Goodbye Pema the Peugeot

So much has happened since last time I was able to blog, it is difficult to know where to start. Here are the highlights:

1. we sold our camper van and bought a car
2. we travelled to Austria to teach and also enjoyed some sightseeing
3. Daniel moved into his new flat
4. Buddhist Council of Wales meeting
5. taught amulet weaving in Bristol

I’ll post a little on each of these separately so that the post does not get too long.

Camping Retreat, Shropshire, 2012

Pema the Peugeot is no longer ours. I have been having trouble with my left hand, and finding the gear change on the van painful.We decided quite quickly to change vehicle, and to move to an automatic transmission. I visited our local dealer and they had just had a three year old automatic brought in. We liked it and so everything happened quite quickly. I phoned the dealer from whom we bought the van to get an idea of an asking price, and he wanted it back. So everything happened very easily.

The Peugeot has been a good workhorse - we’ve moved furniture and logs in it; enjoyed impromptu picnics; and found it useful for camping. It was never too comfortable for sleeping, which was why we bought the trailer tent, but it had a good kitchen. There will be things we will miss about it - but life has to move on.

We are now the proud owners of a Vauxhall Meriva. We haven’t taken any photos of it yet, but this link takes you to some on-line images. It is a roomy car, but not too big, and lovely to drive. It feels smooth and quiet after the bumps and rattles of the camper van. We will have to have a tow bar fitted for the trailer tent. I am enjoying driving into multi-storey car parks without having to check the height limit! We’re still on our first tank of diesel at the moment, so I cannot judge how economical it is yet. The colour is rather grandly described as ‘pepper dust’ but when I booked it into Airparks, their vehicle finder said it was ‘brown’! So we have a brown car. Never thought I would say that . . .