Tag Archives: vehicle wiring products

Monday 12th December 2011 – I’M CURRENTLY …

… at Tibshelf Services, on the M1 not too far from Mansfield. And I’ll be moving off in a bit to find somewhere to sleep for the night.

caliburn overnight parking A43 towcester ukLas night though I was parked up in my quiet little hidey-hole on the A43 near Towcester.

It was flaming cold too, seeing as how Brain of Britain here had forgotten to plug in his heated seat pad into the bed and I didn’t enjoy it one little bit.

But a nip down to the Motorway Services at Rothersthorpe for a good hot wash and scrub soon brought me back to life again and I was on my travels again.

But Towcester plays a big part in urban folklore from when we were young adults, and it concerns my friend Alvin.

Where we are on the A43 in the road that goes east-west. Back in the early 70s the A5 went through the town north-south and drops down from quite a steep height into the town, and then climbs back out to the south.

Alvin was on his way to London to see his girlfriend Anne on his old Triumph 500 and as he breasted the rise, he put the bike into neutral and coasted all the way down the hill into town.

He climbed a good way back up the hill under his own momentum and then put the bike into gear, opened the throttle to hear the comforting roar of the engine, and then dropped the clutch.

And nothing.

He tried another gear – and still nothing.

He eventually discovered that the chain had come off the bike. And after a good search, he eventually found it. Right back at the top of the hill way the other side of town. So much for his early start.

As for me and my … errr … somewhat less-than-early start, I started off at Radio Spares in Corby. Another pile of stuff that I needed from there today.

Up the road to Ilkeston and Vehicle Wiring Products. Stuff that I forgot last time, and stuff that I worked out that I have needed since. This is a handy port of call for anyone with all of its motor vehicle electrical accessory fittings.

Finally of course, I spent a couple of hours in the IKEA near Ilkeston. Another trolley load of panels, a big bag of furniture screws and fastenings, a few plastic boxes and some general bits and pieces for this and that.

Tibshelf is another Roadchef Services, like Sandbach, and so its internet connection is quite reliable. It gave me an opportunity to check up on some stuff here and there.

So now I’m off in the general direction of Stoke on Trent and to find a place to kip down for the night.

Monday 13th June 2011 – CALIBURN …

CALIBURN river ise FORD TRANSIT SWIM geddington NORTHAMPTON uk… went for a swim today.

We were out and about this afternoon in Northamptonshire meandering pretty aimlessly here and there in the general direction of Cambridge and we saw a sign for “Ford”.

With a sign like that of course we had to go for a look and Caliburn really fancied a swim. And he quite enjoyed it too

caliburn overnight parking a6 ambergate derbyshire ukLast night I found a good spec on the A6 near Ambergate in Derbyshire. This was where I bedded down and I had the Sleep of the Dead.

Not for long though. The arrival of the Roach Coach at 07:30 and the noise that it made as it installed tself soon woke me up.

Once I’d summoned up the courage to heave myself out of my stinking pit and grab a coffee from the aforementioned, I moved on to Ilkeston.

Here at Vehicle Wiring Products I bought a pile of 6mm “red” and “black” cable and a pile of other bits and pieces for back home. 6mm because it has to handle high current at 12 volt so I need to avoid voltage drop as much as I can.

And red and black cable?

I’m heavily into colour coding, especially in electrical wiring. It saves all kinds of unpleasantness. I’m trying to keep to blue and brown for 230-volt so I buy as much of that as I can. But for 12 volt, it’s red and black. No mistake with the colours.

The polarity of red and black speaks for itself, but with brown and blue, the bRown goes to the right to where the fuse is in a British plug, so it’s positive. The bLue goes to the left where there’s no fuse, so it’s negative.

And that’s why I use British plugs and sockets, not European ones. British plugs are fused and so that avoids all kinds of embarrassment if I’ve made a mistake with the wiring.

After that, I moved myself on to the M1 where I stopped at Leicester Forest East for a shower, a shave and to wash my clothes. High time that I did all of the aforementioned seeing as I’d been living in a van for a fortnight. Even I was starting to notice.

And I dunno what was going on at Donington Park last weekend but the services were crawling with Goths and the like. Had there been a rock concert down the road?

Next stop was Corby and Radio Spares where I bought a few more bits and pieces. It was a good job that I had forgotten to buy the 7-core trailer wire at Vehicle Wiring Products because it was on special offer at Radio Spares.

25 metres for £25 which is a bargain, and it was a desperate shame that there was only one roll left.

eleanor cross geddington northampton ukOn my way to Northampton I took a detour to visit the town of Geddington (which was where Caliburn went for his swim)

Several claims to fame, has Geddington, including the most magnificent Eleanor’s Cross.

The Eleanor concerned was Eleanor of Castille, wife of King Edward I “LOngshanks”. She died in Lincoln on 28 November 1290, and her body was embalmed and brought to London for burial in Westminster Abbey.

eleanor cross geddington northampton ukThe funeral cortège was an elaborate affair and took 12 days to reach Westminster Abbey.

At each place where the coffin rested, an elaborate cross was subsequently erected.

The Eleanor Cross at Geddington is considered by many to be the best of the three that remain, but even so, it is believed that there was an upper part which is now missing.

St Mary Magdalene, Geddington, NorthamptonshireBut I haven’t finished yet. There’s the church to see.

And the St Mary Magdalene Church is extremely special because it has every grounds to consider itself as one of the oldest churches in the UK (although there are a couple known to be older).

I’m not talking early crusader, or Norman Conquest either, but quite possibly 250 years older than that.

St Mary Magdalene, Geddington, NorthamptonshireChurches in the immediate post-Roman days were generally built of wood – that was because they art of building in stone had left with the Romans.

And that’s why there aren’t any still in existence today. I certainly can’t think of one, except maybe the church in Greensted, Essex, where bits of a 7th-Century wooden church were discovered in a later wooden church..

It was only gradually that the technique of stone-building was reintroduced to the UK and dates from the late Saxon period.

saxon stonework St Mary Magdalene, Geddington, NorthamptonshireAnd sure enough, if you look at the end wall here, you’ll see the primitive stonework over the arch, and the building lines where more-modern stonework starts when the church was enlarged.

Taylor and Taylor, in their Anglo-Saxon Architecture date the primitive stonework to the period 800-950.

While others might disagree with the dating, one thing upon which all of the experts agree is that it is certainly Saxon stonework, and that’s what it looks like to me too.

At Northampton I had to go shopping for Terry, so Ipicked up Terry’s orders from Screwfix, Toolstation and a couple of other places and then took the opportunity of doing some food shopping at the Morrison’s there.

By now it was early evening and so I headed off to Cambridge where I tracked down the University library.

That’s my port of call for tomorrow

And I almost forgot to tell you about the bridge too, didn’t I?

Geddington is situated on the River Ise (the river that rises in the field where the Battle of Naseby was fought in 1645) and is a very good fording place (as you have already seen, thanks to Caliburn).

This is where the cortège of Eleanor of Castille presumably crossed.

But with the improved stone-building techniques of post-Conquest England, stone bridges were constructed and fords fell out of fashion.

1250 park horse bridge river ise geddington northampton ukThe one here was built some time round about 1250 and is what’s known as a “pack-horse bridge” – with refuges for pedestrians as you can see.

It was rebuilt in 1784 – at least, that’s a date that’s carved onto some of the more-modern stonework – and was listed as a Grade II listed building on 25 February 1957.

It’s in excellent condition and it’s quite safe for Caliburn to drive over. But he thought that it would be much more fun to swim the river

Sunday 12th June 2011 – WE’VE DONE IT NOW!

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that Terry and I have been hunting for the last couple of years for a decent mini-digger. We’ve made all kinds of enquiries but the end result always was that we could never find anything that we wanted.

In the end we decided that we would have to pay more than we wanted and buy something newer, but that never worked either.

That is, until today.

I went to Bacup to see a digger, a 2007 Takeuchi and while it was dearer than we were ever expecting to pay, in the end we’ve bitten the bullet and gone for it, faute de mieux – in the absence of anything better.

The cash will be transferred over on Monday and I’m picking it up on Wednesday night after I collect my new trailer.

Did I tell you about that?

caliburn overnight parking bacup burnley lancashire ukAnd so last night after dropping off Caroline I had a pleasant drive around the back of Manchester, Rawtenstall, Rossendale and all of that.

I found a nice quiet lay-by in the pitch-dark somewhere up on the moors between Burnley and Bacup and settled down for a nice, quiet sleep.

And a nice quiet sleep it was too. I didn’t feel a thing.

caliburn overnight parking bacup burnley lancashire uk wind farmPretty windswept it was too up on this hilltop, as I was to discover when I finally awoke.

And that’s hardly surprising, given the glorious view. That was Burnley down there in the valley on the previous photo and on this photo, there’s a wind farm for you to admire.

So a nice drive on into Bacup where I met this digger guy, who took me to see it in Accrington where it was digging out someone’s footings.

Once I’d recovered from the shock of committing myself to spending all of this money, I went to Preston – or rather, the Tickled Trout in Salmesbury – to see Sandra.

We had a really good chat about one thing and another and It’s nice to learn that in OUSA – the Open University Students Association – things are carrying on just as I left them.

Chaos, panic, disorder – it’s all still going on.

This evening I’m on the M1 at Tibshelf Services. I’m moving off in a minute to find somewhere to bed down for the night as I need to be in Ilkeston early in the morning.

Saturday 11th June 2011 – HIS NIBS IS AT IT AGAIN!

caroline strawberry moose caliburn sandbach cheshire ukHere you can see him dipping into his Auntie Caroline’s cod and chips.

To pass the evening, I went to see Caroline again.

We ended up going out to the chippy (not half as good as a traditional Belgian fritkot), I have to admit, and that was where His Nibs joined in the (af)fray.

But Caroline’s cat Bigsy is very poorly and she might not pull through. I wanted to make sure that I saw her and gave her a stroke.

So after many vicissitudes, not the least of which was parking up for the night in a zone where there was no mobile phone signal (something that only I can do), I finally made contact with whatsername and, sure enough, my wallet was there.

That was just as well as I would shudder to have to think what I would have had to do had it not been there.

She was making breakfast for the family (it was quite early) I was also invited to eat there and that really put an end to my journey to Ilkeston and Vehicle Wiring Products, as they would have been closed by the time I would have arrived.

Instead I went to DK Motorcycles in Newcastle-under-Lyme.

As well as selling road-going machines the company also imports classic motorcycles from the USA. They arrive in all states of repair and I always like to go along if I can to see what’s arrived.

They had a few mint Hondas, including a couple of rare 1970s 350-fours as well as a pile of other stuff as well that was fit for renovation, including a 95%-complete Honda 160.

As an aside, I passed my motorcycle test on a Honda 160 belonging to my mate Ray Stigter.

Many of the machines that arrive there are only suitable to be broken up for spares and I always go to chat to the guys there because many of you might not know that I own probably one of the rarest of all Japanese motocycles – a CB92 “Benly” from 1961.

It’s basically complete and after we assembled it we even had it running after a fashion, but that was back in 1974 and that is a long time ago.

It desperately needs an overhaul but spares for it are impossible to find now – hence the regular visits to DK Motorcycles.

They might one day have one in that is only fit for dismantling but to date the guys in there freely admit that this is one motorcycle that they have never ever seen and don’t ever reckon that they will do either.

One regular feature of this blog in its previous incarnation was something to do with poorly-sited solar panels.

badly sited solar panels keele staffordshire ukBut we gave that up when we were overwhelmed with them. Some of these solar panel salesmen have no shame of course.

We’ve seen some dreadful ones on our travels in the past but this must be pretty near the bottom of the pile.

It’s all about the salesman’s income and nothing whatever to do with the reputation of the product that he’s selling

Lunch was at Waitrose in Sandbach and then I went to B&Q in Crewe to see if they had the doors that I need for my house. My house is dark and gloomy due to the small windows and if I’m putting partition walls in, this will cut the light down further.

What I need is some dirt-cheap glass-panelled doors and finding them in France is impossible. However B&Q does a nice cheap line in exactly what I want.

The door that I fitted into the attic came from there and you can see what a good job it does as well – hence a requirement for another half-dozen to match.

B&Q came up trumps in more ways than one.

  1. they had enough in stock.
  2. they had some that were only 650mm instead of 750mm and that’s what I need for the bathroom and the office.
  3. with my trade card I had almost £100 off the retail price – £240 for 6 instead of about £335 or so.

When you think about it … “you are always thinking about it” – ed … that’s just 20 weeks of rental on my mailbox paid off in one swell foop.

You can see why it’s important to have a UK address if I am buying stuff over here.

Now Caroline and I are having a coffee on Sandbach Services. In a short while I’ll be dropping her off at home and making my way in the general direction of Bacup.

I have to go to see a digger there tomorrow morning.

Friday 10th June 2011 – I FINALLY MADE …

… it down this afternoon to see this boss of The One That Got Away who had been hankering after seeing me.

And the reason for my visit was quickly unveiled.

It seems that his company has won a contract to supply and fit out a new village hall on the Staffordshire Moorlands, and it all has to be off-grid.

Off-grid is not something in which they have any expertise and so it seems that I’ve been drafted in on this project as well.

I’m not sure what the payment might be, but “panels at cost” is a good inducement for me to become involved in it, if nothing else.

We then spent until some ridiculous time this morning catching up on all the old times that we knew when she worked for me as a kid back in the 1980s, and discussed everything that has happened to us since we last met quite a long time ago.

It was lovely to see her again after all of this time and I was sorry to leave.

Terry rang me up as well during the day. He wants me to go to look at a digger in Accrington or Bacup or somewhere like that tomorrow, and then I need to be in Ilkeston as well to pick up some stuff from Vehicle Wiring Products.

But I’m not going anywhere until I’m reunited with my wallet, which I hope is still at whatsername’s. If it isn’t I am going to be having more than just a few problems.