Staycation Spring 2023 - Mersea Island Shakedown

With a few weeks to go before we go away to France on the Awaycation, it seemed like a good idea to get the away for a few days as a shakedown!

So I was looking at another short trip. I looked at some Caravan Club sites and there were none that really pushed any buttons.  We like to go midweek where the chances of the sites being overrun with kids is limited.  The Caravan Club doesn't have any Adult-Only sites.

I moved my search to certificated locations. There were a few but given the uncertainty of UK weather it was hard to find any that have hardstanding.  We could have returned to one of the ones we did last month, but they were nice, but are in the middle of nowhere.  One has a pub nearby that would have been a good dog-walk with a cheeky pint at the end of it, but the pub closed, possibly due to the pandemic, and has never re-opened.  

So where to? Mersea Island? I had a look at Fen Farm again. We did that in March (I think) and it was good but grass pitches.  We were lucky last time that it was quite well drained but I decided to try somewhere else.

There's a holiday park nearby, still on Mersea Island, and so I had a look there.  It has all the things to make the perfect holiday. Bars, shops etc.  Dog friendly and £32 a night this week.  It's £30 for us and £2 for Reggie.  So I booked. We go tomorrow after I get back from the greyhound rescue volunteering I do twice a week.

I have the reception area at Waldegraves Holiday Park entered into the satnav and so we should arrive right to the door. Exactly why we use a satnav!  Of course, it means we have to cross The Strood causeway again and the tide times table shows that we should be okay in both directions, tomorrow and when we return on Saturday morning.

The next job is to go and collect Molly from storage later this afternoon. A bit of time to get our non-perishable stuff loaded in and maybe test the fridge on gas.  The Dometic fridge fitted to the 175 works on 12 volt but only when the engine is running. Other than that it runs on the electric hook-up on sites (EHU) and on LPG.  We have never tried either fridges on the motorhomes on gas.  You can only use gas when parked up.

As there is a massive difference between diesel and petrol prices across Kent, we will take the opportunity to fill the tank on he way back at ASDA in Chatham.  The price difference is running at around 16p a litre (75p a gallon) less than locally to where we live. Rip off?