Eriba Man

 This is night No.14/2020 living in the caravan. We (that's me and the dogs) are at a CL near Nairn, Allanaha Farm. Allanaha Farm is a real stripped back CL. Water, waste disposal, and a bin. No electricity, and no toilet block. This is the way CL's should be. And all for £5 a night. It's actually only about a mile from the last CL I stayed at, the CL at Geddes House. I really do like this area, and it has fantastic walking and great scenery. It's got beaches, rivers, hills, and towns all nearby. Cawdor and it's castle are a few miles away, and the famous Brackla Distillery is around a mile away. Booked the CL in the morning, and left around lunchtime for the 2hr drive north. We left in great weather. It's also my first trip towing with my new car, a more up to date RAV4. Stopped at Bin Forest near Huntly, where I normally do, and gave the dogs a good 40 min blast around the woods. They're both really familiar with this walk as it's a great half way brea...

  One quirk of the Puck is that there is limited storage for most things. The plate and food lockers are tiny, the clothes wardrobe is short, and the remaining cabinets although generally adequate, do need a bit of careful planning, especially if you want to a) minimise faffing, and b) enjoy some comforts! I initially wanted to find better storage for the bed poles and the TV aerial mounts. The bed poles normally rattle around under the seats, and the aerial poles just get stuffed under the rear bench. This is not good, as when I want to watch TV, its normally when I'm set up and probably have loads of stuff on the table. Getting to the two poles is like a solo game of 'Twister'! The small area between the wardrobe and the outer door is one of the few areas in this Puck with free space. An ideal location to stash the poles and fix them whilst in transit. No more faffing trying to dig them out either. I got a bag of PVC coated clips of an auction site. These were a perfect f...

  I've owned a Puck before, in fact it was the first Eriba I had. I then progressed onto a Familia 320GT, and then a Troll 530GT, finally ending up sort of where I started, with another Puck. The Familia and the Troll both had equipment that the Puck lacks. They both had washrooms, and they had heaters. The Familia and the Troll both had transverse beds, the Troll's being fixed. There were a few modifications I'd done to my first Puck which I intend to do to this one. I changed all the internal lights to LED, and also replaced the bulbs with LED on the awning light. I replaced the 'melted' original lens with a smart grey framed one from Hymer. The original lenses on the Puck were notorious for melting if you increased the wattage (or installed the wrong wattage) of the small halogen bulbs. I then fashioned a shorter table from an old coffee table, and installed with a new wall hinge and table leg, meaning that I can still take the enormous original table on trips to...

  This was a significant trip on a few levels. It was the first trip I'd made since the 'lockdown', it was the first trip since downsizing from the Troll, and it was the first time I'd used a Puck on a CL! It was a 3 night trip. I had originally planned 4 nights, but I had ordered a new awning for the Puck and it was being delivered incredibly quickly and a 27kg box is not the sort of parcel you can expect a neighbour to look after. On the final morning, I repeated one of my favourite walks. This is the beach walk on the Carse of Delnies along the shore to the spit of land at Whiteness Head. A foggy walk, but cooler, thankfully, and very quiet. In fact I was probably walking for over 3 hrs, stopping for a ham piece at the Bothy, and only saw one other person in the distance. Some debris and litter at the bothy. First time I've noticed wild roses in a coastal location? It is a great walk, in fact this entire area offers some of the best dog walking I've come acro...

  This is night No.13/2020 living in my caravan. It's the 3rd night at the CL at Geddes House near Nairn. Another very warm day but now getting very clammy with the forecast thundery showers. A couple of light showers earlier, but nothing serious. A lovely night last night with outstanding sunset. After breakfast, we took the short drive to Nairn to walk around Delnies Wood. Been here many times before, it's adjacent to the Nairn C&CC Site just outside the town. The walk passes the campsite, which has been shut for the remainder of 2020. This was the site where I visited in March days before the lockdown. Changed days indeed. From here, headed along the A96 to Inverness to visit the Go Outdoors shop. All I needed was toilet chemicals, as I hadn't brought enough! I had recently finished a book on Maj Gen Hector MacDonald, and I wanted to visit the memorial his friends put up for him near his old school at Mulbuie. This is close to where he was born and raised in Rootfiel...