summers

15,000 in 14 months mainly pleasure including one 2000 mile trip to France. On average I fill up every fortnight and cover around 400 miles between fills. Only averaging 36 mpg which is disappointing though a lot of my journeys are short 8 - 10 miles.

There was a litre bottle in a zip bag when I collected my car from Alex Lawrie last year and then when it was in for service last week, besides the oil change, they left me another litre in a bag - nice! haven't used the first one yet so son can have the new one in his A4.

Yeti serviced last week at Alex Lawrie Skoda. As always excellent attention - gave me a lift into Liverpool. On my return the car was ready, valeted with oil, lube spray and a bottle of wine awaiting me on the passenger seat. Very happy to give full praise and recommend them - they are all nice guys as well. Peter

£10 donation to the tyre fitter's tea fund and yellow marker on each tyre - job done.

Totally agree - there appears to be very few reports of wheels being 'stolen' nowadays (even here in Liverpool before anyone else comments!!) - you are more likely to lose your locking wheel nut adaptor which creates endless expensive problems.

In reality most dealers make far more money from the 'servicing' element of their business than they do from the sales side. I appreciate they need the sales to feed the service dept. but the margins on servicing at any main dealers is incredibly high and of course in many cases we are locked in to their servicing to keep our warranties validated. Perhaps by letting them know the servicing would be done elsewhere and with a poor margin from the sale, this could have prompted the initial response from the Sales Manager?

Winters off yesterday. £20 to the tyre fitters which is a bargain as far as I am concerned - getting too old to be humping those heavy wheels around. Always mark which corner the wheels come off so they go back on with hopefully no need for balancing etc. I also keep a note of the mileage at the changes to see how much I get from each set - sad and boring probably!

I have a Thule rack : http://tiny.cc/5d16uw attached to a Witter detachable tow bar. Can't recommend the set up too highly. The rack shows up on the Columbus unit as a trailer when the electrics are connected.

I bought a trim tool of ebay for a couple of pounds - alternatively the credit card would be a suitable replacement. Peter

Ordered. Thanks for the link. Peter

I bought my Columbus unit from the same eBay site. Very happy with the product, delivery & communication with the seller. I made an offer below the starting price which he accepted. The new face plate for the Columbus is: 5L0858069L1QB - bought form Rainworth Skoda - 01623 623400 - £25.11 including next day delivery - superb service. A friendly Briskoda member near me fitted it - about 90 minutes and did the necessary recoding etc. (A bottle of wine for his help). The voice control on mine does not work but I can live with that. Everything else works perfectly and the iPhone connects easily each time via Bluetooth. The GPS antenna was cable-tied to a bracket behind the unit and it works fine. Hope this helps. Peter

Lost my OSR Roof Rail Trim yesterday. I will phone the dealers later to order a replacement and enquire if it will be covered under warranty. Not hopeful!

I bought a Columbus unit from this seller for my Yeti last June. It arrived very promptly and did exactly as it said in the advert. It was brand new and just what I wanted. Rather than pay the price quoted I made him an offer which was slightly less - he accepted my offer so both parties satisfied. Hope this helps. Peter

Thank you for providing this link. I have recently purchased Lightroom 4 and these tutorials seem very useful. Peter

Thank you for your efforts James - I will have one in whichever colour is available. Peter

I think it also de-activates the rear fog light when connected - to avoid glare from the front of a caravan presumably. Peter

I bought mine on-line and my friendly corner garage fitted them - it's a lot easier on a ramp at waist height and you don't get your hands dirty. £35 for the flaps - £15 to the garage - job done! Peter

I'm with Freshacre on this. Alex Lawrie always wash and as someone else posted Mitchells have a free wash service for all their customers every saturday - great service.

Have a look at this American site: http://tiny.cc/6ffpjw I have used them a few times and they have an amazing range. Peter

I stayed at the Hotel Beatus in Cambrai on a recent trip to visit the Somme battlefields. Cambrai is about 90 mins from Calais. The hotel is excellent. The rooms are very comfortable and the breakfasts and dinners were superb. I am happy to give this recommendation. The hotel rates highly on Trip Advisor and is well justified. Peter

Love the roof - very versatile. First car with a opening sunroof for a few years and I had forgotten how nice fresh air is instead of air con. Took me 2 months to find that you can tilt open the rear part of the sunroof by moving the switch up and down! Peter

I have experience of both the Amundsen and the Columbus units. In my opinion the Columbus is a far superior unit to the Amundsen. That is why it is such a high priced option for 'Factory Fit'. My current Yeti had the Bolero unit in when I bought it and this is also a superb unit but lacking amongst other things Sat-Nav. I bought a Columbus unit off Ebay and fitted it in place of the Bolero. Fabulous unit - Sat-Nav with 7 digit postcodes and speed cameras already loaded, DVD player, Hard Drive and with the Bluetooth already fitted it all blends together excellently. Peter

I have driven cars with 'auto' boxes pretty exclusively for the past 30 years and I can honestly say that in every one of the 17 cars I owned in that time, I used the boxes manually at reasonably frequent times - particularly if I wanted to enjoy a little 'spirited' motoring. I did flirt briefly earlier this year with a manual Yeti but changed it for my current one after a short time. My Wife and Son owned manuals if I really felt the urge to trouble my left leg with a clutch pedal - which was not very often. My current Yeti with the DSG box performs admirably but I still enjoy pushing that lever over to the left and working the box particularly in 2nd, 3rd & 4th gears when the conditions allow. I find acceleration and braking a little more responsive through the box in these gears in the manual mode - and also it relieves the boredom sometimes. Interestingly when I took my IAM test some years ago, in an automatic, you were expected to show that you could (knew how to) use the transmission manually and demonstrate that during the course of the Advanced Driving Test. During the test I duly used the box manually on a couple of occasions to overtake at speed and also once to brake when approaching a hazard. Unfortunately my examiner, a rather humourless Police Motorway Officer, decided that I hadn't used the automatic box in manual mode for enough times during my test (he expected me to use it more or less exclusively on any roads other than motorways and dual carriageways) and he failed me. I commented that had I wanted to drive 75% of the time in manual mode I would not have bought an automatic vehicle. As an after note - I complained to the chairman of my local IAM branch and was promptly given a re-test with a different examiner which I passed with full marks - I understand the first examiner is no longer examining for that current branch. Peter

I keep a couple of 'biros' in there. If I put my glasses in there I wouldn't be able to see to drive!

Not an image of my Yeti but a rather sleazy looking nightclub we came across on in Vannes on our recent trip to Brittany.