July 2020 – Duggies Adventures

What is the first thing you do when you pick up your new motorhome? I’m going to get many different ansers to that question! For me I couldn’t wait to add my personal touch to the interior.

I’m a crafter, so for me the thought of coming up with new designs and spending time creating is an absolute joy. Our ypungest son is Bat mad! (the kind with wings) He always had the idea to create a bat cave in the bed space over the cabin. In his excitement we set about turning his ‘bedroom’ into a bat cave.

Tristan did all the designs himself and even put all the vinyl bat decals on the ceiling to imitate the bats emerging from their cave in search of food (a bit like he does every morning). I made the curtains using standard canvas style material from Hobbycraft. I’m not sure if anyone is interested in hearing how I put things together but I think I can put an overview and then answer any specific questions that anyone may have.

For the Wording and the Bat wings I used Heat Transfer Vinyl, again Tristan created the design and we cut it all out on a Cricut Maker before using a heat press to apply it to the curtains.

Curtains and Cushions

Our motorhome, Duggie, is new to us but obviously has been owned by another family before us and they did a great job of looking after him. At four years old the interior is far from worn and the furnishings are like new but not to my taste.

I took these photos on VE Day and you can see the original curtain and cushion design in the background. They’re nice but just not my style.

VE Day Celebrations on our drive during lockdown

The design I replaced them with is based on Duggies Adventures with a slight Harry Potter inspired emblem. I created a coat of arms for Duggie too that you will see on some items.

The bunting I made to introduce a new colour scheme which is complimented by the throws. I made everything from the canvas material I got from Hobby craft and used my Cricut to cut out all the designs and heatpress to apply them.

Tristan is absolutely loving his Bat Cave, its quite spectacular and its so nice to be able to incorporate something special for the little ones into the design scheme overall.

I’m really pleased witht the results and Duggie definately feels like home although I suspect I won’t leave it there! Theres more to come!

On the very day Boris Johnson announced Lockdown in the UK, we had arranged to collect our first ever motorhome. For three years we’d dreamt of owning our own travelling buddy on wheels since hiring a Swift Escape 686 for a summer family holiday in 2017. Suffice to say we really enjoyed our travels along the South coast of England and we were left feeling hungry for more.

With such a huge commitment, both financially and physically, it took us three years to finally be in a position to start looking for the perfect motorhome for us. The motorhome we hired really was superb and suited our family needs perfectly so we started our search with a Swift Escape 686. Three months later we couldn’t find ‘the one’ and we we’re at the end of the year.

With January comes thoughts of holidays and booking the best one we possibly can to look forward to in the summer. We had a little family meeting and discussed how we weren’t able to find the motorhome of our dreams and whether we should give up for another year and book a week in the sun.

(At this point we had no idea that February was going to bring floods and March was throwing a global pandemic into the mix)

Right there and then at that family meeting someone said ‘let fete decide!’ and we agreed to have one last online search for the ideal motorhome for us. Well, would you believe it, right there, in full colour, was a beautiful photograph of everything we’d been looking for. A quick call to the dealer secured a viewing for the coming Saturday morning.

Mr B started to have thoughts of being ‘pipped to the post’ and couldn’t rest knowing we could be too late if we wait until Saturday. We booked a day off work and travelled to Worcestershire a day ahead hoping to be the first to view. It worked, we were the first and on arrival were told the phone had been a hotline for that particular motorhome and the weekend was jam packed with viewings. Normally we’d be thinking ‘yeah right’ but if you’d been searching as long as we have you’d know that this motorhome was going to be snapped up!

In all honesty we set our sights on this motorhome so as long as there was no problems, we were going to buy it. We stepped inside and looked at each other and realised we would have to spend the next ten minutes keeping it cool in front of the salesperson.

Of course we bought it! We also knew his (yes his) name was going be Duggie because the number plate virtually spelt it.

So here we are, on the day we met

So back to the evening Boris announced Lockdown in the UK. As you can imagine after waiting three years sitting listening to this announcement, knowing were were leaving early in the morning to collect Duggie! Could we? Are we allowed? What is Lockdown? What does it mean? The dealer called us before we had a chance to call them and asked to to collect Duggie as soon as we could as they were closing down that morning and they didn’t know when they’d be open again.

Instead of the long anticipated excitement and day of celebration we had planned, it was a mad dash down the M5 and dash back before the roads started to close (which they didn’t in the end thankfully!)

Duggie sat on our drive for months without a single trip to anywhere. People were saying it was a shame we got our motorhome and then couldn’t use it. We had lots of trips booked which obviously were all cancelled. We had to find a new way of living and a new way of enjoying Duggie.

Enter Homeschool. Not just homeschool, we used Duggie for all the things we normally did outside of the house. Cinema, cafe, pub, restaurant, library, craft days, picnics, photography……..we found many uses for the motorhome that couldn’t go anywhere and enjoyed it all the same.

Despite the pandemic being a time of great change and anxiety, Duggie helped us to feel less isolated and kept our spirits high and we’ll always be grateful for our lives coming together at that time.

Month: July 2020

First Things First

How We Met……