Tuesday, 1 February 2011

Shake down trip

I have just completed my first trip of the new year, to a caravan site, in the middle of Sherwood forest, called Clumber Park.

My caravan has sat most of the winter, so I thought I ought to have a little trip out, so as to check that every mechanical thing still works okay, also to check that I was still physically capable of caravanning, the plan being to make more continental trips later on this year

When I first bought a caravan I joined the Caravan Club, all in all a quite amazing organisation, one might even think a bit regimented, but standards are standards.

One of the giants of the British industrial revolution, was a man named Joseph Whitworth, he standardised thread size, of nuts and bolts, one of the thing that makes society work is 'The rule of law' many people would think that this is about 'big brother' no - it is what we should all aspire to.

Here is a good example of what I mean, in terms of how amazing the Caravan Club is. The point is, the electrical connection is actually  outside the caravan site, imagine you arrive when the booking office is closed, you need electricity to make life easier, lights and such, the Caravan Club has thought of your welfare, this is an organisation that has an inherent kindness, except when it comes to the internet, £5 for 5 hours is wallet abuse, I think the Caravan Club is being "taken to the cleaners" in terms of who they have employed to set up the Caravan Club internet connection.

If I can get mobile phone reception, I can tether my laptop to my phone and get the 'Net for a pound a day via Vodafone, so not only is it wallet abuse, it is not good business, further more to obtain a connection is far more cumbersome than it needs to be.

The rigmarole is, you go to the booking office. And buy a plastic card, on the card is printed a password, the next step is, you boot up your laptop  browser, click on home and a Caravan Club web page appears, type the password into the appropriate box and you are good to go.

I should imagine the person who set the system up is a 'Climate Change Denier' because after 5 hours use, you throw the plastic card and the daft leaflet away, presumably to be buried in a big hole in the ground.

The logical way to do this is, the Caravan Club website, takes you to a secure page, where you can enter your credit card details and membership number to get a discount and buy as many gigabytes as you need, charging by time is nonsensical, it is bandwidth that costs money, not how long you are connected to the 'Net, so not only is the person who set the system up, a wallet abuser, they also do not understand the 'Net.

Now a few photos, this is Lime avenue, so I guess the trees you can see are lime trees. The crossroads where you leave Lime Avenue,  for the caravan site. This looks a bit more untouched by human hand In Victorian Britain the idea was, that human beings existed, to tidy up the planet, they had characters like Capability Brown tidying things up, this was before Charles Darwin, managed to convince the majority of the Brits that we were actually animals, people think that Charles was responsible for the theory of evolution, but actually his grandfather Erasmus Darwin had the same idea as did many other thinkers.

Once one learns the theory of evolution it seems obvious, the only surprise being, how many people still disagree with evolution, all I can think is they must go around with their eyes closed. The majority of Americans still disagree with evolution.

Evidence of human beings tidying things up. Look at how untidy these trees are! The dawn of morning that I finished my shake down trip. My next trip, I'm planning to go to Amsterdam around the Spring Equinox and I'm planning to add video content to this blog, bye till later!
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