Off to Norwich

Off to Norwich.   For a very good reason.  Tomorrow I start a two day Practical Caravanning Course at the Norfolk Training Services Ltd.  I am aiming to learn how to hitch the caravan to the car, and solve the mysteries of the jockey wheel and most importantly I am going to learn how to reverse the car with a caravan on the back.

The fact is, I never learnt how to reverse a trailer when living in Australia, finding it much easier to get someone else to do it for me when I took rubbish to the tip.  To be truthful I find it challenging to even reverse a car on its own.  But I am determined. I will be successful.

I am on my own too, well at least until tomorrow night, when Walter will join me.  He has a dentist appointment tomorrow, root canal work, very unpleasant, and will catch the train up here afterwards.   I hope he manges to hobble around okay, when taking the underground trains.

So I drove up here on my own, without any problems.  The caravan is so easy to tow, and as long as I can move forwards all is well. I left in heavy rain.  How can we have no rain for weeks and then on the day I take the caravan out it rains.  But luckily it stopped after Stansted Airport and the sun came out.  Perfect.

I stopped for lunch at the services at Stansted and breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the drive through type of parks for caravans.   I had a chemical lunch.  A low calorie sandwich from the Waitrose shop.  It had a cheese spread in it, and it was better not to think too much about what it was made of.  I also bought a container of cut fruit that was no doubt sprayed with something nasty to keep it looking fresh.  This was washed down with a Starbucks coffee.  Terrible.  

It was great to see all the old familiar landmarks as I drove from Stansted to Norwich.  We used to drive along this road often when Aaron and Kylie lived in Norwich.  The last time was nearly five years ago, just before they moved to the Netherlands. Memories.

But there were changes, the pig farms were still there, but there were also acres of solar panels in the fields and a super dual lane road through the Thetford forest area, which also bypassed Elveden.  I missed the forest on each side of the road, but not the queues of traffic.

So now I am sitting in our cosy carvan, writing my blog.  I must also add that the warden very kindly gave me a drive through type of site, so I did not have to use the mover.  He also unhitched the caravan  for me. 

Why am I putting myself through a course, when there are so many kind and helpful people around?  Independence and pride! 

 And now I must go to bed, and get plenty of sleep so that I can put my full attention into unhitiching and hitching up, learning not to wind the jockey wheel out of its holder and most importantly, learn to reverse.

I hope the cones are soft.