Goodbye Mr Tom

And here he is, looking as good as the day we bought him but with a few thousand more miles under his belt and a wealth of experience stored up inside. The near misses - clipping the deer running across the road in the Peak District and getting severely overheated brakes coming down off the Alps in Austria. The hot ones - 45 degrees in Freiburg, Germany, and the cold ones - frozen water pipes in Hipperholme, Yorkshire. Parking in vineyards, stately homes, mountains, forests, by lakes, rivers and the sea, in somebody's garden, outside a supermarket. Having Christmas Dinner in a howling gale on top of Clee Hill in Shropshire, driving through Monaco and along the Corniche, getting changed from the beach in a restaurant car park and then going for dinner and coming back from France with lockers packed full of wine. Stuck in axle deep mud in Peterborough and the never ending trips to Crystal Palace. It's been quite an adventure. It is, however, time to move on.

Why is he going? First the tyres will need replacing soon and, more importantly, as a British built van there is an increasing risk of water ingress from the many seals around the place. Second, the levels of insulation are not as good as a continental van and, for some mad reason, Swift decided to vent the front lounge directly from the exterior to exactly where you place your feet, hence the need to wear hobbit feet in the winter (and we use the van all year round). Third, and the main reason, the dealer at the Peterborough Motorhome Show made us an offer that was significantly above what I expected to sell it for and was, basically, too good to miss.

So - with a few tears it is a sad Goodbye Tom and thanks for some very happy memories. Let's hope his new owners enjoy their travels as much as we did.

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