Rosedale Abbey – April 2017

I’d booked a half day at work and actually got home earlier than I’d told Sue that morning. That’s unheard of – must be something to do with winding down ready in preparation for retirement.

This will be the first trip this year, We drain the MoHo of all water for the winter so on the Thursday night before we set off, I needed to clean out the waste system (using Milton) and I also topped up the toilet flush tank. It was then that I found out that the flush does not work. Not sure how that’s happened – it was working fine last trip. Not the biggest problem in the world because we can flush with some water out of the tap.

We got away at 15:00 ish as planned (but not usually achieved) and drove over the Humber Bridge, round Hull and Beverley etc. It’s a route I used to take once a year taking my mum and her mates to Goathland. A lot of traffic tonight – not totally surprising given that it was drive home time on Friday night.

At one point on the journey, we got stuck for quite a while behind a tractor and trailer. The trailer was a Bailey – not the same firm as the MoHo manufacturer. I did know about Bailey trailers because there’s one on the farm on which we live.

We followed the route suggested by the Satnav and that took us over the North Yorkshire moors. It also took us on a road that ended up in a very steep and spectacular downhill approach to the site. We saw signs on the next day that that route was not suitable for caravans and lorries. Another black mark for the dedicated caravan/motorhome satnav.

Once we’d checked in and were parked up, we set up the satellite dish which locked on but the Sky box reported that it was a weak signal. This caused some panic because it was approaching Emmerdale time. Panic over when I put up the terrestrial ariel and the signal was ok on that. A nice tea of sausage and rice – plus garlic mushrooms – soon calmed Dud down.

.Ellie and I had a good late night walk exploring the next door commercial campsite – which was virtually deserted.

We woke up on the Saturday to lovely weather. Ellie and I had a good walk through the village and on the various walks surrounding the village. We went through a field where there were sheep. We currently have sheep in the field opposite Parkside but here, Ellie was in the same field. She got very excited. I’ve no idea what she would do if I let her off the lead. Probably just chase them and play with them – not sure the sheep would see it the same way, though.

After lunch, we all went out again for a similar walk. Rosedale Abbey no longer has an actual abbey but it’s a pleasant village. No phone or 3G signal though – I don’t know how those monks managed without that.

The village has a few tourist trap cafés and one of them had what looked like a nice cake shop attached so we bought some chocolate cake – well, you it would have been rude not to, wouldn’t it?

It is early April but the weather was that good that I wish I’d taken some shorts. Lesson learned there – keep some shorts and white socks in the MoHo.

We got back to the MoHo and spent some time sat outside in the sun. I got the Sky box tuned in to Sky Sports News so I could keep up with the town score. We were playing away at Blackpool and ended up winning 1-3 – good result. Oh, and we had the chocolate cake with a cup of tea – which was another good result.

	Distance	Average mpg	Average mph	Time
Day	139.3	26.5	37	3hr 43min
Total	223.8	25.7	34	6hr 31min

On our morning walk, I decided to head back up the road that we had come in on. It was a struggle walking up it because it was so steep but it was worth it because of the views that we got over this valley in between the hills.

We set off for home and took the sensible road from the site towards Pickering – but even that was a bit narrow in places. Narrow enough at one point for the white van man coming in the opposite direction to hit our off-side mirror – as you can see in the video. My recollection at the time was that I was as far over to the left as I could be and that is supported by the video. In spite of the fact that he was driving far too fast, the van was not in a dangerous position but what I am convinced happened is that he touched his nearside kerb which bounced him back towards us.

Neither of us stopped. I was sure that all he had done was hit the mirror and it had folded in – which it is designed to do – so why would would you stop? I opened the window and pushed the mirror back out again so that we could carry on until we could park up and check out the damage.

So we drove back into Pickering and I suggested to Dud that we head to the car park at the Hole of Horcum to stop for breakfast. Unfortunately, when we got to the car park, there were no MoHo suitable spaces so we decided to head toward Goathland and find another spot.

When we got near to the turn off for Goathland, we spotted what appeared to be a likely spot so we pulled in there. What a mistake! There wasn’t enough room for us to park but what was worse was there wasn’t enough room for us to turn round so we had to reverse back on to the road. Luckily we got to the road at the same time as considerate Mondeo driver who flashed us to let us out back on the road. Shame about the impatient Alfa driver who overtook the queue and shot past us.

I would have put the dash cam footage in the video but, unfortunately, the camera was showing more sky than land. We must have knocked it at some point so the footage was not worth showing.

We headed towards Goathland and pulled off the main road and found a parking spot and had some breakfast. I took Ellie for a walk on the moors. It kept me busy stopping her eating either sheep or rabbit shit but I think I managed it. I tried to get some video of the motorhome parked up but there was not a lot of movement so we’ve had to settle for stills.

In an example of bad timing, I could hear a white noise type of noise in the background. It was a while before I realised that it was a steam train on the Grosmont to Pickering line. Unfortunately, I was on the wrong side of the road to get a decent video so that was an opportunity missed.

We headed towards home and drove through Norton/Malton. As we were heading out of there towards Driffield, some cars were flashing and some drivers waving. I assumed that meant that there was a problem and after a short distance, we could see the police were blocking the road – presumably because of an accident. It’s biker country and I always assume that means biker down.

We turned round and went back to the A64 and headed towards York and then took the Selby road. There were lots of bikers about and as we drove past a garage, we saw a biker dressed up in a white rabbit costume getting on to his Kawasaki. He overtook us after a few miles and then we caught up with him again in Selby – as per the video. Most amusing.

We went over what used to be the Selby toll bridge. We used to go over that when driving up to Middlesborough (where Dud was living when I first met her). The toll was something ridiculously cheap like 5p but the local residents had a pass that they held up in the windscreen so one night when we had a car full, I thought it would be a laugh to hold up a cigarette packet and just drive through. I still remember the image in my rear view mirror of the bloke waving at us because he wasn’t fooled. A few weeks later we read something in the paper about people getting fined something like £50 for dodging the 5p toll like we did – but he couldn’t have got our number because we heard nothing.

We then got back onto the M18 and M180 and had an uneventful rest of the trip. A good weekend.