April Update - 15/4/08 - Atkinson Vos, High Benham, England 
(923 km)
We left you last time with the cliff hanger (or mog hanger?!) of the My Way roof tent fitting...
Oz and Paul um'd and ar'd over the position of the roof tent and discussed various options. We had measured up in Scotland before ordering the 1.4m but had not realised that the measurements on the web site were not the overall external dimensions. One option was to cut Marcus' fantastic roof rack but in the end we opted for moving the permanent position of the roof boxes and putting the spare tyre onto the cab roof whenever we use the tent. However, we are discussing with Pete in Cornwall the possibility of him fabricating a hanger for the spare tyre on the back.
Once the position had been established it was a quick and easy fitting for Paul albeit in the pouring rain! Thanks again to Paul and Nicky for their wonderful hospitality. We will report back on the tent once we have opportunity to use it (lorry parks aren't quite the place to try it out!).
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We left Paul's house on Friday and drove to Ilkely. We found a wonderfully quiet car park in the woods and spent the night listening to the rain dripping off the trees onto the roof!!
Saturday and Sunday we explored the fantastic countryside around the Yorkshire Dales and discovered the farmer's market on Sunday morning in Settle where we bought loads of yummy food! Sunday night saw us trundle into High Bentham ready for the gates of Atkinson Vos to open on Monday morning. We stayed at the Riverside Caravan Park which is just round the corner. It was a joy to be able to hook up the electric, fill the water tanks, wash our clothes and use their immaculate facilities. The staff were wonderfully helpful and we would highly recommend this site.
We drove through the gates of Atkinson Vos at 8.30am prompt yesterday and handed over the mog to Frank and his team. Phil set to work on changing the brake pads, removing the charcoaled (and very dead) blue tit that had wedged itself into the brakes, disks, as well as giving her a full service and general poke to see how she was.
Oz, Frank and myself sat in heavy discussion about fitting her with a turbo and intercooler and Frank is coming back with a price for us as we are very interested. The only down side is that we will have to come back up for the fitting as the workshop is very busy at the moment... still, we don't have to be in Morocco until 15 September!
We passed a pleasant night in the Black Bull pub up the road as the mog didn't have any wheels on so we couldn't sleep in her.
Tomorrow we have an MOT booked just south of Kendal so we are going off to find somewhere nice to spend the night nearer to Kendal and hopefully go for a drive round Lake Windermere. Then it's down to Devon and a serious sort out of the back!
K&O