Ah well

The weather has been a real mixed bag; this morning brilliant sunshine with an afternoon of torrential sky leaking.

Lucky the mowing of lawn got done in the morning.

The caravan needed to be moved today which is a simple little job after all.

Move a caravan from a field to outside the house where there is access to electricity, 50 yards, the work of moments.

So first job is let the legs down.

Perhaps I should re introduce Mr Samba, called that as the first time I took the thing to a festival hitting 50 was the begining of a bouncing Samba with van and car dancing all over the place.

I did actually cure this by pumping the tyres up to 50 psi, I think they might have formed into a fixed shape when stood so they were slightly oval, the extra pressure pushed them back round.

But anyway the Samba van has a very clever system for the legs. These are the things that hold it stable when it's parked. Everything is hydraulic so rather than lots of cranking you just pump it a load of times and the thing is stable and automatically level.

Taliesin (yes lets blame him for a change) suggested we park it on a bit of an angle so lots of the legs were at big extension and the ones at the front were under real load as the van was trying to roll backwards.

In moving it we struggled to get the rears to go up and the fronts being held down by the weight of the truck simply would not budge at all.

This was turning from a "let's go and move the van" into something far more complex.

So anyway, unable to hitch up, because the tow hitch was inches over the ball on the 806 I decided to box clever. Pulling the caravan forwards would collapse the legs naturally.

Raiding a Green Goddess for rope, we pulled the caravan forwards, which meant one leg went down a bit and the other, dug in driving the caravan towards the fence.

Now of course room to manouvere was a spot limited by the presence of Taliesin's champ (lets have another go at the man....) and a rather substantial breeze block wall.

97 locks and the car was pointing slightly the right way.

Another pull and the front came down.

Not quite enough of course to hitch up so the wood pile was raided and the 806 backed up on blocks till the hitch locked.

Pulling the thing forwards would relieve the pressure on the legs and with hitch hitched we were in business.

Well no, the van was in a gate and there was still a champ close in front. It came out of there on a triumph of my driving and Big D's judgement.

Turn it round and reverse in nice and tight on the house; tomorrows job, clean it all.

How hard can that be.....

Rhys