Our first Trip out!

[Rocket_man]

Hi guys,

Some of you would have seen my first post about our Apollo and Navara. We bought a 2nd hand Apollo and Mazda pick up about 3 weeks ago. The idea was to put the Apollo on the Navara we have, but after reading about the chassis problems and also not wanting to put loads of miles on the Navara we decided to stick with the old Mazda the Apollo it came with. The Apollo needs quite a bit of TLC, as there could of been a damp problem, but hopefully in the past. We have upgraded our leave springs from 4t to 6t on the Mazda.

Anyway.... We took this on a little trip on Monday 4th July (Apollo is called 'Space Snail' and it was his independents day)! We went from Cambridge to Gloucestershire and stayed for one night at a campsite called Appletrees ( no Apple Trees there though! ). This was about 150 miles and for the first 30 miles or so and I was so worried I do not think I went over 45mph, thinking will the straps hold the unit? Will the new suspension be enough? Is it top heavy? Silly little things, which I am sure a few of you have gone through on your first trip. By the end of the first days driving I was pretty cool with things and got up to a top speed of 55mph... Watch out Hamilton! That evening we cooked our meal in the space snail and watched a DVD and then off to bed. It was great, just like a little home from home .



My Lady putting her walking boots on outside our Space Snail


Next day we went to Branscombe Airfield, the ones you guys meet up at a week before. Really nice place and chilled out. Andrew showed us his plane in the hanger. Getting to Branscombe was another thing...OMG, sat nav took us into the woods up really narrow and steep bendy roads with .5m drops of the edge. Then on coming traffic now and then...let's say I would of used the BLEEP machine a lot if I was on the BBC! Lesson learnt, do not trust sat navs and take a paper map.


After Branscome we went to Wilcot in Wiltshire. A lovely pub campsite called the Golden Swan. This was recommend by Mike, who we met up with Friday night and his lady Wendy. Really nice meeting them and great comparing demountables. Mikes was bigger than mine! Had a lovely meal at £8.50 each, very reasonable we thought. Mike has given us some helpful ideas.

On Saturday we drove back home to Cambridge.


We spotted this Ranger on the M5 near Bristol on our 2nd day. Going more than 55mph


All in all about a 390 mile trip, which cost about £90 in fuel.

Had a great experience, lovely meeting Mike & Wendy.

Hope I have not bored you all with this. I can get Zildjian to add photos if you like.

Thanks Tim & Simone


Ps... We are off to Kent this weekend in the Space Snail

[derestrictor]

That mazda looks quite matched to the camper & I like the alloys

[Rocket_man]

That mazda looks quite matched to the camper & I like the alloys

Thanks Derestrictor, I agree they do look like they match well. I need to give the allows a good clean as they have a red oxide type thing on them.

[Madmountainman]

Nice little report with some photo's. What more could you ask for? I'm currently camping in Shropshire at Rattlinghope, terrific site and a great pub down the road. Will post something tomorrow as i've just fond out the site's got wifi. If anyone fancies a pint tomorrow, Thursday, pop on over and pitch up.

[mjb666]

It was Great to finally meet up with you two after much messaging and phone calls. It really is a nice little campsite & Yes, the food was very good.

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j ... IkBJsGF-Kw

Both the Mazda & Apollo were nowhere near as bad as i feared after your descriptions, both very useable as you are now finding out. It sounds like you have a really good & helpful mechanic with ideas, so thats a start.

Very surprised that
image uploader no one recognised the Ranger on the Double cab, especially with the Registration showing, did they wave as they overtook?

[zildjian]

Mike I don't think a protocol exists so far for acknowledging other owners

maybe We should work on something

[mjb666]

When Mike from Yeovil spotted Us on the A303, it was waving & flashing headlights, seemed to work. And we were both on the move, none of that shady lay-by lights on/off stuf.

[Rocket_man]

Hey Mike,

Great to see the photos of our demountables on here. Thanks for adding them.

Hopefully we can get to Kent tomorrow. All depends if our mechanic can get the legs back from being re machined.

Going to be a hot week, will interesting if we can find a nice shady area at the campsite in Ashford.

[Toshbins]

We're a week into our first trip. Having picked up the camper from Nolan we were straight to a beachside car park for the night, followed by three in a farm campsite. Next to a freebie town car park in Welshpool followed by a pub car park in the Peak District and tonight we're in little gravel hidey hole on the North York moors.
We've learned that the camper likes to be level. Otherwise the shower leaks onto the camper floor if its leaning right or all the water ends up behind the toilet if it's leaning left. Have bought some wedges to go under the wheels.
Water only lasts two days if we shower every day and do a bit of washing, so we need to economise. Toilet lasted 4 days. Would be good to get fill-up and empty-out together so that we can maybe stretch to 5 days off-grid (and maybe be a bit smellier).
We need a considerably longer hook-up cable. 30 feet is fine if the power on the campsite is nearby (just OK for us) but where we were had some 4 way sockets, so we would have needed 3 times the length if we had ended up with the furthest pitch.
We're running 2bar on the airbags. Haven't really experimented up or down from that, but it all seems stable and the whole rig lifts and drops together without porpoising, so I reckon we're about right.
We're aiming to be out for another 10 days, so a good shake-down run.

[zildjian]

The 'Peaky's here are the specialists at water economy here, spending maximum time out off-grid.

Typically it's 2-3 days then book in somewhere to make use of the facilities for a night the head off again.

EHU is maybe a bit short you're right, even on a site like Branscombe people found their cables needed another adding to get connected