We get the keys

I woke up and immediately had one of those where-the-hell-am-I moments. The room was missing most of its furniture, and pulling aside the blackout curtains didn’t help much. It was sunny but cold with lots of traffic. I picked up the plastic room key and everything but the lack of furniture fell into place. Today is Campervan Day, and we’re in Glasgow. Unfortunately, the mechanic doing the servicing on the van was hungover from a football game and apparently he was moving kinda slow. We scheduled official handover for 1900 hours hoping maybe the frenzied Glasgow rush hour traffic would be a bit more kind at that hour. We booked another night in our sparse room because we weren’t ready to hit the road and the hotel said we can park our van in their lot.

Next order of business was breakfast. Nothing was open for blocks. Finally we settled for a place called Julie’s Sandwiches, no waiting, no chairs, just across the street. At the appointed hour we Ubered over to get the final instructions, got the keys and I climbed into the driver’s seat.

The 6 speed manual transmission Fiat Ducato drove nicely. It’s amazing how many vehicles have manual transmissions in the UK; it’s got to be around 70%. We made it back to the Travelodge despite the rain, safely parked for the night. Heavy sigh of relief.

Running errands in a twenty foot long camper van is a little nerve wracking at first but that’s exactly what we needed to do this morning. We knew that we’d have to do it before leaving Glasgow where you can find a concentration of shops where you only need to park once. What we really needed was an IKEA new homemaker startup kit. Two of everything, throw it in to a big blue tarp bag. We made do with stops at Tesco, B&M, Marks and Spencer, some kind of Home Center, and TK Max. We felt pretty well equipped.

In the meantime Marce found a parkup in what Europeans call wild camping, in America its called boondocking, meaning no services, self contained vehicles only. We hoped that the 180 watt solar panel on our roof would keep us in power over night. There were two routes up to the small car park, high above the Clyde. We chose the less steep route, pulled in and gaped at the view.

Our first wild camping and we get to wake up to this view. Not bad.

3 Comments

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3 Responses to We get the keys

  1. Michael Foote

    Most Brits think automatic cars are for old people or lazy people who don’t like driving but you’re an ex Porsche owner so you should have no problem.

  2. Mary and Craig

    Not at lot different from sailing, for adventuresome spirits! Congrats to you!

  3. Bruce Leonard Bly

    Just fabulous… congratulations…

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