Did another couple of weeks away that we have just come back from, don’t want to be on the roads at Easter
This trip took us to Glen Innes for a few days as my wife wanted to go to Minerama, which is a big gem show there, held annually. Not much interest for me they just look like rocks ! Found another couple of small wineries though so was some benefit to the trip.
We then moved down to the Upper Hunter Valley, Scone in particular for a couple of nights. Scone Caravan park is one to avoid, I called ahead , “can you take a big rig?” “Of course, no trouble” was the reply. Well, the site was the biggest we have been on, but getting to it was near impossible, I had to thread VP through several needles to get set up. Then the first coal train went past, I had wondered what was behind the concrete wall at the back of the park 40 mtrs from our site! And about every 20 minutes there was another one. 24/7 these things run, with about 10,000 tonnes of coal in each. The empty wagons returning were noisier. And there was a crossing about 150 mtrs away and of course they have to blow their horns by law. some drivers was just a blip, but the pricks driving at 2 am seemed to have the attitude that, if I have to be awake, so do you and would lay on the bloody thing for 20 seconds or so. And the road was only 50 mtrs in the other direction so lots of truck noise as well.
BUT we did find a fine restaurant, The Cottage, and visited a couple of very good wineries as well. So was not a total disaster. I can totally recommend Two Rivers at Denman and out a bit further, Holydene, which is extremely impressive. As I write this I am looking at our 120 bottle wine rack and see there is no Holydene bottles left on there. They have a restuarant on site as well which we did not get to try on this trip but will be in this area around the time of the 30th CMCA rally, which is in the pits at Bathurst, will put VP around the track and see what her times are (just kidding, it is a public road with a 60 kph speed limit, apart from race days.
From there to Singleton for 1 night at the showgrounds, most expensive showground so far at $25
Then down to Sydney to do battle along Pennant Hills Rd, as we were to park up at our seedling supplier’s farm in south western Sydney as my wife had some weekend courses at Mt Annan Botanical Gardens.
Left Sunday afternoon, pissing down rain, filled up at Taree and camped at the servo for the night. Next day home in one day as Fleet was closed for renovation, sat on 110 on any of the dual carriageway, LOTS of road works on the Pacific Hwy, when they finish it all I reckon Brisbane- Sydney will be 8 hours.
There are some morons in the world, as you come into the business district at Coffs Harbour there is a left hand bend in the highway, 60 kph along here and the footpath is higher than the road. As we came through a guy stepped off the footpath and started walking along the road, in the same direction we were going, right at the bend in the road. I was in the left lane and had a B Double beside me in the right lane. This all happened so fast I had little time to do anything, just crowded over to the B dub as much as possible to keep away from the idiot and kept going, albeit while slowing down. I looked in the LHS mirror and saw him, still upright, disappearing behind the trailer, with his left hand holding his right hand elbow, pretty clear the trailer had touched him but I regard him as so lucky he wasn’t under it. I will see if the dash cams have picked it up, they may looking be too far forward. Can see him walking along but that’s it. However I have just fitted a DVR that will record both side cameras and both rear ones (on VP) They will show on one of my 7″ screens, the other will show the unrecorded vision from the rear of the trailer. Great little unit lots of options, LAN,WiFI, GPS, 3G so you can upload files really easily. Dual SD cards plus I am adding a SATA 1 TB hard drive as well. And comes with software that lets you ring it up and it will transmit what it is filming, as well as showing it’s location on a Google map. It has 4 alarm inputs and 2 alarm outputs so I am hoping the alarm inputs can be triggered externally, not that far into the manual as yet.
All in all another satisfying trip, no quibbles about the way VP ran, especially in the rain, looking forward to the next one to Bathurst.