Shire Horse Show

Bertie is parked up in a field beside the Staffordshire County Showground whilst we attend the National Shire Horse Show. Amazing event if you like BIG horses.

Bertie has a exciting day yesterday. When we left home we went to the Beccles Weighbridge to check Bertie’s weight – not good 🙁 – both axles were below the limit but his overall weight was much too close to the limit and we are going to need to do something about that.

It was probably our longest drive in a single day yesterday – 300kms of mainly busy dual carraigeway (A14 and A5). Whilst that went well and Bertie behaved perfectly we both agreed that is not what we want to do in Bertie and a couple of hours a day is plenty. In future we will spread long trips over several days.

So after a long day the last thing we wanted at 7:30pm just as we were tucking in to our spaghetti bolognais tim-style was for the battery warning light to come on warning us that Bertie was right out of power!!! 6 hours driving and loads of sunshine on the solar panel should have given us loads of power. We had no choice but to power up the engine and run that for half an hour whilst we finished our supper. Fortunately our neighbours were out and no one moaned. That put enough power back in the battery to last the night with only the bare essentials and no heating. Wow that was cold with the indoor temperature down to 5c by morning.

This morning we headed off for a friendly boatyard at Stone where our shared narrowboat has its winter work done but as we approached Stone on the A51 we saw G&P Campervans who build panel van conversions. They were brilliant and fitted a new battery at once – they had one just like ours all ready to be installed in a new van and they agreed to order a new one for their van and it install the one they had in our van. All systems go once more and I am back at work dealing with emails and updating the blog.

Went in to the Show for the early events and watched Shire horses doing dressage. Now dressage is all about precise delicate movements around a fixed court and the idea of these huge beasts walking, trotting and cantering such a precise route had me intrigued. They did it superbly! Not impressed by the venue – cold and uncomfortable.

More horsey matters and some piccies tomorrow

12th Night on Bertie