For our next weekend trip, we chose to head North and try the well acclaimed Caravan Club site of River Breamish.
The site is easily accessed from the A1 and then onto the A697. A short road from the A697 takes you to the site entrance. We arrived around 12:30pm much to our surprise to find the reception closed until 1:00pm! Arrivals were from 12:00pm according to the club site, so we decided to head into the site and find our pitch. This we duly did and chose pitch #40, one of a group of pitches which are South facing. Once we had set up we went back to reception and reported our presence. A first for us was the fact that the toilet block was key less and code less entry, very nice!
The pitches are of usual club standards, nicely spaced and positioned. Service points adequately placed, although we noted one which was closed, so a bit of extra effort with the Aquaroll for that section of the site! The toilet block is worthy of note. Probably one of the best facilities we’ve ever seen during our touring days (ok, this is still only our second year – but I bet it will take some beating!). The block is like a small complex, with all the various parts accessed from one central lobby, so to speak. Full heated as well, bliss! Needless to say they were always clean and well kept, full marks here River Breamish.
Eager to don our walking boots, we decided to head off to Powburn, a walk of around 2 miles round trip which should get the appetite going for tea! The location of River Breamish is set in the remote farmlands of Northumberland, so lots of good country lanes and public footpaths to trample through! Powburn itself doesn’t have much, although there is a pub there called ‘The Plough’, where a good Sunday lunch can be had – something we may sample! There is a garage with a small shop which provides many of the basic necessities if required. Further up there is an antiques store, which is worth a little nosy!
Back on site, we noted that a fish & chip van visited the site on Saturday’s – that was that settled, tea would be coming from this travelling food machine! Time for a bit of Saturday night TV – aerial up and let’s see what kind of signal we can get. As it turns out, some channels are good whilst others are poor. Therefore I took the decision that the satellite dish would have to be deployed!
Now this has been rehearsed in the garden, I was quietly confident I could set this system up within 30mins and be enjoying Harry Hill, no wait that has finished, I mean ‘The Voice’, ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ & NCIS. First, the tripod was deployed and pegged down. Next, the dish was secured to the stand and angled as per the garden trial! Next the Humax was connected to the TV and the associated wiring completed. Next the Sat-Finder was linked between the dish and the caravan’s connection point. A quick guess and I had latched onto a signal. Back inside the channels discovered weren’t Astra 28.2 – so off to dishpointer.com and my trusty compass!
But wait, an internet connection is required. So a little diversion to set the laptop up. Out came the trusty 3 MIFI, switched on and – no signal! Indeed there is no signal here for T-Mobile either. So the only other option was to connect to the CC site’s internet connection. This I duly did and was expecting to be able to pay online and gain access straight away. But no, I needed a prepaid card from reception. Was reception open? I quickly made haste and discovered it was, to my relief! The CC site’s internet comes via way of pre paid cards of various denominations which are used as log-in session times only and last for 6 months, not a bad system in my books. So I bought a 5 hour session and returned to my laptop to gain access. This soon brought dishpointer.com to my rescue in order to discover the Azimuth reading – 147.6 degrees – a quick rotation of the pole and the Sat-Finder screamed at me again. Back inside and the channels being pulled in were looking far more familiar – Channel 4, BBC, ITV – woohoo, interference free TV and radio were ours for the weekend. The satellite dish had proved its worth for the first time, and probably not the last!
Time for tea and the chip van was calling. We went down, only a couple of people there so not much of a queue. We made our orders, took our delivery and went back to the caravan to consume our efforts. Very nice, but a word of warning, they provide a lot of chips! Far too many chips, it was a concentrated effort to consume this meal, not wanting to waste of course! Night fell upon us and time to retire to bed with NCIS. Not a very peaceful night, the wildlife seemed to come alive at night with many a bird a calling. Not a complaint, love the wildlife, but they were having a party, I’m sure.
Sunday, time for an outing in the car. Nearest town of any note is really Alnwick, so off we went. Not much open on a Sunday, but we perused a few shops in the couple of hours we had parked for. The route from the site took us through some beautiful country lanes, so the trip was very pleasant. Upon returning, we headed off on one the site’s ‘nature walks’. This took us by the River Breamish itself, very pleasant. Not much of a walk in terms of mileage, but a very pleasant outing in itself. There are plenty of other walks available as mentioned previous, but as the weather was turning, we decided to cap it at this smaller outing!
Purchases made for this outing included some suction cups for the shower, in order to hang some coats up. These worked well and provided us now with a suitable place to hang wet clothes and the like. A second oven shelf was also duly fitted, as only one is provided with the oven as standard. The Milenco Aluminium Wheel Leveller wasn’t deployed this weekend, as the pitch was very level. So we’ll save that for another time! In Alnwick we purchased some dedicated coffee, tea and sugar jars. We had been relying on a more temporary solution prior to this, but decided this would be a good purchase. Filling at home, using in the caravan and then returning back home.
The rest of Sunday was a nice relaxed affair and home loomed on the horizon of Monday morning. Where upon we hitched up and returned the caravan to its storage site and we headed home to begin the rest of the work week! A great weekend and a great site, we will definitely visit again.
- Date: 28th April 2012
- Nights: 2
- Pitch #: 40
- GPS: 55.445108, -1.920858
