Blogging for Benfield: road trips to Corbridge

To test out the little bloggermobile’s fuel economy, me and Mairi decided to take a little trip up to Corbridge. Mainly I was looking for an excuse to have a wander about in RE, which if you already read my old post (here), is one of my favourite places to wander around.

I came away empty handed (trying to be good this month and save pennies) but there were so many things I wanted.. like these raspberry pink cases. Sometimes I think it’s good to visit places like RE to get motivation to sort through the things I already have and make room for some new treasures..

Now this is probably the first and last time I’ll ever blog a video.. mainly because I hate the sound of my own voice, and also because it puts you in the semi-awkward position of having to not mess up what you’re trying to say.. otherwise then you have to do the whole thing over again.

road trip to Corbridge from raspberrykitsch on Vimeo.

Anyway, as ‘video me’ has just explained, me and Mairi had a little roadtrip up to Corbridge in the bloggermobile. The premise was that Benfield wanted to know what I thought about the fuel economy of the Picanto, and since I’m by no means a motoring expert (or motoring writer usually!), I tried to think of a way that I could test it out.

Now for the bit about petrol.. usually in my car (a Citreon C2) I use about £40-£50 a week on petrol because I’m always backwards and forward all over the place. With the Kia Picanto, I noticed that this was more like £30-£40.. now £10 doesn’t sound like that much but that’s £40 a month! And well £40 is £40.. and that’s a lot more to spend on nicer things than petrol. What I found really good about the Kia though was that it was a lot more efficient without compromising on its power. At the moment, I drive a little 1.1 litre and the Kia Picanto is a 1.25 litre engine, so not a huge difference but it definitely felt a lot nippier than my car! And it saved me money! Now to put this in perspective I am not one of these drivers where I can drive ‘economically’; most of the time I’m running approx 10 minutes late so under normal circumstances I usually should already have arrived wherever I need to be. Plus (and I know it’s pretty childish) I like to drive fast.. although I do always try to be safe and stick to speed limits!

Anyway, so to prove my point in the Picanto, me and Mairi took a little trip up to Corbridge in Northumberland (about half an hour from Newcastle.. or an hour from my starting destination: Sunderland since I drove from there to get Mairi). I had about a quarter of a tank (approx £8 I reckon) and found that the trip to and from Corbridge didn’t even cause the petrol light to come on (I still had about an 8th of a tank). Not bad really for a two hour round trip!