Springs have sprung!

There's a definite feeling of spring in the air, the snow drops are out, the sun has been shining (well at least it was yesterday), the bunnies on the site seem to have a little more bounce when we hurtle towards them in the car and there is, on occasion, a slightly less arctic feel to the weather in general.  I think we can safely say that we are true all weather campers now having lived on Delores in temperatures ranging from minus 8 degrees C to 30 degrees C last summer.  I wasn't at all keen on the 30 degree heat and it seems a lot easier to keep Delores warm than it does to keep her cool.  In fact we're making good use of the weather conditions on board and have renamed one of the underseat storecupboards "the wine cellar" on account of the fact it keeps the wine at a rather pleasingly cool temperature.  It's all part of our attempt to make Delores seem larger than she is and, as well as "the wine cellar", we have "the games room" - the area underneath the driver's seat where all the travel games are stored, "the library" - the two cupboards where my meagre supply of books are stored, "the AV suite" - the cupboard where the TV gadgetry lives and "Monty's Wing" - the cab area where his food bowls and cat carrier are kept.

Of course given recent events on the house front we hopefully won't be living on Delores too much longer.  My days are now a blur of work and trying to cram in conversations with estate agents, lawyers and financial advisors during my coffee & lunch breaks.  We're very much hoping that by this time next week we'll have made some definite progress but I guess we all know how house moves can be so who knows?  We visited the new place on Saturday to double check some of the finer details and find answers to a few final questions we had.  Turns out we have our own spring at the bottom of the garden so we're already making Delboy style plans to take the mineral water world by storm.  In addtion to that we have somewhere between 6 and 10 different apple trees in the garden so I'm also making plans to become a Scrumpy Magnate.  In fact I think that's my next career ambition for no better reason that the job title rocks.  While I'm on the subject of the new house I feel I must mention the lovely chap from the estate agents who has shown us around both times.  He's very personable and professional and has clearly done a good job of selling the place to us however he suffers from a hearing disorder which isn't a problem in itself, but did make me question his constant assertations that "it's very quiet here isn't it?".  Those of you who know me well know I would  never, ever, mock someone's disabilitiy, but I have to say I'm not entirely convinced he was best placed to comment on the noise levels associated with living there.

Now that our weekends are no longer taken up with house hunting we have time to do a little more exploring and yesterday we took a stroll around Jenny Browns point just to the south of Silverdale.  After silthering over a rather soggy hillside we arrived at the edge of one of the stretches of Salt Marsh which line Morecambe Bay.  It's not a landscape I'm particularly familiar with but it was stunning to look at and provided the perfect place for a long stroll in the early spring sunshine.  On our way back towards Silverdale we took a detour and discovered a perfectly positioned stone seat which had been built by some kindly souls and which provided an almost perfect resting place - the only thing worng was the fact that we hadn't bought a flask of tea and a picnic with us, but we're planning a return visit next time we have good weather and will remember to pack a fine picnic and lashings of ginger beer.

And that's about it for another week.  The past 7 days have been busy and eventful but in a good way and it's definitely a big relief to finally be making some progress on the house front and, having met our delightful prospective new neighbours, we're keener than ever to get moved in.  So keep everything croseed for us and before you know it we'll be flogging you finest Cumbrian scrumpy.