Living in our new home - The Hobby

Our "Hobby 600"

Last Wednesday (27th May) we caught the train from Winchester to Rye to pick up
our new home, via about 30 small villages, including Brighton, which took around two & half hours total trip. It was a lovely sunny day, saw a lot of productive countryside, and occasional glimpses of the ocean. It was mid term break last week, so there were lots of families and children travelling making it very busy.

The day before we had confirmed the money went through for the vehicle, and were still trying to follow up our insurance as we travelled. As those of you who know the system here, you can't register your vehicle without first having insurance! We had had a stressful week the week before trying to arrange insurance, which is difficult if you can't prove a residential address (must be on a utilities bill/ bank statement etc) - no the Caravan Club wasn't acceptable apparently! And we wanted to travel Europe longer than 6 weeks! We just did not fit their tick boxes! We did finally get insured, but as you can imagine, at a ridiculous cost. Three times the local rate! Extortion!
But lets not go back there, except to say they gave us grieve the day of pick up by saying they hadn't received our money! But it had gone out of our bank!
We arrived in Rye just after 1.00pm, insurance still unresolved, so I said to Bill we are going to go and have a nice lunch somewhere, and deal with this afterwards.

Port of Rye

Rye is approx 2 miles in from the open sea but is a lovely little historic port harbour as it is at the confluence of three rivers. Lots of cafes / restaurants, but with being Mid Term Break, was very busy.

Our lovely relaxed lunch venue

We managed to find a lovely Italian restaurant where we had a lovely relaxed lunch (the wine & beer did help). We were then picked up by the Motor Home company who took us 5 miles down the road to their premises. Here we used their land line instead of my cell phone, and got into a different queueing system on their 0800 number, which makes them give such a better service. But this isn't available on your cell phone! Anyway, this staff member was much more helpful, found our payment, and all on track with our purchase within 5 minutes! Amazing! Note I am using a lot of !!!, this is because you know I don't use @&*%$*@!* but I must say I was getting close too along with Bill.

JC Leisure in Winchester, who we bought the vehicle from were wonderful, our Salesman Lance (Warwick hope you read this blog if none of the other blogs just so you know we do like "Car Salesmen") was very helpful. So after another hour of paperwork, we were taken out to their workshop (about 10 miles out the other side of Rye). The workshop guys were as wonderful as the mechanics we had for Big Yella at Stuart Drummond Transport's. Spent some time going through the workings of everything inside and out. They had given a full service, so we should be all good for 12 months anyway. At which time we have to have the vehicle back in the UK for it's next MOT (warrant of fitness) as it has to be done in the country it is registered in. So we won't worry about that untill next year.
After going through a bit more paper work, we were finally ready to start our adventure with our new home.

OMG I hadn't really thought about the left hand drive position!! That was really Bill's worry, as he wanted LH drive, so he was going to be the one with that problem. What I didn't think about was the fact I would be sitting out in the middle of the road with NO CONTROL! AND ENGLAND HAS SUCH NARROW ROADS! We were now in peak traffic in a little village, but thankfully that did slow everyone down. Bill was amazing considering he had me screaming at him every 5 seconds "keep left" "LEFT".
As the vehicle comes with no household equipment, we knew we had to stop and provision ourselves. We had been told of the Dunelm Store not too far from Rye, near the main town of Hastings. With my amazing phones GPS (what did we do 35 years ago when were here last??) we got there just after 6.30 pm, thankfully the Super Stores stay open late. An amazing shop with a sale on, perfect. And specials items even better. Then over the road to a Super Supermarket to get the basics, but in particular much needed wine.

Our first night looking out over Church Barn Farm

Then off we went for the last 9 miles of the day to our first nights camper accommodation in the UK, Church Barn Farm in Ninfield, Battle.
Again, OMG, such narrow narrow lanes to drive down, thankfully very little traffic coming back the other way. We eventually found our destination - the perfect ending of a very very stressful day. The Motorhome Club we have joined over here is similar to our NZ one, in that again they are a huge organisation that have a huge number of sites on can park up, but the difference being the services offered. In NZ basic is great, although a lot of people do like toilets and water provided. Here most will have power, toilet / shower blocks / entertainment for children and a property warden. All of which comes at a cost. We were really shocked how expensive it was going to cost a night at the Club sites, but luckily they have affiliated sites, which is where people offer a place to park over for a small fee. These are the sites we will be looking for in future.
We returned to Winchester after a good nights sleep, and continue to stock up for our trip across into Europe to be in Switzerland by mid June.

All is calm on our return to Twyford