Vulcan XH558 tucked up for the night before Waddington Airshow 2011. Our motorhome is tucked away behind the large display panel to the right.
Richard & Kate are a retired couple who live in the depths of rural Suffolk.
Having always been involved with our community we became involved in helping keep the worlds only flying Vulcan bomber in the air by travelling the country to work as volunteers at airshows. A motorhome was the answer and we spent a large part of the summer going from airfield to airfield and spring and autumn (before and after the airshow season) travelling in France.
Sadly, Vulcan took her last flight in October 2015 so we retired for the second time. The upside of that is that we had more time for touring and could take longer trip here and abroad.
When in France we tend to use aires de camping-car a lot and I have started to put together a collection of dash cam video’s showing the way into some of those aires to assist other motorhomers in finding them.
See our YouTube channel here:- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC10cpU-dMK4oiXI75pINolA
Motorhome Moments 
Hello Richard and Kate, do you happen to know of any RV rental companies that cater/rent to American or foreigners? If you do, I would love to get their name, website/contact info and why you like them?
Hi, haven’t used or got any experience of companies that hire out motorhomes but it might be worth your while to have a look at this motorhome forum:- http://www.motorhomefacts.com/forumname-87-motorhome-hire.html
It is about the biggest and most used M/H forum in the UK with lots of info about all manor of topics which you might find useful.
Richard.
Thanks Richard
Hi Richard & Kate
It has been great once again to share the last 2 weeks with you both at Dunsfold Wings & Wheels and Shoreham airshows. Thank you both very much for your endless supply of “Tea” just at the right time when we were flagging after many hours talking & serving the public at the XH558 Vulcan stand.
Have a great holiday and I will look forward to catching up with your movements in France
Best Regards
Paul
Thanks for your kind comments Paul.
We had a great couple of weekends with a brilliant team of people, thoroughly enjoyable.
I will try to keep the blog updated as we travel but when you are in the middle of nowhere wi-fi can be a problem.
Best of luck and good hunting for your motorhome.
R.
Richard, take a look at…
😉
Excellent!
Loved the Yorkshire blog and the photos bring back great memories. We were at Leyburn last autumn and are back there in September. Fantastic part of the country.
Hi Richard & Kate
Terry & Carole we met in grussian we had the Autotrail motor home and came and parked next to you
Took a trip down to blackpool this evening to see if you was up here at the air show !!!! ???
I know the sea front iwas a bit wild hurricane Bertha is making her mark
Hope your both well
Terry and Carole
Hi Carole and Terry, great to hear from you.
We weren’t at Blackpool last weekend but then neither was our Vulcan. After watching the weather for ages our Chief Pilot cancelled the sortie to Blackpool and Carlisle.
Hope the rest of your French trip went well, ours certainly did. Now starting to think about the next one in September….do we go back to France or try Germany. We will watch the weather apps and decide at the last minute. Richard.
Hello Richard and Kate
I have been reading various motorhome blogs for a couple of years at least but I have only just found yours, how did you slip through the net?
First, I am not jealous at all of the new van, quite happy with our Swift thank you very much, ahem.
Really like your accounts of travels through France, we also like to get across the Channel as often as we can. La Mailleraye Sur Seine is one of our favourite aires too, superb. We are off to Bodensee (Lake Constance) in southern Germany in August. We have 18 nights away which is just about long enough, we don’t like rushing. We did a four and a half month tour of France, Germany, Belgium and Holland in 2012 which was fabulous.
Looking forward to reading more.
Paul (and Lynda)
Hi Paul and Lynda
Thanks for your very kind comments.
One of the joys of motor homing is the lovely people we meet, some face to face but many just ‘on-line’. Some of our ‘on-line’ friends really do seem to be ‘real’ friends even though we haven’t actually met.
Enjoy your trip to Germany and perhaps you might even be tempted to write your own blog.
Richard.
Hi again Richard
Well, as you mention blogs, mine is at http://www.europetourblog.blogspot.com. I don’t tend to mention it much online a) because I only set it up to keep friends informed of our travels and b), its a bit rubbish!
As you mention on your blog, thank goodness for digital cameras. As time goes by I often look back at our photos to remind myself of the happy travels we have had.
Paul
Hope you don’t mind but we have listed your blog on our website x You have so much stuff to share!
I will feel honoured to be listed on your terrific website.
I think your site puts us humble bloggers to shame……well done.
Richard.
Hi Richard.
Greetings from the Emerald Isle. I came to your blog by a circuitous route but I am going to enjoy reading your stories. My route started with an enquiry to Alphatronics in Germany for a code to program a Sky remote control. No joy there, so further searches brought me via Motorcaravanners club, Carthago and to yourself. Delighted to see Television on your “CV” so I’m hoping you’re my man. Our friends have a Carthago, which came complete with the Alphatronics TV. They have a satellite system fitted and can bring their sky card on their travels which gets them our Irish channels, which are not free-to-air. The original remote control works fine for the TV, but for convenience I would like to program the sky rc for them. Do you have a similar set-up or would any of your Carthago driving friends have a code. Happy motoring and every good wish.
Michael Harte.
Hello Michael, thanks for visiting my blog.
Sorry, I can’t be any help with a code for your friends remote.
I have dug out the instructions for my TV to see if there was any info in that but no luck there.
I then went through my Sky box instructions but Alphatronics are not mentioned, nor are they on the Sky interactive help system.
I will put a request on the Carthago UK Facebook page to see if anyone has found a code but I suspect your friends will just have to put up with using two separate remotes.
Best wishes
Richard.
Hi Richard,
Many thanks for going through all that searching. I think I have drawn a blank with the sky code. I have spoken with James at Anchorpoint motorhomes, who are the Irish Carthago agents. He has previously tried and failed, so as you say it’s a case of using two remotes – there are worse problems in the world!,
Safe and happy motorhoming.
Michael.
Hi Richard & Kate
Really enjoying your You Tube entries, and your blog, its great! so please keep it going as we are learning so much.
We have just traded our caravan and have a new Bolero 714SB Lounge on order with the UK layout that Tina likes so much. When our new star ship arrives we will be going on the first Shake Down run to the Highlands & Isles, then Europe here we come! or thats the plan anyway.
Our Dealer at Chelston MH in Somerset has just attained The Carthago Franchise, so you never know, if having dipped our toes in MH touring, and get the bug, then our next MH may well be a German one,if we can just get our head around the layouts that is.
We are thinking about setting up our own blog, just looking into doing through wordpress, not sure about who to buy domain through as yet, early days on the research. Really impressed with your website though & jealous of how much you can get away each year, but all the best to you both as we all know life is too short.
We are on motorhome fun listed as ” Tina L” , hope we can catch up with you at one of the airshows.(we are not far from Dunsfold)..such a shame about The Vulcan, also Concorde, cant believe we will never see one flying again over our house here in Camberley, Surrey.
Happy touring and best wishes to you both, will keep you posted on any progress.
Les & Tina
Hi Les and Tina.
Sorry about the long delay in replying to your kind comments but the mañana effect still seems to be taking over and I haven’t done anything to the blog or YouTube for ages.
Best of luck with your new motorhome, I hope you have many enjoyable trips in her.
It took us a while to get our heads around the continental style of layouts as we also had a caravan for years but now quite like the extra convenience of not having to mess about with separate tables.
Richard.
Hello Richard
Have been diving in and out of your chapters, delighted at seeing many of the spots which we have enjoyed over the years. But mostly I am impressed by the quality of your photos – not just the artistic presentation, but the crispness and detail. I would love to know what equipment you use – if it’s not a professional secret . Thanks.
You are very kind with your comments, thank you very much.
There are no professional secrets about the equipment used and the kit is not as complex as you might think. For some time I used a Nikon SLR but for the last couple of years almost all of the photos have been taken on my iPhone. The phone is always in my pocket so the camera bag is usually left behind.
Thanks for that . I’ll ditch my Canon SLR, which always seems to produce dull flat results, and get the iPhone out – if I can find where I put it ! My wife’s old Panasonic Lumix compact churns out consistently bright results, putting me to shame. Safe and happy travels – especially in the mountains.
Hi Richard,
Following on from the praise other people have made about your photos I am also impressed with your videos showing the different aires you have visited. I assume the camera you use is a dash cam but could I ask you what software package do you use to add text to your videos.
Thanks, Doug Bailey.
Hi Doug. So glad you like my amateur efforts on YouTube.
I have been using a BlackVue dash cam until recently when it started to have brain fade. Now have a NextBase,
but haven’t used it for videos yet.
Don’t use anything special or expensive for editing just iMovie, an excellent part of the Mac system.
Richard.
Hi Richard, Thank you for your reply. The reason I asked was that my son bought me a Motorola dash cam for Christmas and I would like to use it just as you have, to record scenes on our trips in Europe.
My pc runs on Windows 10 and it has a photo app where you can add music and text to a video but I haven’t tried it yet but I think it is a bit basic.
I have enjoyed reading your logs and I look forward to more in the future.
Thanks again.
Doug.