Category: VW Campervan

Bye Bye DRL’s – Hello being able to see….

On By MashleyIn Camper van, T4 Camper, Urban Caravan, VW Campervan, vwt42 Comments

One of the things that attracted me to Bumblee when we were searching for our Urban Caravan was purely cosmetic, the lovely looking Audi style day running lights or DRL’s for short, here they being modelled by Bumblebee.

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Whilst they look very nice and are quite expensive to buy they are rubbish as lights. Visibility at night is dreadful, so much so we can drive around at night with the full beam on and nobody flashes us, true story. I thought it might be the bulbs so invested in a set of H1 Osram night breakers, they marginally improved the situation.

There are a number of wiring looms you can buy that allegedly improve the situation specifically for DRL’s with projector style lights by combing the side lights and full beam or by increasing voltage to the bulbs, the problem you run into is by increasing the voltage to the bulbs you raise the bulbs temperature which in turn melts the projector cover and combining the side lights and full beam is only helpful when you have your full beam on, not really a solution.

I spoke to Martyn at Travelvolts who confirmed I had done pretty much all I could do and the only way to see an improvement would be to go back to standard lights, fit an upgrade loom and night breaker bulbs so, after a year and a half of bad night time driving it was time to take the plunge.

After doing a bit of research I bought the following from eBay and Amazon.

Headlights

Indicators

Bulbs

I also bought the headlight upgrade loom kit from Travelvolts, you can buy something similar from other places but I trust Martyn and his products so I bought it from him.

First things first, out with the old, you have to remove the front grille which is held in place by four screws, two at the top and two in the lower grille, it then just pops out.

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Once this is done you can unbolt and disconnect the headlights, quick nod to the previous owner or whoever fitted these for maintaining consistency with their poor work, both headlights were held in with 2 bolts instead of four..

Undo your bolts and unclip your bulbs and the lights come out, this is what you are left with.

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I came across what I think are the self levelling motors for the lights, one was connected to one of the DRL’s and the other wasn’t, I removed them both as my new lights have no way to connect them. Once you remove your lights you are left with a few extra plugs, I taped them up as I felt that would be helpful.

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At this point I slotted together the indicators and headlights, I then fitted the bulbs and attached the wiring loom upgrade to the bulbs, this makes installing the loom a bit less fiddly. I then fitted the lights with four bolts for each, I had to pack the drivers side light out a little near the bottom with washers so it sat straight.

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Last thing to do was hook up the loom using the instructions I downloaded from Travelvolts and test the lights before putting the front grill back on, all working first time, marvellous.

I then took the van to the hand car wash as it was filthy.

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I’m really pleased with how they look, the smoked indicators tie in with the smoked rear clusters and the main lights IMO look better than the old DRL’s. I waited for nightfall and took the van out for a drive to see if the visibility had improved.

In hindsight I wish I had taken a visibility before and after picture for comparison, I cannot tell you how much of a difference this has made, dipped beam visibility has greatly increased and full beam is bonkers, you can see miles ahead, the bulbs give off a nice white light too, not quite Xenon but not far off, the light temperature also matches up with my fogs!

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If you are thinking about swapping out your standard lights for DRL’s my advice would be save your money and upgrade the looms and bulbs instead, maybe buy some smoked or clear indicators if you want to add a custom look.

The total cost of this came to approx £170.00, the old DRL’s will be going up on eBay and I reckon I should get £100.00 back for them so with any luck, this will only of cost 70 quid, money well spent!

 

 

Re-Insulating Bumblebee

On By MashleyIn Camper van, T4 Camper, VW Campervan, vwt4Leave a comment

One of the first things we did when we got Bumblebee was install central locking to both passenger doors and the sliding door, when me and Andy took the panel off the sliding door to fit the central locking motor and contacts we came across the worst kind of insulation you can use for a van, bog standard loft insulation aka lagging.

It’s bad for a number of reasons but the main one being it absorbs moisture, either from cooking or making tea in the van or just breathing, soaks it all up and rusts your van from the inside out, it had to go.

It’s taken me a while to crack on with it mainly because it’s a mission, every panel has to come off, the electrics have to come out, cupboards undone, rock and roll bed out, massive ball ache, however, after the leak in Seaford and an impending 11 days in Wales at the end of March where it will rain I had to fix the leak so I figured I might as well take a couple of days off work and sort it all out once and for all…

First thing to do was decide how to insulate the van, there are a number of methods to choose from, some involving bubble wrap, others using recycled plastic bottles, the cheapo option the previous owner went for or the method I chose, Thermoliner.

The principal behind Thermoliner is you stick it on your van and then put your panels back creating a void between the outside of your van and the inside, the thermoliner greatly reduces the transfer of the climate outside of your van to the inside and the climate inside of your van to the outside, I bought a roll of Thermoliner 8m x 1m from Harrisons Trim Supplies, you can read all about it and order it from here, I put my order in and it arrived the next day, sweet.

First job was to empty the van, it’s an eye opener when you take everything out of the various nooks and crannies and put it in all one pile!

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Next up was to get the bed out, this is held in by four bolts, the two nearest to the tailgate are easy to get out as I could hold the spanner on the bolt with one hand and use a socket to undo the nut with the other, there was no way I could do this for the two nearer the cabin, i’d need 8 foot super bendy arms and hands with grips like the jaw of a pit bull, luckily I had some g-clamps, I was quite impressed with my impromptu ingenuity!

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I managed to get the bed out by myself and left it on the drive and set about removing the first panel.

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As I suspected, full of crappy lagging, I removed that and set about replacing it with Thermoliner. I used the panel I removed as a template and marked out the amount of Thermoliner I would need. It was pretty cold and I was a bit worried the Thermoliner adhesive back wouldn’t stick, not a problem, it stuck without issue.

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Thermoliner is my new favourite thing, it’s really easy to work with, it’s easy to cut and sticks to anything, before I could make any further progress the cat came to inspect my work.

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Once she was happy she tested the tailgate to see if it could take her weight, no issue there.

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Once the cat jogged on I set about undoing all the electrics and unbolting the cabinet so I could access the panels behind it, as you can see there was a small bit of awful insulation, one whole panel was left completely exposed.

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I came across this which I think is part of the vans previous life with the AA, I have no idea what it does but disaster would probably follow if I removed it so I left it where it was.

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In about an hour the drivers side of the van was properly insulated.

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Once i’d replaced the panels on the drivers side I moved the cabinet back and secured it properly, the whole thing was held in place with 4 screws, there are also a number of internal brackets that might as well have been held together with blue tack, how none of this came apart is beyond me, I spent about an hour reinforcing all the brackets and securing the cabinet to the walls and floor of the van, it’s solid now, how it should have been in the first place!

Next up and the last job for Thursday, the roof.

Trim clips are my new least favorite thing, what a pain in the arse they are even with a trim clip removal tool.

Since we’ve owned the van there has been an ugly remnant of the Bumblebees previous life as an AA van i’ve been meaning to remove.

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I don’t know what this actually did but it as you can see it’s covered in filler, I guess this was supposed to seal it from the elements, didn’t really work…

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This is about where the drip came through when we were in Seaford, I cut out the cables and undid what ever that thing was leaving a nice hole in the roof!

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Ideally I would have cut out the rust and welded a plate in to cover the gaping hole however I can’t weld and didn’t have any plates hanging about so i did the next best thing, I wired brushed off the rust and sealed the hole internally with Dynamat and externally with all purpose clear silicon, should hold fine!

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None of the roof had been insulated, it is now !

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I finished up for the day and left the roof panels down overnight to dry as they were damp from the leak.

The next morning I put the roof panels back up, rewired all the electrics, insulated the tailgate and sliding door, I didn’t take any pictures as to be honest there are only so many pictures of insulated panels your readers are going to be interested in…

It took me a day to do that and I was nearing the finish line, all that was left to do was put the rock and roll bed back in along with all the stuff that lives in the van and decide what to do with the Thermoliner I had left.

I decided to insulate the cab doors, why not…

Before

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After

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Lolly helped me get the bed back in and I ferried all out “essential” stuff back to the van.

The van is now in my opinion properly insulated and should be leak free, I took a picture of all the lagging I took out of the van along with the left over AA cabling..

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I’m glad I finally got round to insulting the van myself, i’ve been meaning to do it for ages and I hope it keeps us nice and warm in Wales, i also feel I can put a built not bought sticker on the van as i’ve pretty much properly redone everything the previous owner put in.

If you are reading this and starting a build i’d really recommend Thermoliner for your insulation, it’s easy to work with, good value for money and delivered pronto if you order it form Harrisons.

 

 

 

Valentines camping at Seaford

On By MashleyIn Camper van, T4 Camper, travel, United Kingdom, Urban Caravan, VW Campervan, vwt4Leave a comment

What shall we do for Valentines I asked Lolly, lets go somewhere in our urban caravan she said, we’ll book Friday off and go for a long weekend, sounds like a plan I replied.

We set a rule that for short weekends away we wouldn’t travel more than an hour or so’s drive, Lolly had also mentioned visiting Beachy Head so I figured somewhere near there would be a good place to stay and so it was I came across Seaford.

I chose Seaford because i’d never heard of it, it isn’t too far from Beachy Head and there was a campsite that was taking bookings in February, most places don’t begin their season till the beginning of March, it’s also just over an hours drive from where we live, perfect.

The campsite stayed at is called Buckle Caravan Park and the description amounted to ” No frills campsite with few rules, like camping in the good old days” – that sounded alright to me.

The first thing that hits you when you arrive is the place looks a bit run down although I am sure it looks completely different if the sun is shining, it’s also a little strange that the campsite warden has built a moat around his twin static caravan and decorated the garden with scallop shells, odd garden ornaments and a concrete pig. The reception building is also a little odd looking completely out of place with everything around it, despite it all looking a bit rubbish we were warmly greeted, shown our pitch on a map, educated about the electric gate and told the shower and toilet blocks nearest to us were being repaired / renovated so we’d have to use the ones near the office, there is also a club house open on Saturday with a bar which we were more than welcome to use.

I also didn’t have enough cash on me to pay for our stay and the deposit for the key fob, no worries, pay tomorrow said the guy at reception which was nice.

We made out way to our pitch, parked up and made a brew.

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As you can see, there are a lot of caravans, most of which seem to be there all year round and as such most appeared empty, the campsite was really quiet, looking ahead is a grassy knoll and beyond that a pebble beach and the sea, it’s not that pretty so I didn’t take a picture.

I’d downloaded a walk which was the first one on this page and on the basis it was dry with no rain forecast we drove to East Dean, parked up at the Tiger Inn and set off on our walk. The guide is a quite old and a little out of date but most of the landmarks still exist and we didn’t get lost, bonus.

We stopped at a national trust spot called Birling gap, we grabbed a beer and a cider, used their wifi and then made our way to the beach which you access via metal stairs from the top of the cliff.

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There are lots of signs saying that the cliffs are a little unstable and there are also the biggest lumps of chalk that are very handy for writing on metal stairs should you feel the need to do so…

We hung about for a while, grabbed a selfie and then headed on our way..

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From here we headed uphill toward the Bell Tout lighthouse, built by a chap called Mad Jack Fuller who had an addiction for building follys he believed he finally made something useful, however he built his lighthouse on the fog line so the light didn’t shine very far when it was foggy and was useless to ships avoiding the cliffs, it’s now a B&B..

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We picked up the pace as the sun was beginning to set, from the Bell Tout chipped down a hill, along a roman road and back into East Dean where we started, our plan was for dinner at the Tiger Inn which has what appears to be a real Tigers head on the wall, i’m not a fan of stuffed animals but i’ve never seen a stuffed tigers head before and felt compelled to take a picture of it.

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The pub is on the green at East Dean, it’s a hotel as well, there are a host of locally brewed ales, a warm fire and a great menu, we had baked camembert to start and then the Tiger Inn burger, I got all excited about the local ales and drunk one of each, I was too drunk to drive home and we were going to stay in the car park, Lolly however elected to drive us home and only had 2 halfs and 2 pints of water. I’m glad we went back to the campsite as it meant I could hook us up to 240V and get the heater going, would have been a bloody cold night otherwise.

We also got to catch up with one of my old raving buddies and best mates Rob, he lives just down the road in Peacehaven and met us for a Guiness.

During the night the rain came and it didn’t stop, we woke in the morning and discovered the van has a leak coming from the roof, most likely where the AA lights were mounted. We decided we’d head home instead of staying another night as the weather wasn’t set to improve and everything are wanted to do meant we would be out in the rain. Before we left we had a shower, whilst the facilities weren’t the best looking they were clean and the water hot.

We drove into Seaford in search of breakfast and came across a place called Sub Station, what a lovely surprise, proper nice breakfast in a sub and the owner is great fun too, left him looking up on Google “was Mary Berry fit” after confirming old Mary has had a bit of botox…

Other than the nice cafe Seaford is a bit rundown, I doubt it’s on any must visit list which is why i’ve never heard of it, it’s not that far from Brighton, Hastings and Eastbourne which are more well known.

What I will say is the countryside around Seaford is really quite beautiful so it was worth staying there for that.

It was still raining when we left Sub Station, we stopped off at a place called paradise park, had a wander round there and then headed for home looking forward to sleeping in a warm bed with no leaks!

I probably wouldn’t go back to Buckle but I wouldn’t say avoid it either, 20 quid a night for a hard standing pitch right by the beach is great value and i’m sure when the sun is shining it’s a completely different place, if you fancy a cheap night away “near” Brighton and Hastings give it a go !

A trip to Coldharbour. 

On By MashleyIn Surrey, T4 Camper, travel, United Kingdom, VW CampervanLeave a comment

Last year Lolly and I bought each other a mountain bike. Whenever we go away we take them with us, occasionally we just hop in the van with the bikes on the back, drive somewhere that entertains mountain bikes and go for a ride.

About 45 mins drive from us is leith hill and just beyond that is Coldharbour, a tiny village you can easily end up at if you go for a walk or ride around Leith Hill. All around this part of the world are bridle ways and tracks for walkers and riders as well as horses and the odd crosser that’s not supposed to be there.

We started at the plough inn as you can park up there and it’s a good reference point if you are using the map below.

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The idea was to go and do some of the trails and then grab some lunch. Didn’t quite go to plan, the next couple of hours ended up as a kind of freestyle ride / hike with the added fun of potentially wandering into a pheasant shoot, luckily we didn’t but we did think someone might mistake us for some wildlife and crack a shot off.
We came across some pretty cool woods well worth a photo of!

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The trails on the map weren’t that well signposted and as you can see below we went a rather odd route.

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Before setting out I booked us a table for 15.00, past experience of the Plough Inn and trying to get a table for lunch was a bit of a failure due to it being heaving. As luck would have it our random ramble brought us back to our starting point at exactly 15.00, below is stravas account of our adventure.

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While I put the bikes back on the van lolly went to meet the two horses and their steer that rocked up about the same time as us.

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The pub was pretty quiet when went to our table but very quickly all the tables were taken. The plough does some great local ales and some pretty potent cider too, we were both fairly hungry so we dispensed with starters and went straight for mains, I had the plough inn burger with added cheese and Lolly had-the same.   The burgers were excellent, really tasty, good size portions and not particularly expensive.

We shared a chocolate brownie with chocolate ice cream for dessert, it was epic!

The Plough Inn is nice pub with a mix of walkers, cyclists, and families, there is a nice garden for when the weather is better and dogs are welcome all year round, if you’re ever in that neck of the woods give it a visit.

We had a really good day out, we’ll be back later in the year to try and find the trails and give them a good hammering.

As is customary with my travel reports, a picture of our van, bumblebee parked up near the pub, the namesake of this blog!

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Van-X Curtains

On By MashleyIn Camper van, T4 Camper, travel, VW CampervanLeave a comment

There are numerous options for blocking out heat and light and retaining heat in your van when you’re out in the wild. Our current solution is the thermal window blind variety with the suckers you have to lick and stick to the window.

The issue I have with them is they are a ball ache to get out and stick up. Especially if you are just crashing in the van because you got drunk or you are doing a spot of wild camping, ours fall down a lot too.

I’ve been looking at the Van-X curtains for a while and if you believe the hype then the hype says they are the best van curtains on the market.

After our trip to France and a few other spontaneous nights away I’d managed to convince Lolly that curtains in the rear and tailgate was the way forward, she agreed so I cracked on and ordered a set of the premium line T4 tailgate and side window curtains. I ordered on the Friday and they arrived on the Monday.

Christmas happened and then I got a chance to fit them.

Each curtain comes in its own box with its own fittings. I started with the window above the cooker and sink.

Here’s what it looked like before.

You have to look up the instructions online, they are pretty straight forward, these things come in handy.

As different vans have different size windows you’ll need to cut the rails to fit yours which is no real drama.

The thing I found the most difficult was getting the supplied self tapping screws into the body work, I broke two drill bits I was using as pilots but persevered and got there in the end. I also found the curtain stops that plug into the  end of the rail a pain to get in, I pushed both curtains on and left the the last screw out so I could bend the rail a bit to get the stopper in as shown below.

Once the stopper was back in I put the last screw in and pulled the second curtain back to where it should be.

The curtains also totally block out any light.

The curtains also come with a tie back, I didn’t put them in as I don’t think I need them plus the light was fading and I still had two curtains to go, this one took me an hour.

The next curtain went up fairly quick, when you do the sliding door curtain you need to pay attention to the rail.


As you can see, one channel is wider than the other, on the previous window you fix the rail with the wider channel toward the window, in this instance you fit the wider channel away from the window, you do this so you can cut a bit out for the sliding door lock.

This means the curtain can be pulled without fouling on the lock.

This one took about 40 minutes to do, a bit quicker than the last one.


The tailgate curtain has one regular rail and one that doesn’t look like any of the others, the regular rail goes at the top of the tailgate and other one goes just below the window and fixes to the wooden panel, took about half an hour to install.


I’m very happy with the way they have turned out. If I can put these in anyone can!

We tested them out a couple of days after, we went over to friends and stayed on their drive after a few beers.

The curtains lived up to the hype, they kept the cold out, the warmth in and blocked out any external light, as you can see we still have the thermal curtains in the front, more to block the light out than anything, maybe a van X cab divider curtain is the answer!

Anyways, from my experience I would gladly recommend these curtains, well priced, well made and well awesome!

Digging deep. 

On By MashleyIn Faults, T4 Camper, VW CampervanLeave a comment

So as you’ve read earlier, the starter motor went on the van as we tried to get off the Eurostar, 350 euros to replace, hopefully we’ll get that back through the warranty. 

While we were over there I also noticed the turbo wasn’t doing much and there was a horrible grinding when you turned right. I’d noticed the grinding before we left and put it down to a trashed gator which was replaced, didn’t fix the issue. 

The day after we got home I took the van to Wayne’s, after a bit of investigation he concluded it was the drive shaft at fault so it was replaced, you can see the nice new gator fitted to the old drive shaft which was a bit of waste of time and money, such is life. 

  
Below you can see all the crap inside the drive shaft that was grinding about. 

  

  
As it turned out not to be the gator Wayne fitted earlier he put the drive shaft on and didn’t charge for labour which was nice, it sorted the issue. 

The turbo problem was down to the MAF sensor, replaced that and all is well. 

This round of repairs has cost almost 500 quid though I hope to get over half of that back from the warranty claim. The point of this post is just to demonstrate that whilst the dream of owning a camper van is often a romantic one, the reality is a continual financial investment that never stops, I dread to think how much a classic camper costs to keep on the road, the price tag to buy one is enough to make your eyes water! 

Thank you. 

On By MashleyIn travel, VW Campervan, Writing, bloggingLeave a comment

 It always amazes me that when I write something about our adventures some of our readers like it, even more amazing is people we have never met choose to follow our exploits.

 I have zero writing skills and if you met me in person you’d know I write pretty much as I speak, a south London bloke from Croydon with a slightly cockney accent. 

I enjoy it, I like getting our adventures out of my head and into the blog.  As well as it being nice that people like what I write, I then get to explore what they have written as naturally, I’m curious about the liker. When I visit their site, sometimes I learn something, sometimes I laugh, others take me into a new direction researching something I’d never heard of until I’d just read about it. 

This blog, my readers and the WordPress community have opened up a new world to me and I really like it, thank you. 

Missing the train. 

On By MashleyIn Belgium, road trip, T4 Camper, travel, VW CampervanLeave a comment

Our last morning and we woke to no rain, a bit of sun and a small patch of blue sky, marvellous. We had a few things to see before we headed home so we did our usual morning things, packed up the van and parked it in the campsite car park.

Our first port of call was lidls for breakfast, 2 pain au chocolat’s each, they went down fairly sharpish and we made our way to town. We parked up our bikes by the stadhuis and headed in there to have a look at the gothic hall.


It’s a pretty impressive hall and also the only place you can get married in Bruges, I can think of worse places to tie the knot!

There is a kind of display of coins and notes but understandably, none of it is in English so we had a brief look and then made our way to the Belfry if Bruges.

The belfry is not for the faint hearted, it’s a 366 step climb to the top with a few stops on the way, the stairs are thin and windy and there is two way traffic.

I did take some pictures of the top but they are on my other camera, i’ll add them when I get home.

The highlight for me was being in the bell tower when all the bells started going off, what an amazing sound!

We still had some shopping to do, I was also trying find somewhere that sold a cool little hat I’d seen, food was also required.

After trying various beer shops i’d pretty much given up on finding my hat so we stopped off for some food at a bar we went to the day before, it’s was heaving that day so we’d given it a swerve but today it was ok, we sat at the bar and just out of curiosity I asked if they had any of the Christmas chouffes in stock and the hat you get if you drink three, they only had two left but they also had a hat, they said I could have it for drinking two, result!


We had one each and that was all I could have as I had to drive later, they’re 10% each. Lolly ordered a bush Noel with her food and I had some water. Our food was pretty good, I had Trappist cheese croquet to start followed by rabbit in prune stew with potato croquet, Lauren had scallops in a cheese sauce followed by a Flemish stew, all were lovely.

Time was against us, we still had some beer to buy, a 10 min ride to the van and then at least an hours drive to Calais.

We got the beer, made the van in ten minutes, arsed about with the sat nav and eventually got off to Calais, we missed our train despite my best efforts, no dramas though, we got put on the next one for free.

We had a great time in Bruges, the Christmas market was rubbish but the food, beer, historical stuff and atmosphere of the town was great, when I get home I will update this post with all the places we visited, meanwhile, here’s some pictures of us with beers.


This was near the end of the beer and food night, the beers are starting to take their toll !

On Lollys birthday night I had to order the weakest beer they had as I was half cut when we got there, this beer was cheaper than water….

Proper tourists. 

On By MashleyIn Belgium, T4 Camper, travel, VW CampervanLeave a comment

After a slightly less cold night in the van we got up and had our first shower of the trip, it felt amazing,  after suitable amounts of tea had been drunk we chipped off into town to see some sights and stop by lidls for some breakfast. We forgot it was Sunday and lidls was closed, no breakfast then.

First stop on our adventure was a brewery tour, the brewery is called the half moon or De Halve Maan if you are a local.  From outside the brewery look like any other old building but when you get inside you begin to realise it’s really quite a complex place.


At one time there were 300 brewery’s in Bruges and now there is only one, what’s nice about this one is they have kept mostly all of the old brewing equipment so you get an idea of old vs modern techniques, you also end up on the roof of the brewery looking out across Bruges. At the end of the tour you get a free beer, a blonde called the fool of Bruges, it’s really quite nice and easy to drink.


They’ve turned the old filling hall into a brasserie, the food looked amazing, all that remains of the past here was an old filling machine.


Stop two of the day was the chocolate museum, on arrival you pay your money for the tour and are given a bar of chocolate and invited to help yourself to some giant chocolate buttons, great start!

As you walk in the first thing you are greeted with is an epic chocolate fountain.


You then spend the next hour or so walking between floors learning about the Mayan origins of chocolate, how it fell in and out of fashion over the years and how it was mainly served as a drink before being sold in the form we’re most familiar with today. At the end of the tour there is a quick demonstration of how they make their praline chocolates and you get to eat one of those too. The museum was interesting but we both agreed there was way too much reading to do.

We’d had a late start to the day so by the time we got out of the museum and with nothing in our stomachs other than a cheeky chocolate waffle our thoughts turned to food. Our options led us to a little place that’s more like a museum than a restaurant, it was shut and not opening for 20 mins so we headed over the road to another little place for a drink.

We grabbed a drink and then noticed how they cooked the food here.


All the tables were reserved bar one, a table for two, we abandoned the other restaurant and settled in for some fire cooked grub.

Our table was as close to the fire as we could be!


There is a 3 course meat or fish menu you can have with or without beer for each course, we had one of each with beer!

The food was exceptional, in my opinion the best food we’d had so far and about 100 euros for the two of us..

The only downside to this beer with every meal idea is you end up getting smashed, even more when the couple you are chatting to buy a round, you buy them a round and then the owner buys everyone a round, we were deffo a little on the wobbly side…

For the third night running I have no real memory of the ride home, lolly got us back safely as she always does, we went to bed with full stomachs and fuzzy heads…

Sorted. 

On By MashleyIn Belgium, T4 Camper, travel, VW Campervan2 Comments

Camping at VW was a cold affair, we had no 240 supply so couldn’t plug our heater in. I hope I win the VW heritage comp as in my wish list is a heater that runs off camping gas!

We made some tea, handed the keys to the van over and rose into Bruges for breakfast. We had breakfast at an Indian restaurant that does either full English or continental breakfast, we choose one of each and they were both lovely, halfway through munching the garage called to say the van was done and we should come and get it, a short trip back and we were in the van headed to our campsite.


Finally we are where we’re supposed to be, camping memling, nice little campsite with brand new shower and toilet block, they also said we can have the day we didn’t make it here as a credit to use any time in 2016 which was a nice thing for them to do.

The most important thing about today is its Lollys birthday so our schedule is in her hands.

Our first stop was to have a gander at some windmills, there are only four left, one still works and they sit on the bank of the canal.


From there we went to a museum called Olv ter potterie, a historical hospital complex with its own baroque church and the body of Islebad that after being exhumed after 400 years still smelt sweet, there are lots of historical relics and the church is stunning.


The hospital was run by seven brothers and seven sisters, that changed to just sisters and to this day there are always seven sister resident.

Next stop was my least excited about place which actually turned out to be really cool, the lace museum. Lace was a way the very poor could make a little money, one quote went something like “I’d rather work my fingers to the bone making lace than ask the church for a handout”.

I’d never considered just how difficult lace making is, especially bobbin lace, we watched a video about the history of lace making, how important it was to Bruges and how modern methods can’t copy some of the more intricate designs, there are then examples of different types of lace and the final leg of the tour involves watching some ladies making lace using the traditional bobbin method. The ladies up there most have had a collective age of about 500 but in the corner was one of the ladies from the video, I was going to ask for her an autograph but she looked quite busy.

The last destination was the Jerusalem chapel, it’s next door to the lace museum and is owned still by descendants of the the family that built it in the 15th century. It’s an interesting story of how it came to be, the life and death of Anselm who completed the chapel and why his body is buried in Scotland but his heart is buried here in the chapel, there is also a slightly weird effigy of Jesus tucked away at the back of the chapel, the whole thing is based on jerusalems holy church of the sepulchre which is allegedly built above the tomb of Jesus.

We stayed there till it shut and then went for beers.


This was at a bar called ‘t poatergast, which means monks hole in the local dialect, it’s like a vaulted cellar with 150 beers to try and in this occasion an awesome 80’s soundtrack. We had at least 3 beers and unexpectedly picked up a present for one of our friends back home.


Belgian beer is quite strong, the last one we had was 10%, the Christmas chouff, it was lovely but by the time we left the 10% was working its magic and we both felt a bit sideways, should make riding the bikes interesting!

Our last stop was a restaurant lolly had read about which was part of a hostel called gran kaffe de passage, she wanted to visit as they cooked food in beer, it was heaving when we arrived, we were hungry, we didn’t get to eat anything till about an hour and half after we arrived and the food when it did come was ok. Lolly tried another beer but didn’t really like it, I’d drunk so much beer I couldn’t finish it for her and if I had it would have finished me off.


As you can see by my eyes in this last picture I was well on the way.


We rode back to the van without incident and turned in, one thing I have learnt this trip is lolly is awesome at reading maps, I’m not.

Lolly also assures me she had a great birthday, mission accomplished.