A Highland Spring.

Hello! Long time no see! I'm thinking of this a "Road Snail season three", and hopefully we'll be weekly from now on...

At Snail Towers we have a mantra. "Never go to Scotland for the weather." Which is why, as I write this, I am not in the least bit perturbed that my view looks like this:

Spring in the Highlands...

It's April 1st and here on our lochside pitch at the Caravan Club's Altnaharra/Grummore site we're experiencing rather a lot of weather. In fact I rather suspect we're getting pretty much all the weather...

Anyway. The point is that Bonnie Scotland is not always the warmest or driest of holiday destinations, especially if  you head, as we generally do, for the northern highlands. What never ever fails to be however, is spectacular! I mean, just look at this for a second:

Stunning, isn't it?

So, I imagine that we'll be doing a lot of getting about and about over the next two weeks - we spent some time yesterday on a snowy west coast, which I'll tell you about in a future posting, and we have plans to hit the east coast tomorrow.

Right now though, the horizontal snow and hail against the 'van sounds like a perpetual fall of ball bearings (not even small ball bearings, mind you) while we are being rocked by what I know from my experience filling the water barrel earlier is a bitingly cold gale force wind. Frankly venturing out is a less than attractive proposition, which is why I'm spending my afternoon at the keyboard pondering the questions that always arise when I think about caravan life.

For instance, why do some people travel with their caravan blinds down? Myself and Mrs Snail have made a bit of a study of this, and roughly half the caravans we see on the road have their blinds drawn, the other half (to which we belong) travel with them open. Now. travelling with them open was never a concious choice - it simply never occured to us to close them before setting off. Presumably, unless they set off in the middle of the night, those who travel with blinds down must have deliberately decided to do so.

Are they carrying top secret cargo they don't want anyone else to see? Is their upholstery particularly susceptable to fading? It may sound as though I'm taking the micky, but I'm really not. If there's a reason to do it I'd love to know what it is!

Then there's the perplexing question of why everyone elses' caravans are so clean. I wash my caravan with reasonable regularity but let's be honest, it's a bit of a chore and frankly life is too short to worry about it too much. as a result some of the hard to get to areas, like the TV ariel, have gathered a bit of muck. In addition, even when we set out with a spotlessly clean unit, by the time we reach our destination we've picked up the usual detritus of the road - splashes of oil, dust, road salt and so on.

And yet, when we arrived at the Caravan Club's site at Bunree - our usual staging post on the way up here to the northern highlands - all the other caravans seemed to be spotless. How? They must have driven up some of the same roads we did. Why were we covered in a thin layer of grime while some of them shone so brightly they were literally hurting my eyes. There is clearly a secret here, and if any of you out there are privy to it I'd be most grateful if you'd share!

Oh, and while I'm on the subject - why are bits constantly dropping off? The Road Snail herself is a Lunar Quasar 462. She's relatively new - bought in 2007, and well maintained. And yet things keep breaking loose. Now, obviously, the nature of a touring caravan is to be dragged up hill and down dale, and in our case, along narrow twisty roads that are not particularly always well maintained. Our caravan's travelling life is one of shake, rattle and roll. This is bound to cause screws to loosen, which is why one of the first things we do on arrival anywhere is to tighten a few things up.

However. Caravan manufacturers surely understand that this will be the case - they put wheels on the damn things after all, they must be accepting that their products will be doing some rolling about! Why then does the front of our fire keep dropping off? Is it really beyond the wit of man to design a caravan heater that stays where it's put when the caravan itself moves from A to B? We can put men on The Moon and robotic explorers on Mars but we can't do that?

Really?

Why have the lenses fallen off both my front running lights? Again, I'll accept the 'van might've been shaken about a bit on the way up here, but bits don't fall off the car in the same way. Are caravans inherently weak? Is this a clever conspiracy to flog us more spare parts? I have no idea, but it's bloody irritating!

Still, the 'van is shaking rather less than it was twenty minutes ago, and the ball bearings have abated somewhat, so I think I'll put the laptop away and see if I can spot an eagle - or at least a buzzard. Have a good week - I hope to see you here again next friday!