We spent a week in the Isle of Man lockdown packing up the house so we could leave the island on the Sunday evening Steam Packet ferry.
Thankfully we have some very good friends who are arranging to remove the piles of stuff we have been unable to take to the charity shops and tip, due to the lockdown – thanks again you know who you are!
Given that the ferry doesn’t get in to Heysham until 23:45, we planned to stay in a Premier Inn in Lancaster, which we are able to do under the current UK Covid restrictions as we are moving home.
The plan was then driving to Rugby to the Narrowboat!
Plans Change! (recently it appears all plans change!) Our Ferry crossing was cancelled as the Steam Packet had an issue with staff self-isolating and they were running a reduced service, so we then booked onto the 8:45am Ferry on Sunday,
On the Friday, after loading 75% of our stuff in our van, we drove it to Port Erin and it lost power a couple of times ?? thinking it might be us not using the gears correctly, we took it out again just after 5pm and it lost all power, only managing about 15/20 mph. We rang the garage where we bought it (Phil Shaw) who told us he used Bailey’s garage for all his mechanical work, so we rang Bailey’s, after a couple of calls , we were told someone would be in the workshop Saturday morning at 10am if we could get the van there. As we were heading to Douglas anyway, we took the van straight there. Garage all in darkness and locked up L, however one of the team appeared asking if we were looking for them, he opened up again, connected the diagnostics to the van there and then !! …. sadly not able to fix it, but provided a courtesy car and said they would look again at the the van first thing in the morning, as it is only 2 years old this may involve a trip to Ocean Ford (it still has a Ford warranty) ! 6pm on a Friday in the middle of a pandemic lock down – stunning service !!
Rolling on to Saturday morning, the garage rang back to say a fuel injector was not working, and given the van is still under a ford warranty, it needed to go to Ocean Ford to be fixed! got to Ocean Ford at 10am, who managed to fix it by 11: 45am, So we were still good to go!
After an early start on the Sunday, a bit of a shock to the system after a video dinner party with friends on the Saturday evening, we had a smooth crossing to Heysham and an uneventful drive to Rugby.
Premier Inn at Rugby North Newbold – friendly staff and comfy bed!
Monday 15th March – Picked up “Life in Slow Motion” at 2pm after the engineer replaced the fridge!
Spend two days unpacking – what fun!
Up to Tuesday 16 March 2021 ….. to be continued.
Travurple 