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MOTORHOMENEWS

~ A personal take by Christopher Macgowan on tourism, travel and motorhomes.

MOTORHOMENEWS

Monthly Archives: September 2011

HOUSE WITH A VIEW!!

27 Tuesday Sep 2011

Posted by chrismacgowan in General

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Christopher Macgowan, Cornwall, motorhome, St Mawes.

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On my motorhome trip to Cornwall last weekend I was rather taken with this house near St Mawes.

Some view!!

Christopher Macgowan
twitter: motorhomenews

40TH ANNIVERSARY DOWN ON THE FARM!!

25 Sunday Sep 2011

Posted by chrismacgowan in Sites

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anniversary, Christopher Macgowan, Cornwall, Merrose Farm, The Caravan Club

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Merrose Farm Caravan Club site in Cornwall celebrated its fortieth anniversary this weekend and the wardens, who keep the site in immaculate condition, took the farming theme to new heights with a display in front of the reception building which impressed us all!!

Christopher Macgowan
twitter: motorhomenews

MERROSE FARM, CORNWALL.

23 Friday Sep 2011

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Christopher Macgowan, Cornwall, Merrose Farm, Portscatho, The Caravan Club

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The Caravan Club’s Merrose Farm site is located just above Portscatho about five miles from St Mawes.

What views!!

Christopher Macgowan
twitter: motorhomenews

SLINFOLD

18 Sunday Sep 2011

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Caravan Club, Christopher Macgowan, Horsham, Slinfold, West Sussex

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This weekend I was lucky enough to be invited to the 40th Anniversary of one of The Caravan Club’s most unusual sites.

Slinfold in West Sussex is home to a small two acre thirty nine pitch site which is run solely by volunteers. It is rightly described as “a gem of a site” and is located at the end of a country lane on the edge of this very pretty village. The volunteers keep the site open from the end of March to the end of October and, as you would expect, they also keep it in immaculate condition. It is a former railways siding and is hugely popular – and no wonder!! (No toilet block, poor TV reception and a maximum outfit length of 8m are minor details as far as the fans of Slinfold are concerned – and this was not my first visit to the site so I count myself as one of them.)

Christopher Macgowan
twitter: motorhomenews

ROOKESBURY PARK

18 Sunday Sep 2011

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Caravan Club, Christopher Macgowan, Fareham, Forest of Bere, Hampshire, Hundred Acres Road, M27, Rookesbury Park

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The Caravan Club’s Rookesbury Park site near Fareham in Hampshire is a gem.

I stayed there this week and it must have one of the most welcoming approaches on the network because as you top the rise at the entrance you see the whole site set out before you in wonderful parkland on the floor of the valley. The former royal Forest of Bere is the setting and it is really handy for Portsmouth and Southampton and indeed has a special area for ferry users arriving out of hours.

It is one of the many sites where you need to follow the directions in the Club’s handbook with scrupulous accuracy. I guess occasionally we all think we know best – but this is not the site to practice your Macho Instinctive Navigation as, be assured, it will end in tears!!

Christopher Macgowan
twitter: motorhomenews

THE DAY THE WORLD STOOD STILL.

11 Sunday Sep 2011

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It seems hard to imagine that today as I complete a fantastic motorhome holiday in continental Europe embracing Austria, Germany Italy and France, it is the tenth anniversary of the horrific events which are now known simply as 9/11.

I was attending a board meeting at the Frankfurt motor show of the ODETTE logistics standards company when I started to get messages on my laptop computer that all was not well. I slipped out of the meeting and my PA advised me of what was happening – initially it was thought a plane had crashed into the World Trade Centre but soon a far more horrific picture emerged. Returning to the meeting a number of my colleagues who have English as a second or third language at first thought this was some weird English sense of humour in very bad taste but within minutes the mobile phones were alight and the board representatives from around all of Europe soon knew exactly what had happened and we just stared at each other in stunned silence.

The Frankfurt show organisers wondered whether they should shut the show and most of the senior USA executives were told to return home or to the USA soonest. One of my sons in law was on a flight to the USA at the time and subsequently spent five days marooned in Canada at an air force base in safe but extremely uncomfortable conditions. I had flown in to Frankfurt Hahn airport with Ryanair and spent that night in a local hotel waiting for my flight out the next day and like the rest of the world I just watched the TV coverage in a sort of outraged silence for most of the night.

A subsequent and abiding memory for me was the often repeated clip of George W watching some children at a school concert and his main man, Andrew Card, going up to him and whispering in his ear what we now know to be the first plane being flown into the WTC. It is not the expression on the President’s face that I particularly remember but the fact that prior to joining the Bush administration Andrew Card was the North American car manufacturers association boss and lobbyist whom I worked with. It remains an unwanted but famous moment in my memory.

So today we can remember where we were but we should – and do – also remember the hundreds of lives which were lost in that atrocity.

I read yesterday that there are three other events where most of use can remember where we were at the time.

My wife Amanda – sadly now my late wife – brought me a cup of tea in bed one Sunday and said that she had been listening to Radio 4 while the kettle boiled and it seemed Diana had been involved in a car crash in Paris and was thought not to have survived. That awful news had us reaching for the television and trying to grasp what seemed to be unbelievable. This young mother, a global icon by then, surely could not be dead?

I worked for British Leyland as a young man and was based in Toronto for a while and was attending a birthday party in Mississauga which had the central feature of Neil Armstrong landing on the moon. We all came in from the garden and sat transfixed around the TV. My friend Louise said she had a nice birthday but frankly we had rather lost interest in her!! Of course the conspiracy theorists all say it took place on a sound stage in Seattle and there was a very tense moment when the studio cat nearly made an unscheduled appearance which certainly would have spoilt things.

And finally, as a teenager at school in Wiltshire – Marlborough has more recently become quite famous! – we were stunned and devastated by the JFK assassination. To us youngsters at the time he looked as if he was making a difference and was someone we could look up to. A role model with a beautiful wife and President of the USA. Such a combination. You should never speak ill of the dead so I will merely remark that time has shown he was perhaps not destined for the greatness we saw through our juvenile eyes and, subsequently, I have developed a healthy disregard for politicians but, as an impressionable teenager, JFK’s assassination was devastating.

So, 9/11; Diana; Neil Armstrong and JFK are the four definites we can remember time and place; certainly I can.

But today it is the scale of the loss of life that I remember and it puts today’s anniversary in a horrible league of its own.

Christopher Macgowan
twitter: motorhomenews

WERTHEIM

11 Sunday Sep 2011

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Christopher Macgowan, stopover, The Caravan Club, Wertheim

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If you are travelling north south through Germany on your way perhaps to Austria, Switzerland or Italy, the A3/E41 may well feature in your route planning. South of Frankfurt near Wurzburg at junction 66 is an ideal overnight stopover.

Camping Wertheim-Bettingen is on the banks of the river Main and is featured in The Caravan Club’s “Caravan Europe 2” 2011 guide on page 358.

Christopher Macgowan
twitter: motorhomenews

POPPI

06 Tuesday Sep 2011

Posted by chrismacgowan in Places

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Arezzo, Christopher Macgowan, motor caravan, motor home, motorhomenews, Poppi, Tuscany

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Poppi, north of Arezzo in Tuscany was charming. It does not even feature in the Lonely Planet guide so is deemed to be off the tourist track and is all the better for that!

Christopher Macgowan
twitter: motorhomenews

More Lake Garda.

04 Sunday Sep 2011

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Christopher Macgowan, Garda

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The knack with Lake Garda is to get to the quiet, less touristic parts. There are some parts which are so busy that it can feel like a major resort and those are the areas to avoid.

Christopher Macgowan
twitter: motorhomenews

LAKE GARDA

04 Sunday Sep 2011

Posted by chrismacgowan in General, Sites

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Christopher Macgowan, Garda

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Recently stayed in an olive grove on the edge of Lake Garda about a kilometre north of Garda itself. It really doesn’t get better than this??

Christopher Macgowan
twitter: motorhomenews

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