The Ham Nomads

18 Sep 2014. <GB-ENG> Cheltenham, & Westbury-on-Severn, & Forest of Dean, Glos —

Progress on a few fronts — we went out to see Stewart Wilsdon, who was going to help us with our gas for the Continent. Well, he came up with the simplest of solutions — plan to use CampinGaz, which is readily available throughout Europe. What we need is a regulator to connect to their bottles, which he was able to supply us. He also recommended a tool to allow us to undo the connecting hose clamp to change over the regulator. This is such a simple thing to do that we will be able to run a large (7kg) bottle of Calor gas (from the UK) as our backup, so long as we only use it for a day or so each time (until we can replace the other). That means we can run on one large Calor bottle for about a year, and get the smaller CampinGaz cylinders as they run out every couple of weeks. If we need to go to any other system at any time, we simply buy the full cylinder plus the appropriate regulator.

We looked through our vehicle documentation, and were able to find the exact engine specifications, which we have given to Richard Hulin, and which should help him track down a replacement. We now won't check back with him until after Stonehenge.

We spent a little time at Macca's to do some emailing, then set off for a rather interesting site — Westbury Court Garden. This is a fascinating water garden laid out in the Dutch manner between 1696 and 1705. There is a 1709 engraving by Jan Kip (from his series Britannia Illustrata) which represents the garden at that time fairly faithfully. When the National Trust took over the garden in 1967, it set about bringing it back to the state represented by Kip. The species planted would all have been well known in the early 1700s, and the garden is a wonderful snapshot of gardening practice around that time. Being of Dutch design, of course there is a canal in it! While in the garden, we were visited by the cheekiest of robins. One just sat on the wall and sang his heart out!

We wandered here for a couple of hours, then drove a little further into the Forest of Dean, where Warren had noticed a picnic area (in the road atlas) where we might stay for a quiet night. We missed it by about half a mile, instead finding a carpark at the Speech House Woodland — nice walks, quiet parking, no fees — at the picnic spot (which we walked down to) you have to pay to park! Don't say the Hams don't fall on their feet!

Distance driven — today, 76 miles ( 122 km ); to date, 7,732 miles ( 12,444 km )