Last Sunday Lou suggested we go and visit a good friend in North Wales, so we got our collective poo together and left the following day, our 8.30 start turned into 11.00 and we ploughed our way through the south circular road and worked our way onto the A40 towards Oxford, traffic was light and we were going out of our comfort zone, the furthest I've ever travelled in Lola is to Norfolk. We took the A44, A49 and A5, avoiding mind numbing motorways and had a most excellent and cool drive up there, the roads were mental, I only would have had more fun if I was on a motorbike We arrived several hours later in middle earth, we had a warm welcome and Lou caught up on old times, the pirates were most impressed with this ...the first foreign country they have visited, we explored a bit and found a stone circle....within minutes , the people we met while we were up there were most friendly and welcoming....soooo different from what we are used to in London. We ended up staying til Thursday, only problem I had was getting my top to pop, Popped it without a problem on Monday....then Tuesday in Corwen...no pop....or I was knackered from driving, the plastic stool I use so the kids can effortlessly glide into the van, was also useful for popping the roof, unfortunately it exploded on Monday trying to put up the roof, I think I'm missing something, as I'm about 6'2" and it can sometimes be a real effort getting the roof up. So Lou and my daughter slept in her mates transit camper, and my son and myself slept in Lola on the first night. On Tuesday I pressganged a helpful man to aid me in popping my top....which even thinking about it makes me feel dodgey, after balancing on the gaz bottle we managed to get one side up, which was enough to support it as it wasn't that windy, thus we all slept together for the rest of our stay. We were parked in our friends drive so only used Lola to sleep in, really peaceful, the pitter patter of raindrops, the wind blowing whistfully through the trees..... until a logging truck goes past, but they were civilised and made noise during normal working hours, when the earthquake happened about 4 am I thought it was a logging truck twas nice falling asleep and waking up to the sound of peacocks from a neighbors garden though The journey back was wet to start with, and we diverted to Stourbridge to pick up some back seats for Lou's Mini, weather got better the further back we travelled. All in all we went 483 miles and averaged 24 mpg and we can't wait to go back.
