Click photos for full image and if they are part of an album there should be a link to it. Or use ‘shared photos’ above.       If you can, see them as slide show in full screen – much better. 

You might say we bought ‘Harry’ under a cloud – but we hope there’s no prophetic significance in that. Harry, by the way, is a Chausson Flash 04 Motorhome, and anyone familiar with the early St. Trinians films will have no difficulty in spotting the link between ‘Flash’ and ‘Harry’ …..

As for that cloud, well, having decided that we wanted left hand drive because we intend to spend most time in France, we contacted Bundesvan (www.bundesvan.co.uk) and arranged a van-viewing visit to Germany, which just happened to be timed to end on April 16th – the day all the airports closed for the first time because of THAT cloud. (Volcanic dust from Iceland.)

Nick from Bundesvan drove steadily all afternoon to get to Dunkirk (from the middle of Germany), his son (in the UK) got us a ferry crossing and Rachel got Carol and me onto the sleeper train to Edinburgh – where my car was. Teamwork! Nick continued to drive after the Channel Crossing to get us to Euston with half an hour to spare! 

Meanwhile we had agreed that Nick should negotiate a deal for us on this nearly-new Flash 04 which seemed to tick most of our boxes – it had to be a Ford because Carol has problems reaching the pedals with the little legs in Peugeots and Fiats. We also wanted a fixed bed and large ‘garage’ underneath.                 

Tuesday May 4th 2010. Breakfast time. Shortly after GPT (Brother) arrived on the overnight coach from London – it was the first night of ‘The Gondoliers’ 

– Nick arrives in Harry after the overnight drive from Devon. We are now a 2-van couple! Who wants to buy a Toyota Camper?