Two go off in a Caravan (with apologies to Enid Blyton)

Another long gap since the last post in this random collection of loosely non-connected thoughts.

Many years ago when Ann and I were first married, we bought ourselves a tent for holidays and had a couple of enjoyable holidays; one to Carcassonne in France and another touring Portugal and Spain. In a tent. With everything crammed into a Volvo 340, just creeping into view in the picture.

Our tent photographed while camping in a park on the edge of Lisbon in the summer of 1982

After Lisa was born, we thought that camping in a tent with a very young child would be too much like hard work, so managed to scrape together enough to buy ourselves a caravan that was delivered early in 1984 and immediately was pressed into service with a trip to the Brecon Beacons at Easter of that year. It was simple and basic, even by the standards of the time, but served us well for three years travelling around England for holidays and weekends and for a three week holiday in Brittany 

1984 model Sprite Alpine caravan with our VW Passat (the second of many) in the background. You'll notice that there's a nasty dent in the rear of the car. I found this on returning to the car in a public car park, but was pleased to see a note had been left under the wipers which I thought might contain contact details for whoever had caused the damage. It didn't...  It read "I have just hit your car. The people watching think I am leaving my details. I'm not. Hard luck"

The holiday in France was enhanced with an awning to give us more space and we spent the three weeks at Carnac on a very comfortable site surrounded by other English and Welsh families.

Car, caravan and awning at Carnac. Notice the must have 1980s car accessory - the pop out sunroof. I wonder what happened to A738 VMR? It's one of a very few cars for which I can can recall the registration

Storage was reasonably simple - we just parked  on the driveway. Actually getting the caravan onto the driveway was the stuff of which divorces are made! Our driveway, as you will see was loose gravel and sloped uphill. It was just about wide enough to get one car alongside if I could get the 'van tucked in tight and behind the roses. I'd widened the drive a little, but had not increased the width of the drop kerb. To make life even more fun, we needed to turn into a road almost opposite, but slightly offset from our drive and then reverse back making a gentle S bend in the process. Now, with a motor mover and remote control, it would be so much easier.

Eventually we managed to get the caravan onto the driveway. This is at our house at Great Linford in Milton Keynes. We seem to have driven the neighbours away, though. Just around the corner is Ann's Ford Escort Popular finished in NHS hearing aid beige

I swapped jobs and lost the company car; the Escort was not up towing, so we bought ourselves an MG Maestro, which was probably less able to tow than the Escort would have been. The less said about that car, the better; it was quickly replaced with another Passat! I swapped jobs again and had another company car, so the sale of the car paid for an upgraded caravan. A Bailey Maestro! This one had a heater, but was before the introduction of cassette toilets and fitting of showers - and hot water, but it was 14ft 6in long and so much more comfortable than the Sprite.

The Bailey with very large Isabella awning on holiday in France in 1987. Ann was very pregnant with David at the time and the holiday was timed so that we got home on the last day that we could get holiday insurance. Another dreadful car - Sierra 2.0iS; the poor man's XR4, rapidly replaced with yet another Passat following another job move.

Everything fell apart in around 1989 or 1990 when we were struggling to find the money for the mortgage. The long and the short was that we moved house twice in a very short period for my job and did the second move on a "Gentleman's Agreement" that the bridging loan costs would be met. While I may be a Gentleman, my boss was not and the agreement was reneged. Something had to give and the caravan was sold. A sad day 😢😢😢.

We move forward many years and a trip to the TR Register International weekend, where at too much of an advanced age, we again went camping.

I don't know why we ever thought that little tent would be suitable for two middle aged adults! The Triumph 2000 and TR6 you will recognise as the cars we used to own

And then if that little tent wasn't daft enough, I went to Classic Le Mans with my good friend Nigel and for this event bought a single berth tent from Tesco.It was smaller than the bivouacs that we used when I was in the Army, but it did the job. Actually, not entirely true as it ended up in a skip on the second visit to Le Mans to remind me not to even think about using it again.

The world's smallest tent. Luckily, it didn't rain at Le Mans that year, but it did the following time

For other events that both Ann and I went to, we did buy ourselves a comfortable camping tent, but I really struggle to say that I enjoy camping in a tent.

The Komfy Kamping tent on a site in the Dordogne region of France

Along the way, we've had a couple of enjoyable holidays in a rented motorhome and of course, six weeks in 2017 travelling around the US in a giant RV. We have an investment in a motorhome rental business that allows us a few free weeks each year.

In France (again) with one of the rental motorhomes in 2011

The RV rented for our holiday in 2017

We rather like motorhomes, but found a couple of problems. First they are very expensive and ones that are large enough to be comfortable are too big to go out for the day, so you need to tow a car along with you. We found this in the USA where we ended up renting a car for a few days.

And then a few weeks ago, I just casually suggested to Ann "shall we get a caravan again?" It may have taken Ann a nanosecond or so to consider her reply, but the upshot was that we found ourselves searching on the Internet and spending a day at the NEC a couple of weeks back.

We knew exactly what we wanted and how much we were prepared to pay. Last week, we were lucky enough to find exactly what we were looking for, having been told by several dealers that we would never find what we were looking for and should instead purchase what they had to offer. Perhaps I should attend exhibitions with a badge that says "I used to sell things for a living and know all the tricks". A deal was quickly negotiated and we will soon be the proud owners of a very lightly used huge nearly new caravan.

Pictures of our purchase (images originally formed part of a review on the web by "Practical Caravan" Magazine (I hope they don't mind - it was a good magazine 30 years ago and still is...)

The only slight problem being that neither car was suitable for towing a caravan that weighs around 1.5 tons laden. So if you've seen Ann's Facebook post saying goodbye to "Hans" and "Carmen" - our cars have always had names - and saying hello to "Katy", now you know why.

Yes... it is another Mercedes

Back from Holiday Again (part 6)

The coast line of the Baltic is a little frilly with many inlets and islands scattered along the coast. The region surrounding southern Finland is no exception and particularly around Helsinki. One of the island chains was built up into a huge military fortification, mostly by the Russians when Finland was still a Russian Province and today is a mixture of museum and nature reserve. It's a short boat ride from the city harbour and a "must see". So, off we went to Suomenlinna...

Looking back at the Helsinki skyline as we head to Suomenlinna. The large ship is one of Viking Line's fleet that sail daily to Stockholm

In addition to the main buildings and formal museums, there are a couple of other interesting artifacts to examine. One of these being a Second World War submarine. In fact, it is the only remaining Finnish submarine of the era, all others were destroyed at the end of the war, Finland being a member of the Axis forces having joined forces with Germany against Russia on the basis of "my enemy's enemy is my friend"

Situated at the southern end of the main island is the King's Gate. After an hour's walk to get there, the first impression was "is this it then?" It was... 

Close to the King's Gate in the fortifications, there is a small restaurant serving made to order pizza (delicious) As the rental car has gone back, beer is now permitted as well!

There's a huge dry dock on the island that is now used for the restoration of wooden ships and for storage during the winter when the sea freezes. Its last industrial use was building ships for the Russians, again as reparations.

Back in Helsinki, we visited the two Cathedrals. First, the Orthodox Cathedral, but managed to arrive at the same time as about 30 coach groups and during a service. Very ornate and lots of gold.

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The Lutheran Cathedral is a few yards away and is one of the landmark buildings of the city

Ann stands on the steps of the Lutheran Cathedral

In 1981, Ann is in the square in front of the Cathedral. Sadly, this area has now been turned into a coach park for all the tourists that now visit Helsinki.

The organ is impressive!

A statue of Martin Luther

Helsinki is a city with much interesting architecture in many styles mixing the styles of the various countries that have claimed Finland as their own, but also incorporating features that would have you believe you were in Paris or Madrid.

Esplanade Park in the centre of Helsinki. Tres French ne c'est pas?

Around the harbour

The main street in Helsinki on a Sunday morning. Public transport is fast, efficient and reasonably priced. There is an extensive tram system in addition to the buses.

At the weekend, this historic tram is brought out for a tourist service

This just left us with a few things left to do. First on the list was the traditional end of the holiday meal, almost a re-creation of our first wedding anniversary that we had celebrated in Helsinki, but as I couldn't remember where the restaurant was we went instead to the landmark Vaakuna Hotel. Built for the 1952 Olympics, it overlooks the railway station and is a classic piece of mid 20th century styling. I stayed there several times in the 80s and, to be honest, I thought then that it had aged badly, but now it has somehow regained its style. I suppose everything from the 50s eventually becomes cool again (including your writer!).

The restaurant is on the 10th floor of the building and remains one of the tallest buildings in the City giving a spectacular view. Food is good, service is exceptional and prices are in keeping!

It's Prosecco Time!

On Sunday morning, we headed to the small island of Seurassaari, the location of an open air museum with a collection of building rescued from across Finland. Rather like the Weald & Downland Museum in Sussex. Here's a selection:

As we'd started the holiday visiting the home of Sibelius, we ended by visiting his memorial in Helsinki. As luck would have it, the park was on our bus route and as bus tickets are valid for an hour, no matter how many changes you make, we could stop off for free. Most people use pre-paid tickets in Helsinki, but single tickets can be bought for EUR 3.20. When our bus arrived, it seems that the ticket machine was defective. I suspect that in most cities, the bus would have been put out of service, or <shock, horror> the driver would have pocketed the fares, but here, we were given a free ride. So, here's the Sibelius Monument, again with hordes of tourists:

You need a vivid imagination to visualise a connection between a 20th Century symphonic composer and the sculpture.

Back to apartment, pack the bags and head to the airport. At which point we can declare the "Finnish" to the holiday.

Back from Holiday Again (part 5)

Two nights in Espoo gave us a chance to visit Hvittrask, a collection of houses built by the Finnish architects and designers Geselius, Lindgren and Saarinen, of which the most famous is probably Eliel Saarinen, father of another architect Eero Saarinen. The buildings are in what we would call the "Arts and Crafts" style and only open for a few days each week. Before emigrating to the USA, Eliel's most significant design was probably for the railway station in Helsinki which has been said to have formed the basis for the design of Gotham City in the Batman films. 

Son Eero made his name in the US, with numerous well known designs, of which the most significant are the Gateway Arch in St Louis and the TWA terminal at JFK airport.

The front of Saarinen's house at Hvittrask

Looking at the house from the side garden

Some of the design detail inside the house. In such a cold winter climate, fireplaces become important 

The main sitting room in the the house. There is a curious blend of styles with (at least to me) influences of Gaudi and William Morris

Helsinki's railway station as designed by Saarinen senior. It is a stunning design

The main entrance under the arch is bordered by two figures on either side each holding a globe, more detail of which can be seen in the picture below

 What to do next? We found a car museum with this parked outside!

A long way from home and it only has one previous owner. Inside, the museum is huge with cars on two floors. The exhibits are not pristine, but represent what the cars would have been like when nearly new. Here's just a small selection of what we found:

Dating from the end of the 1940s, the DKW Schnellaster was a mixture of the ancient and modern. An ancient pre-war 2-stroke engine provided power for the monocoque body that featured trailing arm suspension. I can remember these still smoking their way through Germany in the early 1980s

NSU designed their K70 to complement their rotary engined Ro80, but having run out of money were acquired by VW, hence the badges on this, the first front engined, water cooled VW . Having also acquired DKW and Auto-Union, a new company, Audi, emerged and the design of the original Audi 80 and first generation VW Passat can be seen in the K70

Citroen's management obviously permitted their designers free rein when deigning their "Ami" model, a larger version of the 2CV. For many years in the 60s, this was the biggest selling car in France. Pity Citroens are now just bland boxes - much better when they had some individuality.

1970s Datsun 100A Cherry. At one time, these were seen everywhere, often as cheap second cars, but they didn't like salt on the roads and the body work rapidly returned to its organic origin

Morris Marina 1.8TC - one of the world's most maligned cars. Yes - it wasn't anything special, but it was designed in no time on a shoestring and stayed in production for too long. But it did sell in large numbers to both fleet and private buyers and wasn't really that much worse than the opposition of the time. The press hated it due to the original front suspension design, but this was improved prior to production even if the 1.8 litre cars did prefer to continue straight on at corners.

Originally an Opel design, this was built by Moskvitch as their 400 model, basically claiming the Opel design and tooling as war reparations.

Rear engined and with a body design by Giovanni Michelotti, the BMW 700 was pretty much the model that saved the company. It set the style for BMW from the 60s and if you look at it quickly, there is a slight hint of the Triumph Herald, also designed by Michelotti to it.