Today, I said goodbye to a car of which I really was quite fond of. Yes, today was the day of goodbye Honda.

Preparing for my last drive of the Prelude.

In an ideal world, I would be keeping it. Firm suspension aside, I’m a huge fan of how this car drives. The only problem was that it was hard to justify when the XM is capable of much more – including towing. Then there’s the 2CV Project, and the Dyane (which is still here) and really, this was a classic case of ‘too many cars.’ A feeling very familiar to many of us.

It wasn’t a particularly easy car to sell. Even at just £500, it really struggled to to fire up the imagination of the car buying public. Which is silly. They’re denying themselves a great car. Like the Volvo, I ended up resorting to a private raffle on a certain car forum. Even then, selling enough tickets to get my money back was a challenge, and the first winner decided he didn’t want it anyway! Is this the least desirable car I’ve ever owned?! Given some of the dreadful heaps I’ve had on my fleet, that really is quite bad.

The second winner came to collect today, and seemed very happy with it. Especially the boot full of bonus items, that included two model cars, lots of magazines and a cuddly toy. Not that the collection was entirely without drama…

You see, I’d left the Prelude with not very much fuel in it. I’ve not been using it much as I thought I’d sold it, only to find I in fact hadn’t. That’s ok. There’s a petrol station four miles away. Only when I got there, the pumps were broken. Bother. I now either had to drive ten miles in the wrong direction, or 18 miles in the correct direction. The fuel level was low enough for me to have real range anxiety at this point.

Bank Holiday traffic came to the rescue to a certain extent, as the miserable 40mph we ended up doing along the main road was a major boost to economy. I was tickling the throttle pedal like someone testing a sheet of ice for strength. Nervously, and with as little pressure as possible.

Thankfully, I made it. With superb timing too, as when I left this petrol station, cars were queuing down the road! My timing paid off, as I managed to arrive at the train station to collect the winner very soon after he got off the train.

I couldn’t resist one last drive home, so I hope the winner didn’t mind that. Paperwork was signed, tax was paid for and before I could summon up too much regret, the car was away.

And now, we must say goodbye…

Rob, the new owner, seems very pleased with it, and is currently driving it to London. I hope the traffic gods have been kind. It must go down as one of the better cars I’ve ever bought. Very typical that I should have sold it then!

We’re now in the unusual position of having space on the driveway. Very novel! Though, of course, it won’t last…

This week has been a pretty bad one on the roads of mid-Wales. In one incident on Friday, four people were killed in a two-car collision. Hours earlier, an elderly lady was killed in another incident in the same county. Today, there has been another collision serious enough to close the road just a few miles from our house – no news on casualties yet. Looks like it was around the area where five family members were killed in a collision not all that long ago.

Welsh roads can be good fun, but danger can be lurking around every corner…

It’s very easy to get blasé about the dangers of cars. We’re told that cars are safer than ever, and modern cars really are very good at masking the speed with which you are travelling. 60mph just does not feel scarily brisk. Try doing 60mph in an Austin Seven, or on a pushbike downhill, and you realise that 60mph really is pretty bloody fast.

Also, those of us who like to drive quickly can get frustrated by slow moving traffic, which means it’s far too easy to take risks. You end up judging an overtake not on the evidence of your own eyes, but with a dose of risk involved. “The road will probably stay clear, so I’ll be ok.”

I know this, because I’ve done it. Once, I almost paid the price for it too. We’re only on about a couple of years ago, when an overtake I’d attempted in my Rover 416SLi went horribly wrong. My expectation of the vehicle was entirely unrelated to the reality, and it just didn’t accelerate as quickly as I’d expected, which left me exposed to danger for far too long. The flashing lights of the van rapidly approaching me suggested he agreed with this diagnosis. I can’t blame him for being pissed off. I would have been. I gave myself a dressing down and it’s telling that the experience still looms large in my mind.

Yet I’ve seen people tackle completely ludicrous overtakes, in entirely the wrong situation. They get away with it due to nothing more than luck. The problem with luck is that it can run out, and you’ll be taking someone else’s lives with you when it does.

Not that all the accidents on our roads are necessarily caused by overtaking. That’s an assumption due to the stupid behaviour I have witnessed. It only takes a moment’s inattention from even a very competent driver and all hell can break loose. A message arrives on the phone (distracting even if you don’t read it, which obviously you shouldn’t), or the CD needs changing, or noisy children interrupt your concentration. I’m sure we’ve all been there, and had to make a hasty correction as the wheels clip a rumble strip or thump the cats eyes.

It’s especially easy to get distracted when you’re in mid-Wales too. The scenery here is beautiful. Here’s the thing though, you can always pull over for a better view of it.

It really does worry me, because roads can very quickly get labelled as ‘unsafe.’ The A44 attracts this comment all of the time. The road is NOT unsafe. Thousands of people manage to drive along it every day without having an accident. Inattention is unsafe. It’s a failure to read the road and conditions that will cause the collision, not the road itself.

At the rate we’re going, the authorities may feel compelled to take action. Already, one section has been made 30mph, though folk seem pretty keen on ignoring that. I got overtaken through that section the other day, even though I may have been doing slightly more than 30 myself (not very much more I’ll concede). But that’s what can happen, which immediately makes the road less enjoyable to drive.

It’s entirely possible to drive this road at no more than the legal speed limit and have a very jolly time, but it does require a lot of concentration and consideration for other road users. If there’s a stream of traffic,  then you have to accept that you’ll be travelling more slowly. That’s ok. There’s always another day. Unless you take ridiculous risks, in which case that might not be true.

It really has dawned on me lately that I have a severe dislike of camping. I think because of the sleep aspect. It rarely seems to go well.

That’s not to say every camping experience I’ve ever had has been bad, I’ve had some truly magnificent experiences – most often in my tiny Eurohike two-man tent. Amazingly, this little thing first saw use at Glastonbury in 1999, and has since kept me cosy during snowy nights in Scotland, as well as on foreign jaunts to France and plenty of other places in between. For a quick night’s kip somewhere, it’s still ideal.

Last year’s experiment with a CombiCamp trailer tent was interesting. It was certainly delightfully easy to erect and pack away, which is a large part of the appeal after years of tent wrestling. It was never entirely comfortable though, and wasn’t entirely capable of keeping the weather outside – though it didn’t help that the first time we slept in it ended up being in quite a storm! It at least proved that it wouldn’t blow away…

Rachel found it good because, unlike me, she has curves and doesn’t find it comfy sleeping on a flat surface. We’ve tried all manner of airbeds and self-inflating mats, and the conclusion is that they’re rubbish. I can just about get by on a self-inflating mat, but airbeds just frustrate me.

There’s a lot to be said for a bed that isn’t on the floor too. On the downside, the CombiCamp was quite elderly and not in the best of shape. I thought it best to sell while there was still something to sell.

Now we’re approaching another season, and tents are not looking like the answer. Especially while we’ve got the luxury of a rather decent tow car! So, while the Dyane is up for sale and the 2CV is undergoing a rebuild, what better time to get a proper caravan?

Naturally, my budget is tiny. It always is. Can you get a decent caravan for a couple of hundred quid? Well, we don’t know yet. We’ll find out on Tuesday. You see, we have won one on Ebay for £222. It looks like this:

Our new caravan, brochure style.

Or rather, it did look like that when it was constructed. In 1981. It’s a bit scruffier now, but the description is encouraging. It even has new tyres. It’s up in North Wales/Cheshire and I’m looking forward to discovering just what our feeble budget has bought us.

I’ve not done full-size caravanning before, so this’ll be an interesting experience. I have owned a caravan before though.

Puck ownership not without flaws.

That was an Eriba Puck that I once foolishly tried towing with my 2CV around the Peak District. It wasn’t much fun and was only the once. I did try a second time, but the 2CV outright refused and blew a tyre. We found the Puck horribly cramped too, so dragging a caravan to the site was painful, and it wasn’t exactly joyous when we got there. It wasn’t around for long.

Hopefully the XM will do a rather better job. With a maximum towing weight of 1500kgs, it really should do. It even has that torque stuff that’s so lacking from a 2CV’s repertoire. Whether the caravan feels worth it by the time we get to an event, who knows. Not that I can get too attached to it really. Hopefully at some point, the 2CV will be ready to ride again. And there’s no way she’s towing the new caravan. It weighs more than she does…

The mighty Perodua Nippa (née Kancil) has been on the fleet for a full year now and, true to its name, it has become the default choice for nipping about the place. It has covered one long distance trip with Rachel aboard – to Leicestershire and Northamptonshire – but that’s very much a rarity. It explains why it has covered only 2500 miles between tests.

It sounds like it’s barely worth having, but remember that it cost only £300 to buy, does 55mpg and cost £80 (including test) for the MOT last year. I’ve since spent £100 on a full set of winter tyres for it, and gave it a service (the engine takes about 2.5 litres of oil!). This is cheap motoring. Oh. There was one problem. A wiper box seized up and I had to dismantle the mechanism and lube it up.

Still, I was a bit nervous for the MOT, especially as the tester told me only one out of five had passed so far that day. I needn’t have worried though. The only failure point was wiper blades – they had begun to tear very slightly at their edges. So slightly I hadn’t noticed, and I tend to be fussy about wipers!

Nervous times, though only 2500 miles since the previous test.

Including blades, that meant an MOT bill of £66.60. This is still very cheap motoring! Getting the Nippa up on the ramp did allow me to inspect the underside, and I’m going to have to keep an eye on things like the sills. I can see bits of surface rot starting to bite their way in. I need to get a fresh batch of rust converter. Corrosion remains the biggest danger for this car and at this rate, there’s a genuine worry about whether it’ll ever reach 40,000 miles! How utterly ridiculous.

Another thing that is ridiculous is the fuel gauge. It was hovering very slightly above empty at the start of the test, and nudging slightly below empty at times on the way home. Panicking slightly, I went at put 21.5 litres of fuel in – the most I’ve ever managed in this car. Thing is though, online spec checkers suggest it should have a 32 litre tank! So, is the gauge hopeless or are the specs wrong? Not sure I fancy finding out to be honest. It’s still stupidly economical. I think it must definitely go down as one of my better buys, despite how much people laugh at me about it!

I’ve finally had to admit defeat and buy a new digital camera. Good job the Prelude has been sold then!

My cameras have a very tough life. I’ve currently got two of them – a Canon Powershot SX10IS bought in 2009 and a Canon 1000D DSLR bought in 2011. Both have contributed heavily to the 60,423 photos that currently make up my photo library. Both are very tired. The zoom on the SX10IS clunks badly as it goes in and out, while the 1000D is starting to have focus issues, and is generally suffering from bouncing around in my backpack…

I’ve made the decision to get another superzoom camera, like the SX10. That’s a full-sized bridge camera, with a huge lens and clever fold-out screen. The Panasonic Lumix DMC TZ70 (gosh, these names are so catchy!) I’ve purchased is much smaller, yet has 10x more zoom! I’m looking forward to discovering how such a tiny camera can pack 30x zoom ability.

I’ve already discovered that a full DSLR is not necessary to get good photos. Witness this:

That was taken with my old S3 IS Powershot at Goodwood Revival in 2008. Having the ability to zoom massively without changing lens is a real boon for my ‘shoot anything, anywhere’ approach to car meets. The DSLR I own now has often proved to be a pain. More bits to carry around, and you often find yourself with the wrong lens fitted at the wrong time. I’m not a pro snapper.

The biggest challenge for the new camera will be getting good photos when light conditions are not perfect. That’s perhaps the biggest different between my phone and my DSLR. I’ve actually had photos printed in several magazines that were taken on my phone. In the right conditions, you’d never know.

But, when it’s a bit gloomy, a nice big lens can give much better definition to a shot.

DSLR delivers better definition. More depth somehow.

The above was taken on my DSLR and the colours just had more depth than a similar shot taken on my phone. A good lens is still worth every penny. Look closely though, and you may see a slight lack of sharpness. That’s been the problem with this DSLR of late. Clarity. I do look forward to seeing how the new camera compares though.

Another benefit of the new camera is that it can film in video too, to 1980×1280 high def resolution, with stereo sound. My poor phone has been doing video duty for a year now, but is starting to prove problematic. It will be interesting to see how the Lumix does by comparison. I’m hoping its light enough for me to use existing in-car mounts. In the early days of video, I used a huge three-sucker mount with my SX10 attached to it. Far too heavy, and it suffered terribly from wobble.

Anyway, you can look forward to trying to see the difference. I’ll certainly have fun getting to grips with it.