Our first 'season'

Hi all!

First id like to thank ye! I've been reading and reading and reading all sorts of topics and posts picking up information and trying to figure it all out! There's still some bits that defeat me - but I'll slowly tease them out (or post them in the mech & tech forum!) also the craic map has been brilliant! And I'll delve into tate a bit more later!

So we purchased our van in August up in Letterkenny...after two trips up checking it out, we went up a third and final time to bring her home! At 22 years of age, and with 145 (ish) thousand Km's we figured there was plenty left to give! Her previous owner seemingly hadn't the time to get away... And so I spent 4 long hours driving her back to Kildare (only to have to park her beside the house with about 3 inches grace either side at about 1am!!)

The first chapter was the big clean!! Imagine as much bleach as you can imagine, double it and that again!! Every internal nook and cranny was cleaned and it was a great feeling as she cleans up lovely!! The internal was well made and is the factory fit.. apart from a new hinge on a press or two - all the fittings are perfect!

Anyway... Our first trip! In October, We went to achill, travelling again by dark (I love a challenge!) and arriving in keem strand late in the night! (First craic recommendation!!) our breath was taken away at the sight that greeted us in the morning! Our own little bite of paradise! (Even if we'd nearly been blown over during the night!) we travelled around achill and out to mulranny and back... Staying the next two nights in keel, coming across another motor home or two and availing of the warm atmosphere of the local pub! On night three however we ended up doing a late night move to somewhere less exposed, given the winds that had gotten up! I'll all up for wild camping, but I've no magic shoes to click if we get swept away in a wind!!

Our second trip was an overnight - we took her down to hook peninsula to do a Halloween tour of loftus hall... After the tour we parked under hook lighthouse, took out a bottle (or two) of cheap Tesco wine that we'd procured in new Ross and sat and watched the waves until the wee hours of the morning! Again - waking to a view that I'll never forget! also managed to get drenched in a breaking wave on the rocks- but it shook any chance of a sore head!!

Our most recent trip ended just on Friday, where we took on the Kerry ring and dingle peninsula!

Starting with (you'll never guess...!) a late night arrival at ladies view, it wasn't long before we were treated to a 'donut' display by local lads, who may consider themselves hopefuls for the rally of the lakes!! Apart from shouting and beeping - relatively harmless! The second night was spent in the torc waterfall car park.. Which served us well, waking to muckross house and also getting a haunting car to Ross castle! We moved closer to the town on the Sunday night expecting to go for a few drinks and parking behind a petrol station less than 5 minutes from town (mentioned it to one of the forecourt staff just to be on the safe side!) but ended up staying in with a few hot whiskeys instead! During a little stroll up towards the gap of dunloe - we met another MH owner up from cork who pointed out that there was a whole heap we hadn't seen yet! (Which is a great excuse for another trip!) and we retired that evening into Kate kearneys cottage with a couple of pints and a parking spot for the night!

We moved to Tralee from there, completed the ring and the skellig peninsula in the day and arrived in woodlands campsite Tralee for a refill, an EHU and a quiet night on our first ever site! It was great to fill one tank and empty another and they were lovely to deal with! Our plan was to get to dingle, but last Wednesday was a nice day and we spent it waking the length of inch beach, and camping the night there! Across to dingle, after a wander around the town and a bite to eat, it was time for craic map success number two that night as we hit ventry 2 to wildcamp yet again! Beautiful beach, no hassle and pretty quiet spot bar locals walking their dogs!

Saw dingle distillery(recommend!), slea head drive (stunning!) and blennerville windmill! But alas it was time to head for home!

Queue a Late night arrival after a 5 hour solid drive from dingle back to Kildare... Just in time for the toy show!

Little bits learned from the whole experience and probably more questions than before, but all in all - between the trips, I think we're quickly falling in love with the freedom and the lifestyle that comes with it!

Hope I haven't bored you with that read! And if you've made it this far - fair play and thanks!

Look forward to our next trip (although it's still tbc!)

Thought I'd continue this line of updating through the blog.. a 'trials and tribulations' of being new to motorhoming so to speak! Hope you don't mind and if it's better posted differently I'll happily take that guidance!

So - following on from our Kerry trip, unfortunately the MH stayed parked up in its cosy spot beside the house through Christmas and new years (as every spot we talked about going to, came up in the news as flooded!)... finally it made it's first voyage of 2016 up to Lumpers bar for what would be our first ever Craic meet!

Understandably, the van let us know that it wasn't impressed with its downtime and whilst Catherine was practicing driving it in tesco Car Park after picking up some diesel - the gearstick point blank refused us 1st and reverse... Uh oh. With what I thought were the symptoms of the clutch needing replacing - and catherine suffering from all symptoms of someone that thought they'd just broken our van... I took the wheel and coaxed her home. (the van that is... !) The only way to reverse in to the driveway was to turn off the engine every time i needed to change into reverse and start it with the clutch in. I decided not to accept such an early defeat and the words of a local mechanic rang in my head "most of this can be fixed on the side of the road".... so I decided to give my limited mechanical knowledge a bash. After isolating the clutch arm and cables as potentially the problem and half a can of WD40.. some twisting and tightening later, the clutch worked like new. This probably won't come as a surprise to anyone with previous experience of an old Ducuato! (as it took ally all of 3.2 seconds to diagnose the problem when we were chatting on the saturday!!)

We were last ones to the party (I'm pretty sure) and not without problems... Google Maps decided the best way to the bar, was via the smallest of small country roads... this not being the first time it had literally led us up a garden path, we kept the heads down and ploughed on knowing our destination would be reached, by hook or by crook! Upon arrival into lumpers... i noticed that the toilet wasn't flushing.. (queue a tense 10 minutes of pulling and pushing... for first timers out there - my one thought at this point is - ' Brute force and ignorance' should only be used on advice... I *may* have broken the fancy yellow bits off the casette in my attempts.. to pull it out. The problem? the cassette wasn't sealed by the turning knob and the knob was blocking it's exit cassette out, cassette in, toilet flushed (all the contacts weren't aligned) and time to meet and greet the great folk of motorhomecraic!!

I've documented some of our issues through the snag list.. but we picked up a couple of new items too, with great savings that I thought were worth sharing, our mattress in particular! Foam/memory foam mattress (half depth - 15cm for over the cab double) delivered to the door for €189 through groupon. The same mattress is on the companys site for £345 before delivery!!!

Our next trip was up the Northern Coast of Ireland. We left last Thursday (after a hiccup outlined in another post which I still need to fully investigate) and went straight up to the Ballygalley area using the craic map (lay-by 1) as a stopover. Our first time using the Garmin Nuvi was a complete and utter disappointment as it led us off the main road at around midnight.. Needless to say my esteemed co-pilot was instructed to swiftly switch it off and place it delicately in the glove box... (or at least that's how I remember saying it!!) :whistle: and we reverted to good ol road signs to there!

A much needed 10 hours sleep ensued and we ate breakfast watching a cormorant fish for his, not 6 feet away, which was a small treat! We took the coastal road right up to Dunluce Castle (Stunning drive, would like to take more time to do it again! ) and then came back down into bushmills where we parked (Free) in Main Street Car Park - there was a long space a the end on the left that was perfect! After a bit of food and a few whiskeys in the town we retired to our new foam mattress for another much needed sleep!

Friday we departed and did Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge, The Dark Hedges and The Bushmills Distillery. Regrettably, the Causeway turned us away from the Main Car Park despite it being late in the day and there being ample parking. (we only decided to use it due to time constraints on last tours for there and the distillery). After going to the park and ride in bushmills (which is signposted as only running between march and october but is running now) the bus pulled out as we pulled in.... we decided the causeway would go on a future to do list!

On a recommendation from one Mr. Stu8rty of Motorhomecraic.com we ventured down Ballintoy Harbour, hoping to report back to him on a Gem of a recommendation... The small car park at the back left had an open barrier and we popped in there to take some shelter. All tee'd up for another beautiful place to wake up, unfortunately Cat took ill at 4am and we beat a hard and fast road back to Kildare through pretty serious snow fall as far as ballymena to arrive home at 10.30am.

Needless to say - the trip didn't quite work out as planned. The coastal route was stunning though and competes with Slea Head Drive out of Dingle in Kerry!

As with the last time - If you've made it this far... fair play to you! I hope it's not too much ramble... and that someone will find some useful info in it!!

All the best,

Killian