Funnels and Spanners

We have a loose budget of $700 per week, that’s for food, petrol and extras. Not big extras, more like a coffee and a scone or a beer in the local pub at night. Being a chef, I do like nice ingredients and fresh produce so our grocery bill is hardly small and our petrol bill ballooned whilst we were travelling the North Coast 500, but we have got by. I will say we are people that aren’t used to budgeting so having an allowance of £20 a day has been a bit like giving a kid pocket money for the first time.

So far our most expensive purchases have been a spanner for the gas bottle which we bought 70% off at a closing down sale and it was still flaming expensive and 7 funnels. If I sound a little agrieved it’s because I am. The bloody spanner doesn’t even fit the gas bottle and so far none of the 7 funnels have been successful either.

On a more positive note we have found the reason half of The UK has looked so tanned. No they haven’t had to run away to Spain for the summer because summer is right here and it’s just lovely.

I’m not sure we are ever going to make it to Europe. Every time we start to head down, something attracts our eye and we head sideways. Yesterday we started in The Yorkshire Dales heading towards York, (directly down) and ended up in Hemsley, ( directly across).

I was distracted by a brochure advertising a food and market trail heading toward Scarborough on the other coast and that was that. It would have been a crime to bypass the Wensleydale Cheese Shop in Hawes afterall. Actually I feel the amount of cheese Doug sampled in the sampling room was probably more of a crime. You walk around this cheese room in a line with sampling baskets full of different variety of cheeses. We aren’t talking 3 or 4 cheeses but 20 or 30. Needless to say my days budget was spent on cheese oh and 1x 99p funnel found in a junk shop.

Our day saw us in the Helmsley long term carpark at the back of the town, especially designated for campervan parking. It’s free overnight and £2 pound for the day and with a walkway through to town it’s the ideal place to park.

Helmsley is wow. It’s a market town so the square in the middle of town is the centre piece of the village but it’s the quaint shops and delicatessens which make this town. There is also a grand ruin of a castle in the back yard and a church to the side where on the Sunday morning the church bells literally sung the locals to church.

Our budget was spent in a typically old pub where sadly my glass came with the remnants of the previous users lipstick and the coasters stuck to the thin film of grime on the table. Luckily for us our coffee and homemade sausage roll the next morning was the best yet.

We have actually made it to York tonight, which appears to be a charmingly large town and while large towns aren’t really our thing but the lure of the riverside with the canal boats and the cobblestone streets and the attractive cafe windows have won us over so here we are on a farmstay 3 miles from the centre of town with grass at our front door. How good is that. Oh and we’ve gained another funnel but apparently this one’s the ONE.