Eging - Germany
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| Look at these tiny children! |
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Warden house, our new home.
The moment of arrival,
bags still on lawn. |
Fb tells me that we arrived in the UK three years ago today and popped up this photo on the right of these little children on arriving in our house in Holyport. Hard to believe. Lovely welcome sign and gifts from Elizabeth, Tony and family. Thank you EnT for the huge amount you did for us for our arrival, groceries, schools, social, Ellie cleaning, everything. So glad we made the decision to live within walking distance of you, across Holyport Green. Thank you to sister Emma and Mark, Stephanie and Ian, brother Chris and Catherine, Douglas and Anna-Marie and the AP's - Margaret and my Mum, for the huge effort in getting us out of our NZ house. Thank you, you wonderful people you, forever in your debt.
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| Left top of door |
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| Right top of door |
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| The door |
What I didn't own up to last night was that two cracks have appeared either side of the Giantavan door and my eye infection is back. The cracking is of real concern as if the Giantavan structurally fails that is the end of the trip and it is worthless. The panelling is a foam sandwich with dimpled aluminium skin on the outside and a formica like finish on the inside. The centreline of the door is two metres behind the centreline of the wheels with another eighteen hundred millimetres of Giantavan behind the door, with three bikes hanging off the back and thirty five gallons of internal water tank at the back also. All this has to be held up, in tension by the one hundred and eighty millimetres of side panel above the door. Not only would we be stranded with all the stuff and would have to dump it and the caravan should it fail. We are intending to take the Giantavan back to NZ at the end of the trip. The Giantavan is probably worth in the region of £7-8k (paid £7.5k by memory) with all its improvements. We would be lucky to sell it cracked. On getting up this morning, Jacqueline phone was flat and refused to charge and somehow, overnight the inductive cooker that we purchased in France and do pretty much all our cooking on in the awning cried uncle. Felt a bit despondent and yet to repair the boat. Later realised that my trials, tribulations and dumb decisions are grist for the (blog) mill so here we are.
This evening I phoned the free helpline, brother Tony in Holyport as he is a BE mechanical design engineer. Tony and I think that with proper CAD* work a strengthening plate could be fabricated on site by the lackey and riveted /
bonded on. Apparently, when shipbuilding the strengthening around a hole should equal the material removed. I don't think I will add a square metre of two millimetre plate. A similar shape to the light extending out one hundred millimetres either side should hopefully do the trick. The Jerry who designed the thing in the first place failed to account for Kiwi loadings. The Giantavan has bounced thousands of miles of secondary roads in the last year.
Passau was our target for the day and I spent the time prior trying to organise a phone repair. It looks like the awning repair is good. Hardware shops closed today and tomorrow as are supermarkets. Next for the awning is to waterproof it as obviously I couldn't use waterproof fabric as the glue wouldn't have worked.
In Passau Jacqueline and Iris went to the glass Museum which was apparently amazing and I went to the confluence of the Danube, the Inn from the south and the Ilz from the north that is Passau. The Danube and Ilz blue, the Inn grey. While the children played I
contemplated my navel. In my book yesterday,
Jack de Crow sailed past Passau in his Mirror dinghy.
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| Roman |
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| The blue Danube |
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Play ground at the confluence.
Roman spent an hour on this |
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| The grey Inn river |
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| The blue Danube |
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| TbD |
Wandering around town we found a
genuine German shop, closed, selling Cookoo clocks, real ones, not electric, at reasonable prices. I am very tempted by a modern clock, Jacqueline likes the Black Forest clocks, like the AP's that she bought, with her parents, in Geneva, in nineteen fifty four. Luckily the shop was closed
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| St. Pauls in the evening sun |
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| Passau, confluence of the three rivers (stock snap) |
*Cardboard Aided Design - a nod to Project Binky, the best thing on telly
Wandering around town we found a genuine German shop, closed, selling Cookoo clocks, real ones, not electric, at reasonable prices. I am very tempted by a modern clock, Jacqueline likes the Black Forest clocks, like the AP's that she bought, with her parents, in Geneva, in nineteen fifty four. Luckily the shop was closed
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