the clampits

As usual Tracker makes a lot of good points. We've been members of CMC for 14 years, since we started in our first m/home. We joined CCC a few years back, just so we had a choice, and since then have enjoyed our membership with them. I particularly like the welcome you receive from CCC wardens, and that's at every site. CMC wardens on the other hand have, at times, been snooty and sometimes downright rude to customers. I haven't been the subject of it myself, but have seen it and found it embarrassing. Last year we were pretty disappointed by the huge price hike in CMC fees, so we avoided using them. We stayed on the other clubs sites, or independent sites, and had a great year, only spending one night on a CMC site. We get the ACR discount with CCC, but not CMC, still a year to go. It's a big saving when spending 80 + nights a year travelling. With CMC site fees still far too high, we are cancelling our membership with them, and will continue using sites as per last year. A trivial protest I suppose, but it has to start somewhere.

We went down the Falcon road recently. We got a new campervan a year ago, and decided not to fit a tv antenna or a satellite dome. We had both items on previous vans, and decided that the satellite dome in particular, was a waste of money. We were due upgrades on our phones so after a bit of research went to EE and got a deal from them. In addition to the phones, we got an unlimited SIM for the Falcon. Now this next bit may not be exactly accurate, as my wife dealt with the whole contract thing, but as far as I know, the Falcon SIM is on a monthly contract. Connecting our tablet, we are able to cast the picture onto the tv through Google Chromecast and watch BBC Iplayer, Disney and Netflix by logging into our account. ITV is a bit difficult, and we haven't quite worked out how to do that. The real bonus is logging into IPlayer for the weather forecast when in UK. We live in Scotland and do most of our trips here, especially up northwest and so far its working well. I think we've only had one site where we couldn't get a signal to connect onto. We toured Europe earlier this year and used the Falcon there. You have to log into your EE account and enable roaming, and pay slightly more. We had a few probs doing this the first time, which involved calls to Falcon, but they were helpful and sorted it out. Important to remember to notify them when we returned to the UK. So far, it is working well and we've enjoyed using it all through the UK. We just stick it on the outside of the window where it always seems to get a signal. You can connect several devices, I think four or five, meaning the phones always get a 4g signal. We even use it in preference to using free WIFI on sites, it works so much better.

Thanks for that, hopefully the border cop in Spain will have had his coffee the day I arrive. I'm still surprised that I'm the only one that screwed up in this matter, but thanks for the advice.

As per the title, we left France on the Dunkirk ferry last week. As we moved through Port security, we stopped our van at the Police checkpoint, mirrored glass you couldn't see through, but no-one opened the window. We moved forward thinking that they were using another checkpoint, but all activity was centred around checking for illegal immigrants. We asked the UK Border chappie, who wasn't interested and offered no advice. Having trawled through the internet, the only advice I can find is that on when entering the euro area next, bring evidence that you left when you did, receipts etc. However, I cannot find anyone experiencing a similar problem. We are due to fly to Spain next month and are concerned about how this lack of an exit stamp will be viewed. We were only in the Schengen area for 9 days, so when arriving in Spain next month, we will still be well within the 90 day limit. My question is, has anyone else had this experience and did they manage to resolve it.