JJ0063

I’ve only ever swapped a car once and it went well. I do however appreciate how very lucky I was and it’d very unlikely ever happen again. I had a 2010 Astra J 1.7 CDTI, discovered ‘Swapz’ and thought I’d give it a go. Got offered a 2007 BMW E90 325D but the chap was in Cornwall and I am in Norfolk. Ended up arranging to meet at Gordano services, he turned up when he said he would, we straight swapped and off we went. I loved that BMW and eventually sold it for more than I paid for the Astra. Fully understand it was a one off and that site is typically full of absolute horrors.

Put a brand new motorcycle helmet on eBay for £130, had an offer of £115 which I accepted. He then said he couldn’t pay for a week until payday so I cancelled his order and just said if it was available still when he has the money, he’s welcome to it.

When we got home today we decided to put the van on the back garden and put up the awning that it came with, we’ll never use it as we don’t tend to stay in one place for any length of time but I wanted to check the condition and that all parts were there to be able to sell it. Also handy to get pics of it up for the advert. Not bad at all for a freebie that wasn’t even in the advert. Looks virtually new - no fading or sun damage. Going to use any money we make selling it to get some extra ventilation in the van, be it a roof vent or opening windows in the rear as it was a bit stuffy last night not having any form of ventilation bar the cab windows.

Near Hunstanton tonight, favourite camp site so far. Top notch.

There was me about to get on the train to come and buy the E39 from you for £250 without reading the thread. Looks brilliant, I love these especially with the M sport bumpers.

I feel the same when it comes to MPG I have seen people that religiously record every fill up, pence per litre, exact amount filled up, calculate the MPG for every tank and record it. I just don’t understand why, what does it actually matter? You still need to put that fuel into the car and pay the price on the pumps.. I just feel like it must take the enjoyment out of it massively.

Absolutely not, why would I want to ruin my hobby by knowing how much of an expensive hobby it is? The less I know, the better. When you look at it like that you can genuinely live by man maths and just remember purchase price and resale price. That way if you sell the car for more than you paid for it you really are in profit and don’t take in to account the amount you’ve spent on it during ownership. I never want to think about what I spend on any of my vehicles, ever.

Day two, walked for ages, dogs are fucked

Check the post above for details bud 👍

I got a Huawei B535 router second hand on eBay, then managed to get his Poynting aerial off Amazon. Seems to work really well.

Wi-Fi is proving it’s worth already. Vodafone on my iPhone has 1 bar of signal, van wifi is currently running iPlayer on the fire stick connected to the TV in the van and the internet speed test has 58mb download speed… on a farm in the middle of nowhere, really pretty good to be honest.

Second camp site of the evening, much better than the first. Alarm bells should have rung when the first one I booked was £10 a night on a bank holiday weekend. Turned up and it was a village football/social club which basically had half a football field that had a load of caravans round the edge. The ‘warden’ stunk of alcohol and was really proud to tell me that the karaoke in the bar starts at 7pm and it’s £3 a pint tonight. As soon as we parked on our pitch we said shall we look for something else, this was the same time a woman next door to us said “the wine is out, there’s no stopping me tonight”….. We now are on a farm with alpacas next to us, empty field to ourselves. More expensive but well worth it.

Yep Astra J all day long

Melody also got collected today. £450 I got for it in the end, pretty chuffed with that.

Water pump changed, what a shit of a job 4G/5G aerial fitted, just need to hide the wires somewhere inside and mount the router somewhere, it works though