Robin Hood Country

We weren't in any rush today so had a fairly lazy start to the morning, heading off at around 09:30 or so. It's a pleasant and scenic drive heading down the A68 and then the B6275 to emerge onto the A1 just north of Scotch Corner. Even the A1 was fine for once with no particular hold ups and a moderate level of traffic. I've driven those roads loads of times in the motorhome but would normally be battering along at the speed limit as we'd have a long way to go, however not being in a hurry today I just sat in the mid 50's with the lorries and saw quite an improvement in fuel consumption - a best ever 25.2mpg where we'd normally be in either the high teens or the very low 20's. Once we get to France and are taking our time on rural roads it'll be interesting to see what sort of mpg we get then, but it should be decent. On previous trips we'd often be covering quite high mileages some day but the plan this trip is to generally keep the daily mileages down and to take things a bit easier - given we've got about 8 weeks or so rather than the usual 2 or 3.

We stopped off at the Brownhills motorhome dealership in Newark to ogle some of the new vans (although I think I prefer the layout of our current van to pretty much all of the ones they have) and to purchase a few bits and bobs from their well stocked accessory shop. After that it was just a few miles to the little Caravan and Motorhome Club "Certified Location" (CL) we were booked into tonight, midway between Newark and Lincoln. CL's are small 5 unit sites with often quite limited facilities, although this one (Skybarn Farm) has a fair amount with all being serviced pitches (i.e. having individual mains electric, water and grey waste disposal).

There are no toilets or showers but that's normally the case with these sites and not an issue as our motorhome has a pretty decent shower etc. The site also has an information hut with lots of material about the local area's attractions as well as a fair number of books and DVD's to borrow. All in all it seems a really excellent little site and given the amount of stuff to do in the area we might well be back in the future. It's £15 per night, which is about average for these sorts of sites but pretty good value given the facilities here and what's been spend on creating it. It even has a code entry system on the entry gate so is nice and secure as well as being quietly located amongst fields. There is a bit of noise from the A46 road which isn't far away, but even with the vents open I'm not finding it intrusive. The site even has free WiFi.

We arrived mid-afternoon but are just going to have a quiet rest of the day (Fiona has already headed for a nap - you'll soon see this is a theme for the trip as she does like a nap!), re-jigging some of the cupboards and the like. Tomorrow we're planning to head into Lincoln - neither of us has been before and it looks like there is a lot of interesting stuff to see.