and polished, although it was patently unnecessary....we owners all seem to suffer from this compulsive polishing disease don't we?
Now, as my readers know, it is necessary for me to drive my Volvo out of the back of our first garage into a 'siding' to enable me to reverse the Morgan out of its garage. During this operation, for some obscure reason, probably in my impatience to get out in the Mog, I applied a more lock than normal and heard a ghastly noise as the rear wing scraped against the metal door upright.

It was a mortifying experience, especially as I like to keep the ageingVolvo in as pristine condition as the Mog. So it was out with the 'TCut' and the touch up paint to try and repair the damage. Not a bad job, but I think that I will probably complete the exercise again in an effort to achieve someting approaching perfection!

After all that 'excitement' it was out in the Morgan with side screens off and into the countryside. Great fun as usual but I do look forward to a long, 'proper' drive with a firm objective in prospect and the looming holiday to the Ring of Kerry in Ireland will, in four weeks time, satisfy that desire. So not much longer to wait, but before then I am going to have to grease the front suspension and prepare the car for the trip.

Plenty to look forward to!




  

Spring has sprung!.....

......well we hope so.

As we awoke this morning to the sun streaming through the bedroom curtains, a situation that was the complete opposite to the forecast offered by the Met Office yesterday evening, it was apparent that there was every chance that we might get out for a pootle in the Morgan and also provided a timely reminder that a 'blackout' blind might not be a bad idea.

In the absence of one of the aforementioned blinds, we both wear masks that we have acquired on long-haul flights in the past and I always find it quite alarming on some occasions, turning over in bed to find that I appear to be sleeping with 'Zorro the Avenger!



In the Bleasdale Fells

 Anyway, I digress. The sky was cloudless as I consumed my kipper, not the filleted type for softies but the 'real McCoy', a Manx beauty, complete with skeleton that required some dexterity to remove from the surrounding flesh. It's quite an exercise, requiring a separate plate for the bones and bits and finally, after consumption and following strict instructions from Madame, the careful disposal of the remains in newspaper and a plastic bag to avoid the smell of kipper, not only permeating every corner of the house but the village as well!

Looking west.

What this has to do with the pleasant drive we were about to have in the Morgan, goodness only knows, except for the fact that a hearty smoked herring is ideal fodder for a top-down drive in temperatures that, although considerably better than those we have recently endured, were only likely to peak at 11 degrees, hardly tropical!

Straight into the fells we went, on the first real drive we had had together this year. It was the 22nd March last year when we had our first picnic so this was 3 weeks or so later and, although delightful, still not warm enough to don the knotted handkerchief,  roll up the trousers and slonk in a deckchair!

With cloud, rain and strong winds forecast for early afternoon, we timed our drive perfectly and were back at home after about 2 hours with the clouds just beginning to gather.

With both of us and the car refreshed, it provided a real taster of things to come.

James and me....

.........so many years ago!

Across the sea to Ireland.

Yesterday we booked a delightful apartment at Castle Cove in Kerry, for a week at the end of June, and a sea crossing from Holyhead to Dun Laoghaire with Stena Line on their High Speed Ferry service, OK if the sea is calm, but hellish otherwise!

This is of course an ideal opportunity to exercise the Morgan and we are praying that the weather at the end of June will be sensational, although being realistic, we have to accept that Ireland does get its fair share of rain, so we shall not be surprised if the hood has to stay up on some occasions.

We intend to have an overnight stop on both the outward and inward journey, probably selecting B&Bs in the Kilkenny and Tipperary areas and we are in the process of selecting these.

I have always had a wish to travel the Ring of Kerry and the Dingle Peninsular and we are both quite excited by the prospect.

How I love holidays, especially having had to endure a rather long English winter and for the first of these we're off to Corfu in just over three weeks, (not in the Morgan!), and then some five weeks or so later we are having the trip to Ireland.

Nothing else has been fixed yet for the rest of the year, but it will be, and my firm intention is to watch the 8 day weather forecasts for the UK and when it looks promising just arrange a cottage or B&B at the last minute and do some more touring in the Morgan. There's still so much of the UK that we haven't seen.

Meanwhile, on with the route planning.