BMWLand

So, the long awaited and almost saga-like beginning to the ownership of the latest Spuff Adventure Wagon!

As you will remember from the abortive process involved in acquiring what was supposed to be our next family motorhome - a used 2020 Bürstner Argos 747-2 - back in January this year and the sale of my previous camper van - a 2023 Knaus BoxDrive 600XL - which I owned from new, there were lots of moving parts to get to the situation we have done today.

And what is today? Well, it’s the point in time where I’ve settled the full invoice amount for our brand new MY25 Dethleff’s XL Family A7872-2, six belt, six berth motorhome and we’re over the moon. With the invoice settled, insurance paid and Tracker subscription paid, the only thing left to do is to collect next Saturday 8th March from the dealership, Erwin Hymer Centre - Travelworld up near Stafford.

This will be my sixth...

The good lady Mrs W and myself spent a few hours at the Cheltenham branch this morning, thought I'd drop a review on here. The dealership is MASSIVE. It includes BMW, Mini and bikes, so covers a huge site. The salesman that we met told us it was the second largest in the country, Sheffield has a larger dealership.
Lovely place to spend some time, really friendly staff, and the car collection is incredible. There are many M cars (another thread on that one....) as well as more usual stuff, but there is also a pretty extensive collection of classic BMWs.
The site is on three levels, ground/basement is the workshop, first is the main sales area and then there is a 2nd floor which houses many of the classic cars. When I say classic, I mean older gen cars. We saw:
Original 1960s Mini Cooper
1974 3.0CSL, stunning car in silver
Two Z8s, these just get better looking by the year
An F82 GTS (had the wrong wheels on)
An individual E92 M3
An E60 M5, immaculate in every respect
An E30 325i...

Just returned from a few days up the The Lakes with my two sons. We decided it would be great to revisit Little Langdale as two of us did this time last year.
Dad (me) treated us to the hotel, meals etc, two nights at The Three Shires, same place I stayed last year when I met my youngest for a walk.
My eldest got the train up to my house on Saturday, horrendous journey as there was a points failure outside Milton Keynes, took him 8+ hours to get to us from Euston. My youngest drove up from Devon in his (my old) Alfa on Saturday as well, evening meal with the four of us. We set out at 10am Sunday morning, very easy drive up the M6, then off at the Kendal junction, threaded our way up to Windermere and then across to Ambleside, some traffic there due to a very unfortunately placed set of roadworks. The road from Ambleside to Little Langdale is a proper B road, threading between stone walls, ditches, cottages etc, lots of slow corners and passing points.
Parked up at the hotel,...