Category: 2017 Trips

Friday

Ruby the VW Campervan is nestled in a pub car park in Cumbria, behind Britstop no NW69/19.

We had a mad dash north, leaving home at 2pm following a lunchtime gig in Norfolk which saw the close of our ridiculously term. Our britstop is located rather close to Appleby, which we only visited at half term. It’s not a coincidence, we just couldn’t drive vaguely past without stopping at Lower Howgill Butchers to squeeze some of their homemade Cumbrian sausages, smoked Appleby Brie along with a whole load of other delicious looking cheese into our already overflowing fridge – and of course, every adventure needs to start with a homemade sausage roll doesn’t it?

We ate at the Britstop on Friday – perfect as we were wiped out, and enjoyed Cumbrian sausage and mash washed down with a couple of pints of Eden valley ale. A perfect way to end our term, only made more perfect when we found out the delicious sausages were sourced from the very reason we’d come this way up, Lower Howgill’s in Appleby.

Saturday

Our journey started early, we made the short trip to the butchers, before dropping onto the M6, crossing the border into Scotland and turning off at Gretna to follow the Galloway Tourist route towards Stranraer.

We had a tea, Scottish tablet and leg stretch break at National Trust’s Threave Gardens where we saw some fabulous displays of daffodils.

Sadly the gardens weren’t dog friendly so Jazz had a rest in Ruby whilst we whizzed round! Our next stop was Portpatrick, the most picturesque lunch stop I think I can remember.

We sampled a local ale overlooking the harbour, the sun was shining and we could not have felt happier.

We stocked up on local ale and gin at the village shop before heading 10 miles to our home for Saturday night, the C&MC New England Bay site. This was huge and landscaped fabulously. We had a great sea view, which we enjoyed with a local gin and tonic.

Dinner was a delicious lamb dhansak, before crashing out early to the sounds of waves outside our window.

Sunday

It was time to move off our lovely pitch at New England Bay as we had a ferry to catch at Cairnryan. We’ve vowed to return here though – I reckon a week along here would be fabulous, and we noticed lots of food places that we’d like to return to, including smokehouses, cheese farms, ice cream parlours and of course a distillery.

As we left the campsite we made a very quick stop at the Kirkmadrene standing stones, which date from 500-800 AD. The stones are now protected in casing but you can see some fantastic carvings still evident.

We also made a fuel stop at Stranraer Morrison’s before checking in for our 11:30 ferry at Cairnryan Port.

Whilst we waited to drive on, we assembled Jazz’s new travel crate.

We were crossing with Stena Line who very fairly, in our opinion, allow smaller pets on board in a crate with dimensions no larger than 80cm x 52cm x 52cm, providing that they are booked in advance. We purchased this folding travel crate from Amazon, and thankfully Jazz doesn’t seem to mind it. Although the crossing is only just over 2 hours, Jazz’s separation anxiety is bad enough at the best of times, so the thought of leaving him in our beloved Ruby on the noisy car deck, put me right off the holiday before we’d even booked it! When I was younger I travelled across the Irish Sea with a school friend of mine and their family, and dog, and during the crossing the usually placid dog completely wrecked the interior of their car! This memory lives on in my mind, and I didn’t want to put Jazz through that trauma, or run the risk of Ruby getting wrecked either! We seemed to be the only ones who knew about this though as Jazz was the only one upstairs and we saw another family trying to walk their dog upstairs without success. It really worked wonderfully for us, completely easing the stress of travelling on the ferry.

We booked our ferry a couple of months ago, taking advantage of their Tesco partnership using our Tesco club card points to cover the majority of the return crossing. The crossing was smooth and we were impressed with the facilities on board- and before we knew it we were arriving in the port of Belfast!

We had a short drive to Larne, where we picked up the spectacular coast road through Glenarm towards Waterfoot, stopping for a cheeseboard lunch in a scenic lay-by, before turning into our prebooked campsite at Glenariff Forest Park.

We were exhausted by this point, all the travelling and the end of term catching up with us, so had a nap before rustling up a very exciting and low maintenance dinner – see my YouTube video here where I introduce our new VW gadget.

We are so excited to be finally in Northern Ireland and are looking forward to starting our adventures properly tomorrow!

As 2018 draws to a close, Keith and I (and Jazzy of course!) would like to wish you all a very Happy and Healthy New Year! Thank you for following our adventures – we never imagined that our tales would be read in so many places across the world; our site stats are growing each year so thank you for reading!

This year I felt we hadn’t done quite as much Ruby holidaying as normal, so I was quite surprised to see that we’ve managed 42 nights away in Ruby this year! Aside from Ruby trips, we’ve managed two weeks in China, a week in Cuba and 10 days travelling around Texas USA. Not bad for a couple that work all the hours under the term time sun!

We are currently enjoying a few nights up on the North Norfolk Coast- will send a blog instalment soon. For now though enjoy your New Years Eve whatever they may bring for you, and wishing you a 2019 full of happiness, good health and plenty of adventures.

Until next time

Lx

Isn’t it funny how your body copes with shock? Some people lash out, some people cry and sob, some people go numb. I’m guilty of all of those, but last Thursday I experienced a new reaction to a huge shock- absolute disgust and despair then this feeling that I was going to faint!

This was the scene that I was greeted with as I came out of one of my schools after my morning at work there.

Yup.

Did they leave their details?

Nope.

CCTV managed to pick me up arriving with no damage. But apparently I was parked in a blind spot. So the driver of the car had a lucky escape as we have no way of tracking them and the school won’t let me send a picture around the staff email as it’s “not their policy to do so and I was parked at my own risk”.

On the plus side, it’s revealed no rust and we weren’t hurt in an accident. It can be fixed for £300, which it will be once we return from the states.

They say time flies, and this year certainly has!

We can hardly believe it, but this weekend marks a whole year of us downsizing from motorhome and car to Ruby the Veedub Campervan as our sole vehicle. When we were faced with the decision of having to wave goodbye to many years of motorhoming, we weren’t sure which direction to turn. We decided to give a small VW a whirl, swapping both our trusty Skoda and our beloved Bluebell the motorhome, but it was a snap decision and one we weren’t 100% sure would suit our needs. We are 1 year on now, so what better time to stop and evaluate how downsizing has worked for us so far.

In short, I think we can fairly safely say that our downsizing project worked out pretty well! Despite Keith being 6 foot 4 and Ruby not having a pop up, we’ve coped well with the much smaller living space and have managed to avoid divorcing each other! In fact, we both enjoy the fact that managing the space once inside makes us feel closer and more together than ever, Keith often says he finds he does more when it comes to meal prep as he’s my right hand man, fetching utensils from all the hidey-holes his side of the van. I like the fact that everything is much more of a team effort these days, rather than what it sometimes was in Bluebell – more of me doing and Keith chilling (once parked up that is!)

We’ve managed 12 trips away in Ruby – ranging from a night just down the road, to a full scale 2.5 week tour of Wales. We’ve taken her across the water to Holland and France and clocked up nearly 10,000 miles of both business and leisure miles. We’ve also used her instead of hotel rooms when attending parties and we’ve wild camping in the middle of winter with no heating! We knocked up some amazing meals on the 2 burner hob and had some barbecues with views literally out of this world.

One main difference is that we’ve been using Ruby not only as a day to day vehicle, and obviously a campervan; but also we’ve been enjoying using her as a day van – cooking up lunches or serving tea and cake after a dog walk in a nearby village before heading home again. Next half term, I’m starting at a new School and Keith will be travelling with me, as we are both at the next school together. So whilst I’m teaching for an hour, Keith will be chilling in Ruby with a brew! So we feel like we really are utilising Ruby to her max potential.

We’re finding our rhythm with the booking of sites with showers for a couple of nights, before maybe a night off grid then another site with showers. Keith is being very brave and has washed away (ahem*) his habit of being Mr 2 showers a day. He’s found baby wipes are his friend and is nowadays happy to miss a shower for 2 days – 1 night! That is something that I never thought I’d write!

So a year on, despite Ruby having cost us a little more than we’d liked in various repairs, we are 100% sure that we’ve made the right decision. We are eagerly counting down the hours now until our next departure – which happily is this weekend; and have plenty of jaunts booked already for this year including our annual pilgrimage to Scotland and a really ambitious 3 week road trip to Southern Spain in August.

Our highlights of Ruby’s first year in the O’Gorman household are:

Utilising Ruby’s sliding door – a real treat after years in a motorhome – give us a view and we’ll knock up a meal and enjoy our very own rolling restaurant. Pic taken at Brancaster Staithe where we cooked up some fresh mussels from the fishmonger in Burnham Market.

Ruby’s first night of Wild Camping, up in Scotland at the Black Mount viewpoint on the road to Glencoe. We had our most favourite BBQ at our most favourite viewpoint. Can’t wait to get back up to Scotland later this year.

Taking Ruby to Holland to see the Tulips

Striding Edge and Helvellyn

Arisaig, Scotland

Until Next Time, which won’t be long – YAY!

Lx

Day 9

Friday arrived and it was a very early start! Alarms went off at 6:30 although mum and Alec were up and sorting their cases from 05:30. We bid farewell to our Air b n b host Debra at 7:30 giving ourselves plenty of time to make the shortish drive to Boston Logan Airport- we had been warned about rush hour traffic!

We made a quick stop at Ocean Drive Salem to look at the house from Hocus Pocus- wow what a gorgeous house it was!

Wouldn’t you just love to be in that lookout tower watching the night sky?

We carried on towards the airport passing though some lovely sea view suburbs of Boston. As predicted the should have been 30 min drive took over an hour due to commuter traffic, but as commuter journeys go, this was a spectacular one.

We arrived at Boston Logan Airport, handed back our rental car, and made our way to the domestic flight terminal- we were catching the 10:20 Jet Blue flight to Buffalo, NY.

Jet Blue are extremely strict on luggage weight – most airlines these days seem to have a collective weight for your party- but not Jet Blue! Keith and I were both over weight (both our cases and our bellies lol!) so cue a mad 20 min reshuffle of cases!

We’d never taken an infernal flight before – and only had Ryan Air and sleazy jet ones to compare it to. Well, Jet Blue do internals very well indeed! Free Wi-fi – free hot drinks and a snack- in an hour and 15 min flight! British companies you should be ashamed.

Before we knew it we were landing at Buffalo airport- about half an hour drive from Niagara Falls. We picked our rental car up and got upgraded for free to this beast 👇 a $90,000 luxury SUV which took us almost half an hour to switch on!

Luckily it had an inbuilt sat nav as for the first time in the trip my copilot didn’t want to play ball. (I think I’d forgotten to download Canada whoops!

Crossing Rainbow Bridge into Canada was exciting- we saw the mist of the Falls for be first time and got a Canada stamp into our passports.

The weather was perfect and we had an hour before we could check in at our Niagara Falls apartment so we went to Niagara Falls Helicopters to see whether they could fit us onto a helicopter ride soonish. As luck would have it, we managed to get on the next ride. I am not a great flier and Alec and Keith had never been on a helicopter before (in fact, I wasn’t even sure Alec would do it, but fair play to him, he did!) so it was a pretty big experience for us all, and at £75 pp we felt not too badly priced.

The helicopter soon arrived and we were ushered on. My God. I’ve NEVER been so terrified in all my life, I actually was hyperventilating at one point, and in floods of tears! BUT – it was INCREDIBLE. the emotion when you see the perfect horseshoe shape of Niagara Falls from above is just beyond words. The view was AMAZING.

Don’t just take my word for it. Look at my mini video here

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nce back on the ground, it took my legs a good hour to stop trembling. We were all high with emotion and we hadn't even got close to the falls yet. We dumped the car and our bags at the apartment and walked the 10 mins down to Rainbow Bridge. It was then a further 20 mins walk along the river, first you saw the American Falls then Horseshoe Falls.

We were surprised how close you can get to the edge actually – everyone had told us that the Canadian side was the best view and I absolutely whole heartedly agree. Keith had a “moment”. We’ve been very lucky with where we have travelled to in the recent years, but I can honestly say Niagara Falls is one of the, if not THE most impressive thing we’ve ever seen. The sheer volume of water that just continually falls is just mind blowing. You HAVE to go!

Soon it was time step aboard The Hornblower (which is the Canadian side version of the famous Maid of The Mist boat) This 20 minute trip (you can’t book but they run trips every 10 mins) was amaaaaazing. We got DRENCHED but I cannot describe to you how incredibly awesome it is to be within that much water! At one point your entire field of vision is the water fall – it is HUGE and has most definitely ruined any future waterfall visits we may encounter!

We were supposed to eat at the Skylon Tower, which offer arial views of the Falls, but by this point we had already seen them via helicopter, viewing platform and by boat quite frankly, we were totally overwhelmed by what we had experienced, so we chose to enjoy a beer at the boat terminal and then wander up into the main strip to find some dinner.

Unfortunately the main town of Niagara is tackville and although we enjoyed a beer or two at the Niagara Brewing Company, our meal wasn’t great that evening. Mum and Al turned in as Mum had a nasty cold and we hadn’t stopped all day, and Keith and I wandered down to see the falls by night. I’ve ran out of words to decry how much we loved the whole experience – I reckon you get my drift!

day 10

Next morning and it was up and out of our apartment BY 8am, back across the bridge into USA and the short drive to Buffalo airport where we caught our flight back to Boston Logan.

We had some time to kill before our evening flight so we caught the water taxi across the bay with all our luggage – which actually caused the small boat to shed water!

Part of the ticket cost meant we could leave our luggage at the Marriot Hotel right by the centre of Boston for free which is amazing as there are no left luggage facilities anywhere in the city otherwise! We had a couple of hours mooching before heading back to the airport for our night flight back to UK. What a fab trip!

For anyone who has not been to Niagara Falls – please go, it really is one of the most amazing places on Earth. And I reckon you could easily go for a long weekend from UK.

Until next time

Lx