Zippyrella

Well Hi...............and great to see everything's working. I'm just back from a few days hols which we spent in our recently acquired, new to us, campervan, which shall be referred to in all other posts as Zippyrella. We missed our Babe, that was our previous van, so much that given enough temptation, we gave in, and brought Zippyrella home to her new place the country. She is actually a Lancashire lass and had never been up to our neck of the woods, Aberdeenshire, before she found herself installed unaccustomedly in a very muddy drive right next to the well. She has settled in well and does not even blink twice now at the band of four (cockerels) as they stride past her looking as if they own the place.

Ever since we bought out very first car, a Renault six, which was frequently pushed up and down the road to get it started, we have given our cars a name. The Renault was of course Andre, our last car, the Volvo; more commonly known as Victor, broke our hearts when, having sat, broken down and dejected in the drive for about a year, because we couldn't bear to part with him, finally had to be towed off to the scrappie by Babe. This was actually because he had grown an all-enveloping skin of green mould on his upholstery to add to his clapped-outness. The scappie only took him due to the relatuively good state of Victor's tyres. So, when Babe could no longer make it up our track, two young mechanics took her off our hands and were off round Europe. A more fitting end for a complete babe.

So Zippyrella steps into the long line of vehicles and has-beens, and we love her already. Unflinching she took us up some of the steepest roads on the West Coast, on up to the very north coast to Durness and back home to Sunnyside. The scenery was astounding, the weather hit a high of 11C enough to strip off at a lochside and paddle, but not risk a heart attack by swimming. Babe would have loved this trip, but fickle as we are we now have Zippy.