7th Dutch Haflinger Treffen 2015
Posted: Tue May 12, 2015 10:08 pm
I suppose there are at least 3 people on here who are interested about the trip I forced Lurch to undertake over the weekend 8/9/10/11 May 2015. (last weekend)!
So planning had all happened, 2 days Holiday had been booked and agreed by work. Treffen organiser had been paid by Transferwise, Camp site booked and prepared to accept payment when we turned up, Breakdown insurance via the RAC organised and paid for. Insurance company informed, which countries will you be visiting? France, Belgium, Netherlands - fine that's marked down - we don't send green cards any more, just give us a phone call if you need us! Like they will answer the phone on Sunday!
Thursday arrives and my friend Stephen who likes to accompany me on these forays turned up to help with the packing of Lurch. I had come across a plastic green house which for all intents and purposes seemed to be the same dimensions as the Long Wheel Base Haflinger bed. I had the previous weekend gone to the trouble of re-working the metal tube frame that came with it to fit and end result is shown in the pictures. It actually worked very well for the whole trip. A bit saggy after the storm:-
The bright minded of you will have noticed that I have not mentioned the ferry being booked and paid for above, good reason for that There was a long series of emails back and forth between Stephen and myself as to which ferry to get, all agreed but some how the "buy it" button never got pressed! So Thursday night I am going through all the paperwork with Stephen when I look at the date on the ferry booking - last years - quick where's this years! Go though my emails, no booking, go through my bank statements, no payment - Ekk! Haven't booked the ferry Go online and book for the next morning, slightly more expensive, but at least we have a ferry ticket now.
Alarm clocks set - set off for Dover with enough time to get there for the ferry, We had about 10 miles to go when the charging light started to flicker, by the time we reached the ferry port it was on constantly and ammeter was showing no charge, volt meter was slowly going down.... So we are sitting in the ferry line with the engine running having had a similar situation last year. One complaint about leaving the engine running by one of the other car drivers but otherwise it continued to run. Loaded on to the ferry, now we have to turn the engine off, still at least there is a slope out of the ferry we can bump start on.
Arrived in Dunkirk, got our customary push from a reluctant crew man and drove out of the ferry port. Other than changing the brushes on the Dynastart last year, it has worked perfectly well, so there was no real reason to think it would fail completely on this trip. As I happened to have another Dynastart, which I had spent vast sums of money on getting professionally rebuilt, I had loaded it in with a selection of other spare, so all we had to do was find a suitable place at the side of the road and swap the Dynastart's over. As luck would have it we stopped in building site entrance which had several big old wooden sleepers which we put to good use when the fan and cowling wouldn't come off the old Dyanastart. Lots of thumping with the biggest hammer in the tool box eventually allowed us to change the Dynastart. New one has loads more "omph" than the old one. Just goes to show how gradual the deterioration is. I thought the old one was quite good.
So with our new found electrical supply, Lurch ran perfectly - Stupid SatNav took us through Gent, and through Antwerp - so much stop start, I think I have glazed the clutch!
Arriving at the camp site we found various other Haflinger's already there and a few more turned up whilst we put up the tent. Turned in after a meal and during the night the weather turned stormy! At one point we thought the tent was either going to blow away or collapse on us. Morning arrived with continued high winds and we wondered if the tent was still going to be there when we got back. Saturday involved a road run round part of the Island, One of the people who turned up for the Treffen had flown there from Austria, in his own plane which had taken him 12 years to build. The day included a visit to farm that had Alpaca's, sheep and border collies as working dogs - which had their commands in English rather than in Dutch.
Saturday night had a meal arranged at the local airfield which is why we had our Austrian visitor - he wasn't going to drive all that way with his Haflinger on trailer, but as there was a local airfield, he flew in and "borrowed" a drive in a Haf for the weekend.
Sunday dawned bright and calm and no real damage to any of the tents, a couple of puddles being the most we had to worry about. Another road run around the other part of the Island, including a visit to the outer sea dyke and then a guided tour around one of the tidal flood barriers which were constructed in the ten years after the devastating 1953 flood which killed nearly 2000 people.
There were 14 Haflinger's and other than our "break down" before we even got to the Treffen, none of them had any issues all weekend.
Monday involved packing up and leaving the camp site in order to make the ferry at 6pm from Dunkirk. Other than getting stuck in some road works and getting slightly lost due to detours for yet more road works, we made the ferry with out major issues. The crossing was according the Capitan, "good with favourable winds". What he didn't tell us until we almost at Dover was that it was really foggy and that it was going to add another half an hour to the journey whilst they waited for the pilot to come out and guide the ferry in!
Arriving home late in the evening we had travelled 673 miles at approximately 30 mpg. A thoroughly enjoyable weekend.
Maybe we will see some of you at next years event?
John
So planning had all happened, 2 days Holiday had been booked and agreed by work. Treffen organiser had been paid by Transferwise, Camp site booked and prepared to accept payment when we turned up, Breakdown insurance via the RAC organised and paid for. Insurance company informed, which countries will you be visiting? France, Belgium, Netherlands - fine that's marked down - we don't send green cards any more, just give us a phone call if you need us! Like they will answer the phone on Sunday!
Thursday arrives and my friend Stephen who likes to accompany me on these forays turned up to help with the packing of Lurch. I had come across a plastic green house which for all intents and purposes seemed to be the same dimensions as the Long Wheel Base Haflinger bed. I had the previous weekend gone to the trouble of re-working the metal tube frame that came with it to fit and end result is shown in the pictures. It actually worked very well for the whole trip. A bit saggy after the storm:-
The bright minded of you will have noticed that I have not mentioned the ferry being booked and paid for above, good reason for that There was a long series of emails back and forth between Stephen and myself as to which ferry to get, all agreed but some how the "buy it" button never got pressed! So Thursday night I am going through all the paperwork with Stephen when I look at the date on the ferry booking - last years - quick where's this years! Go though my emails, no booking, go through my bank statements, no payment - Ekk! Haven't booked the ferry Go online and book for the next morning, slightly more expensive, but at least we have a ferry ticket now.
Alarm clocks set - set off for Dover with enough time to get there for the ferry, We had about 10 miles to go when the charging light started to flicker, by the time we reached the ferry port it was on constantly and ammeter was showing no charge, volt meter was slowly going down.... So we are sitting in the ferry line with the engine running having had a similar situation last year. One complaint about leaving the engine running by one of the other car drivers but otherwise it continued to run. Loaded on to the ferry, now we have to turn the engine off, still at least there is a slope out of the ferry we can bump start on.
Arrived in Dunkirk, got our customary push from a reluctant crew man and drove out of the ferry port. Other than changing the brushes on the Dynastart last year, it has worked perfectly well, so there was no real reason to think it would fail completely on this trip. As I happened to have another Dynastart, which I had spent vast sums of money on getting professionally rebuilt, I had loaded it in with a selection of other spare, so all we had to do was find a suitable place at the side of the road and swap the Dynastart's over. As luck would have it we stopped in building site entrance which had several big old wooden sleepers which we put to good use when the fan and cowling wouldn't come off the old Dyanastart. Lots of thumping with the biggest hammer in the tool box eventually allowed us to change the Dynastart. New one has loads more "omph" than the old one. Just goes to show how gradual the deterioration is. I thought the old one was quite good.
So with our new found electrical supply, Lurch ran perfectly - Stupid SatNav took us through Gent, and through Antwerp - so much stop start, I think I have glazed the clutch!
Arriving at the camp site we found various other Haflinger's already there and a few more turned up whilst we put up the tent. Turned in after a meal and during the night the weather turned stormy! At one point we thought the tent was either going to blow away or collapse on us. Morning arrived with continued high winds and we wondered if the tent was still going to be there when we got back. Saturday involved a road run round part of the Island, One of the people who turned up for the Treffen had flown there from Austria, in his own plane which had taken him 12 years to build. The day included a visit to farm that had Alpaca's, sheep and border collies as working dogs - which had their commands in English rather than in Dutch.
Saturday night had a meal arranged at the local airfield which is why we had our Austrian visitor - he wasn't going to drive all that way with his Haflinger on trailer, but as there was a local airfield, he flew in and "borrowed" a drive in a Haf for the weekend.
Sunday dawned bright and calm and no real damage to any of the tents, a couple of puddles being the most we had to worry about. Another road run around the other part of the Island, including a visit to the outer sea dyke and then a guided tour around one of the tidal flood barriers which were constructed in the ten years after the devastating 1953 flood which killed nearly 2000 people.
There were 14 Haflinger's and other than our "break down" before we even got to the Treffen, none of them had any issues all weekend.
Monday involved packing up and leaving the camp site in order to make the ferry at 6pm from Dunkirk. Other than getting stuck in some road works and getting slightly lost due to detours for yet more road works, we made the ferry with out major issues. The crossing was according the Capitan, "good with favourable winds". What he didn't tell us until we almost at Dover was that it was really foggy and that it was going to add another half an hour to the journey whilst they waited for the pilot to come out and guide the ferry in!
Arriving home late in the evening we had travelled 673 miles at approximately 30 mpg. A thoroughly enjoyable weekend.
Maybe we will see some of you at next years event?
John