On the Road Again!

A post simply to see if the Blogit app that I have been using on and off since around 2019 will upload photos.  It did yesterday when I blogged a couple of greyhound photos from my volunteering job. At last. Then when I tried to add a photo to the Bikers Gear Australia blog. It didn't work. So I am now thinking about whether the problem lies with the folder on the phone where the photo is saved that's the problem ... These and the greyhounds are in the "Camera" folder. The jeans in the other thread are the  "Screenshot" folder 📂.

The navigation upgrade hasn't been doing too well.  I spent a few days mapping the early days of our upcoming trip to Spain into the app before I paid for the upgrade. What the **** have I done? It didn't work.  I have already blogged about the offline mapping problem. The maps wouldn't download to the SD card in my phone. This was fixed, in part, when I tested to see if the maps would download to the internal memory. It's not the solution I would choose, but I have enough internal storage to cover it. The next problem has been the sound. The mapping works very well. I can plan routes with multiple waypoints and download to the phone and then navigate. It works really well. Except there's no voice. Why? Most of my tests have been done in the car. We have a Nissan Juke. And there lies the problem. On Sunday I did a test in the motorhome. The sound worked. Just a short run to Dover to get LPG. We had barely left the house when the voice chimed up.  At the time I was h...

Today's jaunt for Molly was to the BP petrol station by Dover Western Docks. Essentially to fill the LPG bottles and maybe a snifter of diesel. But also to give MyRouteApp Navigation one last chance. I set a route and it worked. We had sound.  We are off the Spain in just over a week and have been seeing Facebook and YouTube posts about how cheap diesel is on Spain. Plus that it's getting more difficult to get LPG due to some change on Spanish or EU law. Whatever! Hence the massive 98p spent on LPG today.  As for diesel. It was 159.9 per litre so I decided to make sure we had enough in the tank for the drive to Portsmouth and the Brittany Ferries shop, and enough to find some cheap diesel ⛽ in Spain! As usual the pump clocks over the amount you want. Trying to stop firstly at £30, then £35 led to £40... Eventually I stopped at £42.02. Add the 98p and it's a round £43!!!! So today we have managed around 30 miles. As it was a part fill the Fuelly app won't give a miles pe...

We went to Canterbury for a short rip today to go to Marks & Spencer to look at trousers for me, for the upcoming birthday party for Claire's cousin.  It's not until June but we will be barely back from Spain and France and we go in in about three weeks. One of the downsides of a Peugeot/Fiat based van is that there is a known problem with the passenger airbag ECU. This is caused when the engine battery gets too low andthe unit fails.  It seems on the face of it that maybe they need to change the ECU to have a fail voltage lower than 11 volts!  But I guess it's an earner with the unit being anything between £300 and £600 to relace, depending on where you get one. # So I like to make sure that the engine battery is kept topped up. We have a single solar panel on the roof and this charges the leisure battery and also, via a split charger some of the sun's rays trickle charge the engine battery.  So far so good.  Touch wood and other superstitions etc. We decid...

After the shock that we have damp all over sections of the van, today might have been a little brighter. With JC Leisure no longer being Elddis dealers and therefore not a able to do warranty work to fix the damp, we felt let down by them.  What's the point of warranty that's simply worthless? I emailed Elddis to ask what to do in this case. I can't say they were that helpful as they basically said to look at their website and search for a local dealer. It took them over a week to reply! I had already done that and found Marquis at Gomshall in Surrey.  From home it's about 85 miles. On their website it says that they will undertake warranty work for owners that bought elsewhere. There is a cost though. Today, we went across there for a 2pm appointment for a damp check. It cost £120.  Whilst they did the job we had a walk Round the "for sales" area. Loads of motorhomes and van conversions.  This was my favourite but way outside my price range until I win the lo...

Fack me! The wallet took a bashing a week ago with the services and checks and today it's another wallet smasher! Today it's taxing the vehicle.  I have done it for six months so that in September we can do the year and move it to a different time of the year to avoid this year's big bill!   There's not much we can do about the insurance as it will always need renewing on April 1st! As with all insurance it seems the UK motorist is being fleeced right, left and centre.  The renewal with Lexham had gone up around £100 over last year.  Last year they were the cheapest cover I could find for me with only one year's no claims in a motorhome.   The fact that I have over 20 years as a named driver on Claire's car, plus have ten years on my own cars, the Punto and Insignia, of accident and CLAIM free motoring has no effect.  It seems that two years without a single claim,  since I first insured Suki, has little or no effect either! Still, hopefully ...

Well. That was a shock. Molly passed her MoT test on Thursday afternoon. No advisories. No problems. Good for another year on the road. The engine service was done and there were no problems found.  I did find it a little annoying to find that when I checked the AdBlue level, by adding more to the tank, that it took over a litre to fill it to the top. Surely as AdBlue is necessary in Euro 6 diesel engines it should have been done. I had already filled the wash/wipe bottle so that it would get through the MoT. Where the shock came in was with the habitation check showed we have relatively high levels of damp in three places.  One each side of the moho roughly where the Peugeot cab is joined to the Elddis body. The other between the habitation door and the rear bumper around where the gas locker is.  These are all around 25% damp. The problem is that JC are no longer Elddis dealers, even though Molly was sold new by them in 2019 and again to us in 2023, They are unable to d...

As we are away for a few nights for Claire's birthday from Friday I wanted to top up the water and check that the heating and water heating was working on gas.  For the first time, I used the left bottle. Previously I have always used the right one. So this one has gas that we filled up with in April last year. Does LPG/GPL have an expiry date like cheese???  I filled the clean water only watering can three times to put some in the freshwater tank. Remembering to turn the water heater drain to closed before starting the water pump... This is where I had to move fast as I heard the tap in the bathroom coughing and spurting seconds before the kitchen. The bathroom is okay but the kitchen tap wasn't over the sink. Luckily Claire's new drainer was there ... Flooding avoided. Next to put the heating to gas. A few seconds and the electric fan started followed by the "which" of the gas. I gave it a few seconds before turning on the water heater. The same satisfying ...

Today, another Friday drive out.  We were up early as I had to return the sleep apnea gubbins back to the Buckland Hospital for 9am.  Once home we decided to get the van sorted and go out for a few hours to make sure the engine battery was in tip top condition. As usual (tough wood!) she started first turn of the key and we were away. Only to Dungeness to park up by the station cafe and have a walk across the shingle to give Reggie and us some exercise. I took very few photos on the walk. Once again the Sony Cybershot DSC-P200 got the nod as it fits in the pocket. Claire managed to forget to take her newly returned to service Sony A300 DSLR. The Battle of Britain Polish Pilots Memorial Dungeness Nuclear Power Station being decommissioned now. We toyed with having a tea in the van, takeaway from the End of the Line Cafe at the station, but instead sat in as they have a dog friendly section. It was very nice looking out of the window across the Dungeness Estate.  There wer...

After a few days of letting them sit in the box we finally got around to fitting them to Molly. Firstly the new short arm mirrors were cleaned. Already in barely a month the left side one has a few scrapes on the edge from bushes and trees!   Fistly we did the driver's side as it has the hole for the temperature gauge.  The instructions are to lubricate the edges of the cover's beading with washing up liquid to ease them into place. This I did and used quite a bit. Then we removed the sticky sided tape covering and pressed it into place. It took quite a lot of force to get the cover to fit anywhere near the right place.  It doesn't fit flush with the edge of the mirror as it is expected/supposed to. We pressed and pushed and this is as far as it would go!  We repeated the same procedure with the left/passenger side. About the same level of force was used with the same result.... I just hope that leaving the tape to "cure" is enough to ensure that they don't fa...

Mouse attacks are very common in motorhomes and campervans that aren't being used daily and moved around from place to place. We have already had a mouse chew its way through the under bonnet piping that feeds the windscreen washers. And then we found a nest, but no mouse in one of the kitchen cupboards - just a chewed up Jeyes cloth and a few droppings. To counter that we bought these mouse repellent balls to hang up inside. I have opened the cupboards and doors to try and give it a chance to permeate the entire interior of Molly. We are on the second ball, but wisdom from one of the forums suggests that using the a puddle of Big Cheese in a bowl and dropping in one of the used balls in it will re-energise it. The spray itself was bought to spray under the bonnet and around the numerous air vents and other places where the mice could be getting in. The van has plenty of air holes that all seem to be covered with wire mesh, but the little bugger still got in and made a...

Rather than spend less on the Milenco mirror protectors that we had before, and that proved useless when the left one took a bang, we have opted for Mirrorguard . Since fitting the new short arm mirrors we decided to save the cost of new ones, should we have a bang, and we would get the more expensive covers. These look much better quality than the Milenco ones. Inside they are lined with foam, "like a motorcycle helmet".  I certainly wouldn't wear one made and lined with this stuff when on the bike! Fitting looks straightforward and unlike the Milenco there's no little plastic bar screwed on to hold them in place. Instead there's sticky tape... I have to admit that this looks a little worrying to me! These also have a thick edge trim. They do look way more substantial than the Milenco covers. Time will tell. We opted for white as well that matches the body colour better than black. For the same price I could have bought silver/chrome.

Today we took Molly back to JC to get them to investigate a problem with the fridge. The Dometic fridge fitted to Molly is a three way version that needs to be manually switched between modes, gas, electricity or battery. When away and on EHU the fridge is switched to electricity and it will act normally. Cooling and maintaining what we set it to. We have used it on gas a few times but if we have EHU it seems best to use it. The problem we have encountered is that after days on EHU and the fridge has been working, and we are on the road, the fridge switched to battery, after about 50 miles the alarm goes off. The battery setting doesn't do anything but maintain the temperature in the fridge. It's this that's seems to be the problem. The power comes directly from the engine alternator. We were prepared to leave Molly there but they had it looked at whilst we waited. It's apparently an Elddis "known problem". The fuse between the engine bay and fridg...

It seems that the job of transplanting the DAB aerial from the old broken long arm mirror was partially successful.   I say partially successful as it's difficult to tell whether the job was successful, or if the DAB coverage in large parts of the UK is still rubbish.  How the Government can even contemplate turning off AM/FM transmissions is nonsense. Even in the car fitted with a DAB radio we encounter many "dead" zones all over Kent and the rest of the UK. At least it works some of the time. The next job is to look for some guards to protest their newness!  The Milenco guards fitted proved superb at stopping the OEM mirrors from getting scratched when passing too close to bushes, but when we hit the hard object that broke the mirror, the guard flew off and did nothing... So it looks as though we might have to look for a different make! 

Day 2 started off in the teeth of a gale. The forecast was for 40 to 50mph winds in the Waterpump CL area. We were the only van to overnight this weekend. Behind where the vans are parked is a bank that at least protects the parked up vans. The wind came around midnight and kept rocking the van for hours.  Once up we would only have around 12 miles to go to Claire's sister's new house. We sorted the housekeeping jobs like the rubbish and black waste. Then were off. The new house is on an almost finished section of a new build site and we found it easily enough and parked up outside. Getting there meant plenty of muddy roads and Molly is filthy. I think maybe it's time for a trip to the jet wash this week. After a few hours and lunch we needed to be away. I wanted to be back to the A12 dual carriageway before it got dark.  We failed in that but not by much. The roadworks on the A12 weren't as bad southbound as they were in Sunday. We stopped again at Thurrock...

On the road only 15 minutes later than planned at 1015.. The satnav said a little under 3 hours to do the journey. We knew with a stop that this would be a little longer. Going was good except for two sets of roadworks on the A12 and the winding roads once we went off the A140. We did have a stop at Thurrock Services for Reggie's comfort break and to get some lunch for us, sandwiches from Greggs, and a coffee. It rained most of the way up. There was an accident on the A14. From the damage to the car and the ripped up vegetation on the central reservation it looked as through there had been a 💥! The roads between the A140 and the CL  went through villages with lots of standing water and huge floods.  Nothing too serious though. We arrived on site about 2.35pm and setup the ramps and EHU. Time for tea and a mince pie whilst I set up the TV.  Dinner tonight will be a couple of ready meals in the microwave. Tomorrow we go a few miles to visit Claire's sister. ...

One of the problems with Molly, and her predessesor Suki, is inflating the tyres and even checking pressures. The tyre valve rubbers really need to be longer. Even with the cutouts in the wheel trims it's still difficult to get the pump on to it. So the answer. An extension. There were loads on eBay and Amazon for permanent fixture onto the tyre valve but these were not what I wanted. I Googled and saw this. For less than £5 it was a bargain. I screw it onto the tyre valve and have plenty of room to work, getting the pump connected with the minimum of air loss. Thoroughly recommended. Mine came from: https://tyre-equipment.co.uk/products/nickel-plated-brass-tyre-valve-extension-155mm

After the little contretemps with something hard that broke the left (passenger) side mirror last month, we have finally got it fixed. Instead of simply buying the very expensive Peugeot OEM original, I was recommended a pair of pattern parts from Amazon. These are also called short-arm mirrors as the arm that connects the mirror head to the door frame is about 3 to 4 inches shorter. They actually work well and on the drive home from JC in Rye I had no problems at all. They are a matched pair. The only question mark was relocating the DAB antenna 📡 from the damaged left mirror to the new one. The radio worked okay on the drive home so that seems successful too. It wasn't a cheap job. Avoiding a head on collision 💥 with a truck cutting a bend has cost me money. And a lot of it! Time will tell if being 6 to 8 inches narrower will be an improvement when it comes to narrow roads combined with unruly and uncut hedges and of course, truck 🚛 driving assholes cutting corners and bends. ...

The trouble with planning the first few steps of a trip that's about 150 days away is that it's easy to over think it. Over plan it even. It's also easy to think of somewhere to go and then change your mind. My original thinking was a kind of loop. West from Bilbao and then down through the Picos d'Europa into Portugal and then back across north of Madrid to the Pyrenees and across on one of the passes or tunnels and back through France to the Channel. Two dates are fixed. The ferry from Portsmouth to Bilbao, and the return Eurotunnel home.  What happens in the middle is all negotiable. My initial searches haven't been very successful in finding camping sites or overnight stops that appeal to me along the northern coast.  May might also be a little too hot for Reggie to venture to the southern coast, the Mediterranean, but Portugal still excites.. As we count down things might become clearer. And we have to get a vet to do Reggie's worming and stamp in his pet p...

Recently Caravan Club members were told that there would be a voucher allowing them a free night at a club site. The voucher needed to be used for a booking between New Year and March 27th. I had a look through for places within around 200 miles for a two night stop. It was harder said than done. Many sites are closed in winter.  In the end I found that the Seacroft site at Cromer on the North Norfolk coast opened in mid-March and so I booked a couple of nights. I had wanted to book something around Claire's birthday in late February. At the moment this will be our first trip of the year. https://www.caravanclub.co.uk/club-sites/england/east-anglia/norfolk/seacroft-club-campsite/