Time to leave Rock and it wasn’t a bad morning for it – uninspiring in a dull, grey sort of way. It was dry though so a good day for travel. Travel, in this case, was to be to Taunton in Somerset to call in on friends, Barry and Irene, recently having moved down from Chesterfield. We had met Barry and Irene in France a few years ago while we were delayed on our journey by our then recalcitrant Vectra Anglaise. They had suggested a commercial campsite which was a mere 10 minutes walk from their house on the edge of Taunton, so we had booked in for two nights.
The 110 miles or so was blissfully uneventful and the directions to the site from the M5 junction were unusually excellent. We duly arrived at about midday having found the site very easily and checked in. This was very much not our normal kind of site, being all hard standing and somewhat regimented in layout, but it was adequate, convenient to our purpose and the sanitary facilities were very good.
There were what appeared to be a number of long term residents but that impression may have been caused by the most immediately noticeable feature: several obscenely large American-style motor homes with wind-out side extensions – the works. Poor Billy was told to go and site himself between two such monsters and was immediately dwarfed. Siting between several huge American cousins was a little like invading someone else’s established space but the big guys turned out to be mostly harmless, if not actively friendly, and he settled down, The stones of the hard-standing hurt his feet a little but all was well for a short stay.
The campsite was apparently started to support a business (Van Bitz). People stay here to have horribly expensive tracking systems and other accessories fitted to their horribly expensive, horribly large motor homes. Maybe we should just be fitting wheels to houses.
The afternoon was reunion time with Barry and Irene. This involved seeing their house, being introduced to downtown Taunton, drinking their wine (we had very ungraciously finished all ours before leaving Rock and not had time for a shop visit to restock), and being generally well fed.
Well fed and watered, it was time to stagger back and ensure that Billy had not received any improper advances.
Leave a Reply