Suds in Skegness

It was all going so well until the soap bubbles started coming out of the wardrobe.
"There are bubbles coming out of the wardrobe!"
"No way."
"Yes way."
But more on that later.

We're staying (in our caravan) with the East Midlands Motor Caravan Section of the Camping and Caravanning Club, at their Temporary Holiday Site in Skegness. We fancied something new and realised we had never been to Lincolnshire before. Draw a line exactly east from our home on the Wirral, and you reach Skegness. It's strange that we've never done this before. I had my doubts, though. Skeggy does not sound like the most classy of places to visit. And maybe not, but the countryside round and about is full of interest. Driving over the rolling Lincolnshire Wolds I could feel rest and relaxation seeping into every muscle.
The site itself is excellent. There is even an electric hookup - very rare on a THS - so my fears of having to ration the battery life on my laptop are unfounded.
Linda and Bill, our friendly stewards, hosted a coffee morning on the first day, and this gave us the chance to meet all our fellow campers, most of whom hail from the Leicester area. As this is a Motor Caravan rally, we are one of only two towed 'vans, the rest are motor homes, so we had a chance to quizz the owners of the big units and see just what makes them tick. I've always had my doubts about the motor home option, but I soon discovered where the passion comes from, with tales of perpetual touring, fast set-ups and wild camping across Spain. I almost fancy giving it a go myself. Almost, but not quite. I love my caravan. I love having a fixed base that we can use to explore a region, and Lincolnshire appears to have a lot to offer. Places like Gunby Hall and Gardens, only five miles up the road.

A new National Trust visit is always high on our list, partly because we don't have to pay to get in, but also because they are invariably a delight to visit. This one is no exception. There's an artistic and musical heritage in Gunby Hall, and we had a special treat in the music room, where a pianist was adding layers of atmosphere by playing Mozart sonatas. She was very good, and it was hard to drag ourselves away to see the rest of the house.

The gardens at Gunby are lovely and Sarah was off with her camera. I was abandoned on a bench amongst the roses, to mind the bags. I could have explored, I suppose, but no way was I walking around on my own clutching a pink handbag! Anyway, she soon had her paint box out, so I got my chance to have a look around, then.

So, when we returned to the caravan we were suitably mellow. The holiday was working its magic. Sarah lost the toss and made our tea. I did the dishes, and soon after this, those words were first used: bubbles.
Yes, suds were coming out from under the wardrobe door. I looked inside and realised these bubbles were only the upper ten percent of the iceberg. There were bubbles appearing behind the toilet pipes, too. A knock at the caravan door. "Do you know you've got bubbles coming out from under your caravan?"
OMG!
"Yeah, okay, thanks. I'm onto it. Cheers."
My search pattern narrowed down to the cupboard under the kitchen sink. We stash a lot of stuff under there. I started pulling it all out. All of it was wet, and soapy. Sarah got the torch.
"There you go," she said. She aimed the beam on the waste pipe, that was no longer attached to the bottom of the sink. yeah, maybe we'd stashed too much stuff under there. It answered another question, too. The sink, normally a slow emptier, leaving a residue of seetcorn kernals and bits of pasta behind to be mopped up with kitchen roll, had been emptying efficiently and fast ever since we arrived, sucking everything down, leaving the sink clean and sweetcorn free. Yeah, it had been emptying straight and unimpeded onto the caravan floor. We'd have noticed sooner but for all the stored items, items that soaked up water, or at least up until that super-saturated moment when it would soak no more.
So we started mopping out. We filled the bin with damp things. We carried out the suds in gentle handfulls. Remember that peace and tranquility that I talked about? Yeah, gone.

2015 Caravan Season – The Prologue

So this doesn’t really count. The caravan season hasn’t started, not properly. Then again, we did hitch up the ‘van and tow her for nearly a hundred miles today, but we’re not staying with her. No, it’s that time of the year when she has to go in for her annual service. It’s hard doing all the packing and hitching and towing, and then not getting that first cup of tea in a grassy field by way of a reward.

To ease the blow, we decided to make a day of it, so after leaving our Sally Swift with the gentle folk of Derby Caravans, we did a spot of early season National Trust bagging with a visit to Kedleston Hall. This was a new NT for us, and we had to ask ourselves, why haven’t we been before. Because it's wonderful, and it’s not that far, really.

At this time of the year they are doing the conservation stuff, a little like the thing we are doing with Sally Swift, waking the hall up from a long winter slumber, rubbing her aching joints, prepping her in readiness for the 100k visitors who will trample across her 250 year old carpets for the next nine months or so. In many ways it is more interesting to see the nature and scale of this task than it is to see these old homes fully open and performing.

I have to admit, I struggle with the history. This might seem to be a bit of an odd admission from someone who’s been a member of the National Trust for fifteen plus years, but I will be honest, I find it hard to be moved by time and history and stuff, and I think it is because I just can’t get the time scales into my head. It’s too much. Too many years.

Then I start to wonder about how the hall might have looked back in 1765 when it was new. The marble floors were perfect and unmarked. There would have been a smell of paint and fresh plaster everywhere, a little like going into a Wimpy show-home but factored up a bit. The park would be, I don’t know, bare? Grassy with a few sapling oak trees scattered around, maybe with little cages around them to stop the wildlife nibbling. There are probably piles of building materials scattered around the yard, wooden scaffolding waiting to be collected by the local builders merchant. Everything is clean and new. This kind of imagining helps me some. I usually look at a National Trust home as being an old house where rich people once lived. But today I tried to see it differently, because for some of those rich people, Kedleston was once a modern home; empty bright rooms waiting for the first items of furniture, the first curtains to be hung, and the first ever logs to burn in the grate. Wow.

The domed ceiling above the saloon with its glass oculus 

Had to include this, because if ever I need to describe a very scary alien...