Well I finally did it... I went and bought myself a white van. She's got a few knocks but overall, for her age, she seems quite fit. The cab is surprisingly tidy for an oldie. The seats don't show much sign of wear and more importantly she goes - fnah fnah. I'll not be entering her in any races - unless I want to collect the wooden spoon. She's got almost no power, climbs hills at a steady pace - dead slow but cruises along on the motorway just fine. None of that is a surprise. I've read the reviews, seen the specs and knew what I was getting. If I had more to spend I would have gone Dispatch/Expert/Scudo but I just wasn't able to find one of those cheap enough that wasn't, well, totally hammered.
So in the end the vanette it was and with only 84k on the clock she should last me a while. The only surprise to all of that - and it was a nice surprise - was that the engine noise wasn't as loud as I was expecting from the reviews. Yeah, it was loud but not horrendous like some of the reviews had led me to believe. Just goes to show - but I'm not sure what.
So back to the start of the day. I was up at the normal time, having managed to scrounge a lift into Gloucester by my very kind neighbour. Then it was on the chu-chu non-stop to Burton-on-Trent - apart from the many stops along the way at those long, flat concretey things with people standing, waiting - that would be train stations then. Anyway, it was a good journey and only got in a few minutes late.
Then it was out with the maps, on with the running shoes - already had those on but I needed something to write - and started the clock. The climb out of BoT was steady up for about a mile and a half then it basically undulated pretty much all the way to Ashby-De-La-Zouch - or Ashby-DLZ, as I like to call it - and where did it get such a pimped up name from anyway?
Finally an hour twenty later I rolled up to the van centre, ten and a half miles from whence I had started the run. Met the man. Took her - that's the van not me calling the van man a 'her' - for a spin and did the deal. The drive home, some 95 miles, was pretty good. Flowing traffic all the way, a steady 55-60 for me...
Today's Route all the way up in sunny Burton-on-Trent ('cept it weren't sunny):-
So in the end the vanette it was and with only 84k on the clock she should last me a while. The only surprise to all of that - and it was a nice surprise - was that the engine noise wasn't as loud as I was expecting from the reviews. Yeah, it was loud but not horrendous like some of the reviews had led me to believe. Just goes to show - but I'm not sure what.
So back to the start of the day. I was up at the normal time, having managed to scrounge a lift into Gloucester by my very kind neighbour. Then it was on the chu-chu non-stop to Burton-on-Trent - apart from the many stops along the way at those long, flat concretey things with people standing, waiting - that would be train stations then. Anyway, it was a good journey and only got in a few minutes late.
Then it was out with the maps, on with the running shoes - already had those on but I needed something to write - and started the clock. The climb out of BoT was steady up for about a mile and a half then it basically undulated pretty much all the way to Ashby-De-La-Zouch - or Ashby-DLZ, as I like to call it - and where did it get such a pimped up name from anyway?
Finally an hour twenty later I rolled up to the van centre, ten and a half miles from whence I had started the run. Met the man. Took her - that's the van not me calling the van man a 'her' - for a spin and did the deal. The drive home, some 95 miles, was pretty good. Flowing traffic all the way, a steady 55-60 for me...
Today's Route all the way up in sunny Burton-on-Trent ('cept it weren't sunny):-
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