Welcome to the Purplemeanie build blog of our Caterham 420R. We hope you enjoy our trials and tribulations during and after the build. Please leave us a comment and tell us what you think.

Where to Start

For my most popular video take a look at “Build a Caterham 420R in 30 minutes”

For more reading…

  • If you want join us on the journey from the beginning then take a look at this post: Build Blog Index
  • If you’d like to see a bit about us then please take a look at our About page.
  • If you just want to skip to the latest news then take a look at the Blog.
  • We’ve also put a Gallery together if that’s your thing.
  • If videos are your thing then take a look at what we’ve posted to YouTube: YouTube Videos
  • If my ramblings aren’t enough for you then you can find a whole different bunch of other blogs in this post here.
  • … and some might like to jump to my tools and trinkets here.

Latest Posts


  • Day 65 – Home Again

    Day 65 – Home Again

    Post Views: 25 And so our mini adventure ends. There’s not much to say about the day itself and I’ll leave the conclusions to further posts where I hope to pull some more considered thoughts together about the trip. However, for today, we did manage to get off from our one night stop reasonably early,…


  • Day 64 – Avignon to Reims and 15 Seconds of Fame

    Day 64 – Avignon to Reims and 15 Seconds of Fame

    Post Views: 27 Right, the last full day on tour! Today we’re going to make as much progress up through France as we can, within reason. It had rained over night but the mud outside the van was still pretty resistant under foot – not like the mud bath that was the volcanic mush in…


  • Day 63 – Avignon

    Day 63 – Avignon

    Post Views: 28 Nine weeks! So we’d performed a bit of a “left turn Clyde” to get to Avignon and away from the direct route home via Switzerland. We’d visited Avignon last year in August but wilted in the sun and didn’t do any of the sights or town. This detour now, in October, was…


  • Day 62 – Travel from Lucca to Avignon

    Day 62 – Travel from Lucca to Avignon

    Post Views: 19 Not much to report today. We set off from the yard at the back of the garage for Avignon after some breakfast and coffee/tea, at about 8:30. The concept of using a back yard to house camper and with a minimal toilet and shower setup was quite appealing. We were right in…


  • Day 61 – Leaving Naples and a bit of Lucca

    Day 61 – Leaving Naples and a bit of Lucca

    Post Views: 24 So, we’re on the way home! We’re heading north now, and going to be taking big chunks out of the 2,500km we have to get there. We had a spectacular thunderstorm roll through the bay of Naples last night, from about 11 until 1 – sheet and fork lightning. The wind got…