Ellis Family Blog

This is the unedited version according to Karen and Geoff – the publishers accept no responsibility for any defamation or inaccurate reporting.  Read on….. Well what can we say…We had a fantastic time….It was so nice to be met by Grant & Karol, looking tanned, chilled & happy, needless to say looking 10 years younger as well !! Croatia was beautiful, having never been before it was a lovely introduction to this beautiful country flying into Dubrovnik over some of the most beautiful islands we have seen. It was greener than we expected and it was fantastically hot. Grant & Karol took us back toRead More →

Boy, have the last two nights been noisy!  The rock bands continued performing until the early hours, less than 100 meters from our caravan.  As everyone knows caravans are not known for being particularly soundproof, so it was a bit like having the performers in the van with us!  At least that’s out of the way now….. Sunday we nipped up the road to the airport to collect Karen and Geoff, who had flown in from Leeds Bradford – an early start for them as they took off at 7.15 a.m. so they were with us just after 11 a.m. The remainder of this isRead More →

This is not a plea – just a statement.  They’ve all gone now.  Debi and Ed pushed off mid morning on Friday, and had an easy journey back to Manchester, and a less easy one from there to Sheffield, but I guess travelling on Friday afternoon….. Anyway, once we’d got shut of them, the rest of us headed off to the Krka National Park, Roski Slap where we could marvel at lush vegetation, and some damn fine waterfalls.  It was a lovely day; the journey there took about an hour, but with fantastic views on the way.  Debi and Ed had done it before us,Read More →

Hello All,   Ros here with a short and sweet update (if you’ve sat and read through Rob’s mammoth entry you’ll certainly want the key facts about the next couple of days!) For those of you who were on tenterhooks and waiting – Dad’s had his tooth fixed. We apologise for the shocking lack of updates since he left you on this cliffhanger but hopefully we can rectify your lack of entries. He needs you all to know that this was only £35 and I’m sorry I failed initially at including this vital fact. I haven’t admitted to Mum and Dad that I haven’t readRead More →

One of the (many) upshots of your parents being out of the country for an extended period of time is that you are forced to grow into a mature, confident adult, who does not need to call them 24/7 with probing questions about “water pressure,” and “which pans work on induction hobs.” You are expected to make rational decisions, bold choices with plenty of time to spare, and make sure you are self-sufficient enough to pay for this when the time comes. So invariably any mistake you make is going to be very late in the day to fix, and also bloody expensive. Thus onRead More →

We spent our last couple of days in Italy on the beach just chilling out. One highlight was, when returning from the restaurant in the evening, we found a small crowd of Italians standing and admiring ‘Stavros’ (our caravan for the uninitiated!)  They noted our approach, and a large lady beamingly shouted out, pointing at Stavros “Bella, bella, molto bella!” We felt quite proud, as other than admiration when using the motor movers, we hadn’t realised how special he was! Our ferry to Split departed Ancona at eight in the evening, so we set off in plenty of time to check in by six. WeRead More →

We were off from Genova bright and early, and hit the motorway for our five hour drive to Bologna.  The roads here are much busier than in Spain, with lots of wagons, none of whom seem to pay any attention to the speed limit!  When you’re towing a caravan and a wagon overtakes you it creates a bit of a vortex, so that you’re momentarily dragged off course, and unless you’re aware all the time you veer into their lane which is a bit disconcerting for all concerned!  Add to that they have a tendency to slipstream you until the very last minute before pullingRead More →

Our previous ferry journeys had led us to expect comfortable accommodation, good food and facilities. Sadly the inaccurately named Fantastica’ wasn’t! It was rubbish; dirty, run down, poor food and indifferent service. It was also late!   We eventually docked in Genoa around 90 minutes later than advertised, so didn’t get to our chosen site until almost seven in the evening. Things picked up after that though.  the people on the site were great, and whilst it was another ‘no toilet seat/paper’ location, it was clean and very well organised.  We had a slight blip with the electricity, but the hostess explained that the connectionRead More →

I signed off last time saying we were taking the overnight ferry from Barcelona to Genova that evening, a forty five minute drive up the coast to the port. We were due to check in at 9 o’clock but as the English guy on site suggested it might be busy we decided to set off at around 7.30 to give us plenty of time. It’s a good job we did. We had gone less than a mile before we encountered our first ‘incident’. The road was blocked by cars in both directions and we realised there’d been an accident as there was a motorcyclist inRead More →