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Our caravan
So here are details of our caravan.
Its layout is described as a single axle, centre washroom, rear island bed.
In english, it means, only 1 pair of wheels, and rather than having beds that have to be made up by re-arranging the back-rest of seats and such like, at the rear, is a nearly full sized double bed. Between that bedroom and the front of the van is a bathroom with shower and toilet.
The diagram in the brochure was this:
We initially thought we liked the idea of a rear washroom with a transverse island bed, that is the "master bedroom" as such connecting to the main living area, and the washroom being right at the back of the caravan.
The bed isn't so long, but often can be extended. In the caravans we looked at (mostly on paper, but we did take a trip to the caravan and motorhome show at NEC, Birmingham) we quickly came to the conclusion that it was less than ideal for a few reasons
- Bed length. I am under 6ft tall, but as the beds have curved ends, my feet were nearly over the end
- Bathroom location. We wanted to be future proof, as we hoped (and have) started a family. With the bed in night mode, the gap at the end, especially with a duvet on the end is small. Children squeezing past would be problematic
- Bedroom separation. We have 2 dogs, and the partition between bedroom and lounge is just a (heavy duty) curtain. It was easy to see the dogs trying to push under it or something like that
We actually changed our mind while at the caravan shop, and although the exact model we decided to get wasn't in stock, similar ones from Swift were, making it an easier decision
Our Route to caravanning
So why caravanning? We all know how frustrating it is being stuck behind an HGV or someone towing.
Hannah and I first tasted some of the freedom of the mobile lifestyle when we borrowed her parents motorhome. Its a lovely vehicle, and is under 3.5T maximum laden weight, so no extra driving tests for LGV.
But borrowing wasn't ideal, as we would have to make 2 hour drive down to them, before we then could unload our car, load our dogs in and then get on our way. And the same was true at the end of a holiday too. Not insurmountable, but we wanted some freedom for ourselves.
In January 2017 we embarked on our biggest adventure yet. We flew to the North Island for 2 weeks of holiday in a motorhome.
I could talk for a long time about that trip, but I'll try and summarise with a few photos:
Caravanning
CaravanningYes, I have become one of those most hated by Top Gear aficionados. A caravanner! Last February, before the big show in Birmingham, and negotiated a deal on a dealer special
Eventually in July, our 'van had been built and arrived. A Swift Lifestyle 4EB, based on the Sprite Major 4EB
mythtv meta grabber problems
I was on my mythtv media server last night, and I noticed that no matter what I did, I was not getting metadata back when lookups were being done for tv shows recorded off the air, and for any video files I tried either. Looking in the frontend logs (/var/log/mythtv/mythfrontend.log) I could see some interesting results when I tried refreshing the metadata for one of the video files:
Apr 23 22:31:46 inception mythfrontend.real: mythfrontend[7669]:
I MetadataDownload metadatadownload.cpp:280 (runGrabber) Running
Grabber: /usr/share/mythtv -l en -a GB -D 25957
Apr 23 22:31:46 inception mythfrontend.real: mythfrontend[7669]:
I MetadataDownload metadatadownload.cpp:186 (run) Metadata
Lookup Failed: No Results Clear Skies 0 0
Apr 23 22:31:46 inception mythfrontend.real: mythfrontend[7669]:
I CoreContext videodlg.cpp:3340 (customEvent) No results found for
Clear Skies 0 0
Now the path /usr/share/mythtv is a valid path on my system, with various things, like the backup tool and such like. However, it isn't an executable, so consequently, when the system tried to run a directory as an executable, nothing happened. Finding why this location was being used instead of an actual script took a little bit of digging.
