TWO SNAILS (plus a dog and a dragon)

It has not escaped my attention that I am way behind on updating this blog. Not only have I not written up the last trip that we took (in June) but I have gaps going back almost two years now.

It is Koken that is my problem. I want to use Koken and I believe that it looks stunning at the front end but the back end is slow. Worse than that it is difficult to map out a decent structure for  a blog with Koken. It handles text, certainly, but it is built for images.

It was not simply Koken's good looks that led me to use it for Two Snails but also the fact that Mr Snail wished to have no truck with Wordpress on his shiny new server. We are presently renegotiating on that position. I can struggle on with Koken from my desk but when we drive off in a few weeks' time everything will become so much more difficult with mobile comms in use.

For now I am left wondering whether or not to invest time and effort in catching up with our travels or to defer matters until I can sort out a WP installation.

The new RV has been christened: Hank, the Yank

I have created a Twitter account associated with this blog: https://twitter.com/two_snails

We are not now going Full-time immediately

The house is not yet prepared for sale, though we are happy to enter into discussion with any interested parties at any time

Mr Snail retires imminently - at the time that I write this he has only 9 days left at his desk, plus 2 further working days spent days travelling to and from his office in Manchester.

We have booked a pitch for the winter so that Hank will not be subject to the worst of Orkney weather and scoured by salt winds. He's a little too precious (aka expensive) for that

This makes us officially long-termers for the immediate future

Next spring we return to Sanday and  prepare the house and market it

We go Full-time as soon as we can sell the property

Long time readers should know that the cast of this blog is now much reduced. In fact we are two cats short, both Treacle and Teddy having left us and also one dog less since Suzie also died. There's just us and Nell now. Tales of Teddy's last days will be along as soon as I can write them.

We took off in Brunhilde to see an RV in Gloucestershire, having already paid our deposit in the expectation of liking the van and ultimately buying it. The vendor had other models that we could transfer the deposit to but Mr Snail felt that this would be the one.

We left home on Thursday evening, the 17th of March, planning to take a week over the trip to Gloucestershire and stopping on the way to visit family. We had an appointment with the vendor on the morning of the 23rd. 

The dealer's normal turnaround period is ten days but he indicated as the vehicle already had a lengthy MOT certificate, he could shorten this to "a couple of days". We outlined a plan that involved visiting a friend in Newbury before returning to collect the van, do the swap and then spend a few nights fairly locally in case any bugs emerged. After that we would tour the coast of Wales before heading home again to start work on 11th April. Should things go well we planned to spend a couple of nights in the Forest of Dean.

In the event, we had the van the day after we viewed it, the friend in Newbury had to cancel, and all plans were revamped. Details all to follow.

I wrote this a few weeks and did not get around to posting it.

What are we looking for in our new home?

Essential:

• From a non-smoking family
  

• Ideally under 9 metres in length as some sites restrict pitches to vehicles of no more than 9 metres
  
• Non-HGV
  
• Dual fuel with LPG
• Winterised
• Auto levelling feet
• Fixed bed, island
• as much kitchen worktop and storage as we can get