The South Coast Chronicles Day 1 out and about in an Autosleeper Broadway EB

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Astrophotography may become the new hobby.

A dreamy sunset. Is there anything more wonderful than sitting in your own motorhome watching the sunlight slowly roll away down the neighbouring valley sides. That hour when a golden mantle of slips slowly off the shoulders of the Axe Valley down onto the still waters of the estuary below, where it twinkles and reflects away in a thousand starbursts. All to be replaced by the subtle arrival of the blues and greys of night-time, accompanied by the evening stars above.

When dusk arrives and lone bats flit about, the old-fashioned street lights suddenly switch on casting an orangery warmth across houses and streets below us. Distant yellowing sandstone cliffs shimmer like burnished copper in the last dying seconds before the sun finally makes her exit below the far-flung horizon to the west.

As the temperature falls outside, it’s time to grapple once more with the Truma heating panel. The dial is turned, the heating symbol selected, the dial button pushed. 20C seems about right.

Three blown fuses later and several error codes that don’t appear in any handbook, the temperature inside Bryony has taken on a distinctly frosty air, and it isn’t due to the temperature fall outside! One of us is patiently resigning herself to a very cold night under the duvet and several blankets, listening to her partner of many years stomp around, fuming about poor workmanship and faulty heating systems! Would it disturb the campsite if the TV volume was turned up to 100 to drown out the moaning, she muses?

Meanwhile ‘Mr Hufflepuffel’ is resorting to the internet and FaceBook. A social media site much derided by his partner, this is the moment to demonstrate how wonderful and useful it can be. A message on the ‘Autosleeper Owners Facebook Forum’ page and three minutes later, order, calm, serenity and most importantly ‘warmth’ are restored to Bryony’s interior. From zero to hero in three minutes – job done! (The error codes by the way are due to incorrect shutting down procedure of the harmony and heating panels – something that is not actually explained very well in any of the handbooks. The tip? Switch off the Truma panel, then the 12v symbol in the harmony panel BEFORE disconnecting the electrical hook-up cable. Go figure, something so simple!)

Lying in bed this night, when the skies are moonless and clear and there is a severe autumnal chill in the outside air tempered by the ‘cosy’ van interior, is frankly, magical. It takes us back to times when as young children we were allowed to camp out in the back garden in homemade tents on warm summer nights. There we would contemplate our place in the vastness of the universe and wonder about other alien life forms out there who might be watching us watching them watching us (well one of us did that kind of thing when we were young!)

In bed, on this first night of our first tour away, our whole world is framed in one square skylight. The vastness of space, the gradually changing constellation viewpoints as the earth below our new home rotates on its axis. A glimpse of Mars, the Polar Star and The Plough. Orion’s belt slowly drifts by. Distant galaxies and stars twinkle various colours, their massive stellar gas bursts unseen and unheard by us, so many billions of miles away. Later that night, in the early hours, the stars become obscured as light shower clouds move in. The orchestral symphony and different tempos of falling rain on a motorhome rooftop is hypnotic, in a good way.

Once in Florrie, our old caravan, we visited Sennen down in the far west of Cornwall, where we spent cloudless nights photographing a rarely seen comet. Perhaps now, with a new motorhome and the prospect of so many exciting tours to wild places that come with her, it is time to invest in a good quality telescope with DSLR camera attachment.

Astrophotography and stargazing could become the new motorhome hobbies although I doubt if I will attain the standard of these take around the Seaton/Charmouth area by Guy Sweetman.