Saturday August 6th A day of preparation

Kev and Matt at Halfords, happy to show off our new plates.

What a great night’s sleep we had, the bed was so comfortable, evidently the owners had just bought the mattress at quite a cost before selling the van, many thanks to them, I know we are going to really enjoy it.

The weather has turned really hot again, a perfect summer’s day and the crowds seemed to be thronging into Skegness. We snuck down the road before the traffic was too bad and went to Halfords, an auto supply company that prints vehicle plates. Kev and Matt, the two lads that we dealt with were amazing, they made sure we had all the appropriate papers and logged into the DVLA site to register everything and make sure it was all correct (which of course it was…thanks Steve!), and in no time at all we had our new number plates. By the time we left the traffic was bottlenecked with visitors coming to the seaside so put aside our plans of continuing further into town for some groceries and headed back to the quiet of Burgh Le Marsh, will do the shopping tomorrow morning although have heard from the neighbours that the supermarkets don’t open until 10am on a Sunday. A good piece of advice as we were planning on an early start to beat the crowds. Put the plates on and Ruakiwi is all now all official and looking pretty smart.

All through UK there are lots of Hand Car wash operations, and there is one just down the road. Ian wasn’t keen to get up on top and scrub the roof of Ruakiwi so our first outing was to drive down and get the wash done. A few hiccups when Ian couldn’t get her to go over 30kph,there was a bit of a queue behind before he realised that it had a limiting lever which he had put on by mistake. Won’t do that again. After her wash we headed off for a real drive, Ian was very comfortable driving the LH drive and she drove so sweetly. Big smiles on the kiwis faces.

Spent the rest of the afternoon gradually transferring our belongings from the barn into the van, it is really starting to feel like home.

Neighbours Sue and Alan were our first guests tonight, they popped over for drinks in the van, so pleasant having a chat as the sun went down over the village.

A very happy Meg