The P0299 code underboost mystery solved!

On By MashleyIn Mercedes Sprinter, Sprinter Camper Van, Urban Caravan4 Comments

A short while back the engine management light came up on the van, no issues seemed to be present which was a bit strange, I hadn’t been on any long drives and wasn’t until I was on one I noticed the issue.

The van would be fine on small journeys below 40 mph but if you ventured above 40, especially going up a hill limp home mode (LHM) would kick in.

When this happens the van will not rev about 3000rpm in gears 1 and 2 and you’ll be lucky to hit 2500rpm in the remaining gears. Essentially the van is running on the 2.1 ltr engine without any turbo, mine is a Bi Turbo so the power loss is really quite noticeable.

Putting a cheap OBD2 scanner on the van revealed the code P0299 which is a turbo underboost code, further investigation revealed this could be a whole heap of things ranging from fairly basic stuff such as a split pipe from the intercooler to the turbo right the way up to a cracked intake pipe which appears to be a very specific problem with OM651 engine on our van.

I physically checked all of the pipes I could see, no splits, there is a massive read pipe that comes off the intercooler and goes to the turbo, no splits on that and I changed the gaskets either end, didn’t fix the problem.

I dropped the van to my mechanic Wayne and he checked out pretty much what I did and few bits I couldn’t get to, he also had a few other people look at it and they all pointed to the turbo being faulty, at £550 for a reconditioned turbo this was the main reason I was convinced it wasn’t the turbo so I decided to try and find a sprinter expert to take a look at it.

As luck would have it, a quick google search for sprinter specialist Croydon brought up MerxWerx, a sprinter specialist that comes to you, perfect! I called up, spoke to Peter who said he’d be round the following day which he was.

On arrival Peter determined there was nothing wrong with my turbo, “rarely go wrong they do” he said, instead he said I had a vacuum leak, somewhere before the turbo on the same side of the engine as the EGR valve and cooler. Unfortunately he didn’t have the vacuum testing kit on him to confirm which part was faulty, he was sure he knew what the issue was but there were four of the same thing and he needed to check using the vacuum tester which one was at fault, he’d be back next Monday with the tester.

Sure enough the following Monday Peter turned up with the tester and happily confirmed the issue was a faulty turbo transducer

Turbo Transducer

Going back to his confidence in what the issue was he turned up with a new one, fitted it, job done!

I’ve since taken the van on a few runs and no more limp mode, van runs like a dream!

The part number for the transducer is A 009 153 31 28 and I cannot recommend Peter highly enough for any puzzling sprinter issues if you are in London and the surrounding areas, http://www.MerxWerx.com

The Flaming 3 Way Fridge….

On By MashleyIn 3 way fridge, Mercedes Sprinter, motorhome, Self build, Sprinter Camper VanLeave a comment

When I was building new Bumblebee I decided on investing in a 3 way fridge as the 12v compressor fridge drained the battery on old Bumblebee, was noisy and wasn’t very big either.

After a good deal of research I settled on an N4100 3 way auto selector fridge which I ordered from Jacksons Leisure. I spoke to Jacksons for considerable time to ensure I bought everything I needed including the correct vents, I was advised by Jackson that the Dometic vents were perfectly fine for the Thetford Fridge install, you’ll see why this is important later.

The vents and fridge were installed in France by Simon, the Fridge had to be raised to meet where the vents were cut (due to the van structure) and the fridge was surrounded by fire retardant insulation, all electrical and gas connections were made as they should be, the Fridge was briefly tested on 12v and 240v but not on gas as there was no LPG in the cylinder. I returned back to the UK assuming all was well with the Fridge.

Covid reached our shores in March 2020 and we all got locked down and for a time I was working from the van as a make shift office, I had the fridge hooked up to 240v to store food that wouldn’t fit in our house fridge, all working as it should do for a good few months. As the lockdown measures eased slightly we decided to head off to some land a friend owns to stay in the van and escape the house, I’d filled the tank with LPG so thought I should test the Fridge before we left to make sure there was no Carbon Monoxide issues when running on gas. I double checked all the connections for gas leakage, no issues there so was confident in firing up the fridge on gas which I did, hung about for ten minutes to make sure there were no immediate issues and then headed off into the house to grab some food, a short time later there was furious banging on my door, my neighbour enlightened me that the van was on fire, luckily we extinguished the fire relatively quickly, the culprit was the 3 way fridge.

The rear of the Fridge post fire

To this day I do not know what caused the fridge to go up in flames, we were very lucky nobody was in it and thanks to the fire retardant insulation the damage to the van wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been.

The aftermath

I immediately tried to contact Thetford who had shut down their UK operation due to Covid, I managed to report it to their US counterparts who took down my details and then sat on it for a good month or so. Eventually after much chasing on my part a member of the UK team, Paul McNulty got in touch asking for more photos of the damage and the fridge.

What then followed was essentially Thetford’s representative telling me that there were flaws in the installation such as the fridge cavity not being fully sealed, the exhaust pipe not being something he recognised and the vents used being incorrect. None of these things would cause a fire. He then went on to question whether something else in the area where the fridge was installed caused the fire, there is only a water pipe running underneath the fridge so not likely to have caused a fire. The fridge was returned to Thetford who concluded there was no evidence they could see that the fridge caused the fire despite it being the only thing on in the van at the time, the only thing in the cavity where the fire started and the only thing in that area that had a naked flame.

The customer service from Thetford was appalling and consisted solely of them pointing out how they were not responsible and would no way be replacing the fridge. I contacted trading standards and they advised me to take it up with Jacksons as per consumer law, they were just as bad and offered to sell me the same fridge at a reduced cost!

Since this incident I bought a second hand Dometic fridge, myself and my mate Adam installed it ourselves in the same cavity using the same vents, gas pipes and wired the same way, it works exactly how it should, I’ve used it countless times on gas with no issue whatsoever which leads me to believe even more so that the fridge from Thetford was faulty.

If you are thinking of installing a Thetford fridge in your van build please bear my experience in mind, I hope never to have to deal with Thetford again for anything, I do have one of their toilets however and thats great for taking a dump in, it least it won’t go up in flames…

2020 – Bit of an odd one…

On By MashleyIn motorhome, Sprinter Camper Van, T4 Camper, travel, United KingdomLeave a comment

So as most of you reading this will agree, 2020 was a bit of strange year. For me it started out alright, I began the year by heading over to France to start work on our new van, did that, came back, we had a baby and I’ve been working from home ever since…

The real baby Yoda!

Little Arielle arrived at the beginning of March, I went on paternity leave and at the end of it the whole company I work for moved to a working from home model as did I, however mine was slightly different as we don’t have the biggest house so I worked from the van parked outside!

Van / home working

The upside of working from the van is that in between calls I could do some work on the van and to be honest, if it wasn’t for the whole lockdown thing it wouldn’t be where it is now. With the help of some very good friends we managed to get the van to a state that we could actually use it to go away in despite also having a fire thanks to a Thetford N4100 fridge which I’ll write a separate article on.

Post fire fridge

Having the van and a network of friends who have land we can stay on meant when some of the restrictions were lifted we could get away and we had a lovely summer.

Camp Penshurst

Arielle took to vanlife pretty well too and between when she was born and now her sleeping arrangements have been modified a few times and are still an ongoing project, it’s been lovely to get away as a family at short notice and not have to really book anything, living not too far from the coast we did a few midweek trips to the beach and it’s surprising how many car parks you can stay the night in!

A car park believe it or not!

Dare I say it, the van itself is almost finished, the fridge has been replaced, the door under the fridge fitted and shelving installed along with a shelf above the cab too.

Just needs a paint and net added
Cab shelf, you can never have enough storage!

It now looks a like a van and comfortably sleeps the four of us

We’ve even had a trip out in the snow!

The kids love the van too, here they are a year into lockdown, it amazes me how resilient they are to it all as is Lauren

Stella was so excited she passed out

Hopefully I’ll be sharing some details of trips out and about and will be updating the build section with all the things I’ve done in the hope it will help others on their quest to build a home on wheels, with the whole covid thing I reckon there’s going to be a rise in motorhome builds!

A New Look…

On By MashleyIn Mercedes Sprinter, pregnant, Self build, travel, Urban CaravanLeave a comment

We’ve made some changes round these parts!

As we have a new van calling the blog the adventures of Bumblebee didn’t seem right, we don’t have a proper name for the sprinter bit it is what we like to think of as an Urban Caravan so with that in mind, thats what the blog is now called, The Urban Caravan.

This time around we have built our Urban Caravan from scratch so there are plenty of articles detailing the journey.

We also have an instagram page, search for “urbancaravanUk” if you’d like to follow us or hit the follow us on insta button to the blog.

We’re still building the van so expect some build related posts before any travel ones and the build pages are being constantly updated.

The van is coming along nicely and should be ready for spring, the weather in the UK at the moment is terrible and everyone appears consumed with fear of the coronavirus so not the best time to travel just yet, the most exciting thing of all is we are adding to our numbers..

A new van…

On By MashleyIn conversion, Self build, Sprinter, T4 Camper, Urban CaravanLeave a comment

We’ve invested in a new van, Bumblebee is still up for sale but I need to crack on and get the new van built before baby number two arrives in March.

So here it is, a long wheel base 2013 Mercedes sprinter, came with side windows which is a bit of a bonus but the rest of the van is empty.

Over the next couple of months I’ll be working on the conversion in the UK and then heading to France for some help from a friend to do all the woodwork and final fix..

So far I’ve stripped out all the ply lining, treated any internal rust and added some sound deadening to panels.

I’ve also removed the bench seat and installed a single passenger seat on a swivel base.

Lastly I’ve made a small start on the insulation.

There is a very long way to go, jobs to do include fitting the LPG system, solar panel, air con unit, maxxair fan, Fiamma awning, bench seat in the rear and leisure battery system all ahead of going to France.

Over the coming weeks I’ll add what I’ve achieved here and slowly begin to archive the content relating to Bumblebee who looks tiny compared to the new van!

Fancy an awesome camper van ?

On By MashleyIn T4 CamperLeave a comment

The time has come for a new van, as a family of three soon to be four we’ve kind of outgrown Bumblebee. It’s a bit of a pain finding places to put things while all the beds are out and we end up losing things for days at a time as we can’t put them back where they are supposed to go.

Also, the days of just rocking up and throwing a few couple of chairs out and enjoying our surroundings are long gone, it’s a massive effort setting up a camp everytime we stop, we need to simplify our setup.

We’re sad to be saying goodbye to BumblEbee, we’ve seen and slept in a lot of places in the UK and Europe, we’ve upgraded and mended various things that need attention along the way, our daughter has absolutely loved our home on wheels, Bumlebee will be missed..

If you are reading this then maybe you are interested in buying him. If you read further down this blog you’ll see we’ve just got back from a 1700 mile trip round France and Bumblebee didn’t miss a beat mechanically, we did get a puncture, you can’t prepare for that. After a full reset of the solar controllers the solar panels are now doing what they are supposed to do, I also gave the leisure battery a good charge using a 7 stage charger, just something I always do when I get back from a long trip.

I’ve also changed the oil, oil filter and air filter ready for his new owner, the van comes with a set of roof bars a black and yellow VW duvet set. Below are some recent photos of the van, if you are interested you can find the eBay advert here

The final leg

On By MashleyIn Beach Camp Yelloh, Rene Oltra, Cap D’agde, Travel, Le Shuttle, T4 CamperLeave a comment

Things at camp naked worked out quite well in the end, we liked it so much we stayed for about a week. We had awesome neighbours, Leanne and Kevin, hopefully we’ll head up to Newcastle sometime and meet them for a drink.

Stella met who she described as her honorary grandma, a lady called Lynda. Lynda and her husband Stewart were both lovely and invited us round to theirs for a drink one afternoon which we gladly took them up on, it was a lovelyafternoon and we swapped email addresses to keep in touch.

Stella really enjoyed the beach and even ventured out onto a lilo with me and Lolly, she really got the hang of being in the sea.

She also quite like me digging holes for her to sit in and be buried.

Aside from the beach there isn’t really very much for Stella to do so we decided to move on and try and find somewhere that caters more for kids, we consulted the ACSI campsite book. We checked out one place but it didn’t look all that and the surrounding area was pretty run down so we drove on to this place.

It’s a Yelloh camping site which in season is very expensive, as it was out of season the pitches were considerably cheaper. We were offered a number of options and eventually settled by a spot by the beach which would eventually slightly regret.

I spent a little while getting set up while Lolly took Stella to the waterpark. Stella loved the waterpark and was exactly what we wanted for her.

There was a designated small baby pool which she could splash about in, there was a lazy river she floated around while in her inflatable ring, a jacuzzi we all hung out in, there was also another pool upstairs which Stella loved jumping off the edge of into one of our arms and swimming from one end to the other in her ring.

There is an on site cocktail bar and restaurant that we visited on our second afternoon there, I had a steak and Lolly had mussels, it was OK but expensive for what it’s was.

I also discovered they sell my absolute favourite Belgian beer on tap which was an excellent surprise, wasn’t cheap though, 6 euros a glass…

That night there was a beautiful sunset and I sent up my drone to get a picture.

When we first arrived we found a bar which was part of the complex called the Tiki bar, it was closed but a couple of days later we ventured back there and it was open, it dawned on me that i’d taken hardly any pictures of Stella and Lauren together so I grabbed a snap of them both sitting on one of the swings they had at the bar.

We didn’t really do to much at Aloha, it was nice to relax and watch Stella enjoying herself in the waterpark or trying to bounce with the bigger kids on the bouncy castle.

There are a lot of Germans at this site and they tend to head for the more static accommodation which looks lovely.

I also noticed the kids here were quite unfriendly. Stella would bowl up to any kid in the park or on the bouncy castle and say hello and they all just looked at her like she was an alien, I felt really sorry for her especially as everywhere else we go so many people make an effort to talk or smile at her. Most of the adults were the same to be honest, nearly every site we have been to people have been quite cheerful and made an effort to say good morning or hello, few and far between here, I’m not blaming just the Germans either, everyone was like it except us which I am sure got on peoples nerves!

Right by reception there us a little wooden house for kids, Stella went mad for it and I got a really nice picture of her in it.

Toward the end of our trip here I put up the awning lights which I’d forgotten to put out for the entire trip, they looked nice at night.

It was a lovely little spot we had but the wind blew terribly and there were mossies everywhere, they particularly liked me 😦

After 5 nights it was time to pack up and head out, when we checked in we had been told the spot we took was one price but it turned out to be about 9 euro’s a night more expensive, even though I explained we had been told it was the same price as the cheaper pitch reception were having none of it which kind of tainted the whole experience for me.

I dropped Lolly and Stella to Béziers airport and started the long drive back, I drove for about 8 hours to a place called Nonancourt where there is an Aire Lolly’s parents use, I got there and was offered some vodka from 2 kids in a car that were hanging around with nothing better to do, I declined and said I’d have a beer once I’d finished getting myself setup for the night. I’d been trying to find somewhere to grab some beers from all the way to Nonancourt and came across a garage that was open, to my surprise they sold beer and I felt I had witnessed a miracle, it was only when I was half way through the second can I realised it was non alcoholic not that it mattered I suppose, just having a beer after a long drive alcoholic or not definitely helps you unwind.

Lolly’s parents weren’t going to arrive at the air until about midnight so I caught up on an episode of Stranger Things and admired my view for the evening.

Camping for three in a motor home for 3 weeks sounds romantic but you have to take so much stuff..

The roof box was also full, now you see why we need a bigger van!

Before I settled down for the night I decided to put in my API information for the tunnel crossing, It was at this point I realised there was an error in my booking, somehow my booking from Calais to Folkestone had been booked the other way round, it was too late to call so I figured I’d deal with it the next morning.

About 7.30 there was a knock at my window and Lolly’s dad very kindly took my tea cup and filled it with tea, I had a lovely chat with Ian and Lindi along with a pain up chocolate and some cake for breakfast, I got a last picture of Bumblebee and Charlene as this will definitely be their last adventure together.

I said farewell to Lindi and Ian, cleared up a bit of the mess the vodka drinking kids left and got on the phone to Le Shuttle.

Whoever designed their ticketing system designed it in such a way in that if there is an error in the crossing direction you can’t just swap them round, you have to buy a whole new ticket and then give them the booking references for both tickets and they will refund you the original booking. That’s all well a good but as I didn’t notice until after hours the day before I travelled, the price had rocketed to over double the original cost. After a lot of negotiating / pleading they eventually credited my original crossing cost to to the new booking which cost me an extra 103GBP but on the plus side I am getting on an earlier crossing. I know I didn’t make the mistake so I’ll be contacting their customer complaints department.

As I write I’m sat at Calais waiting for my crossing,I thought I’d go and hang out in the Aire Lolly and I stayed at back in 2015, it’s been demolished and rebuilt since then!

It looks a lot nicer and tidier but it’s not an aire anymore, there was a burger stall and kebab shop that was really busy with kids, now it’s just a promenade with a load of lined parking, you can still get dodgy mussels and chips from the restaurant that time forget however, it’s still here and not moved with the times.

I’ll be glad to get home if not just to sleep in my own bed and drink a decent cup of tea, how very British!

We’ve covered about 1700 miles this time round and apart from a puncture Bumblebee has performed flawlessly cruising at 90mph with ease on the A roads, honestly, as a family we’ll be sad to see him go but it’s been a fitting farewell trip for our trusty home on wheels….

Camp naked….

On By MashleyIn beach, Europe, france, road trip, solar, T4 Camper, travelLeave a comment

On our last day in Mont Dore Lolly, Lindi, Ian and Stella did some sightseeing and I spent some time trying to figure out the solar issues…

I’ve concluded that one of the panels is having problems working in direct sunlight, I know solar panels outputs are effected when they heat up but they shouldn’t stop working altogether, most likely something is heating up and becoming disconnected.

You can see from the picture below I’m getting a voltage that should now charge the battery when the panels are not in direct sunlight.

The manufacturers of the panel, Phoenix universe did call me back and sent me some things to try that may be able to fix the panel, if that didn’t work they also offered me a new panel at trade price which is a very kind thing to do…

Just before we left Mont Dore I saw this car parked up on the street.

I can’t remember the last time I saw an old Capri 🙂

As the title of this post suggests, we were off to a naturist site. I’m not a fan of the whole naturist thing and don’t partake, I genuinely don’t ever feel the need to wander about with my twig and berries swinging in the wind, each to their own I guess.

The drive down to Cap D’agde is about 4 hours and we didn’t leave Mont Dore till about 5 so without any stops, we should have arrived at 21.00. Four hours continuously behind the wheel is a bit much for everyone so we did make a couple of stops and arrived around 22.00.

I hate arriving anywhere at night as I find it messes with your bearings and makes things generally more difficult to find, such as the booking in office. At this point I would like to mention how lovely the staff here have been. Despite arriving at ten in the evening they made sure we had somewhere to stay for as long as we needed, security we’re helpful in directing us to where we needed to be and being cool with leaving the van in a drop off only point till we were sorted. The check-in staff on the gate explained everything we needed to know and when we registered at reception the following day the same helpfulness again.

As you may have read on my blog we stopped at a naturist place in 2015, you can read about it here, I still maintain I wasn’t made fully aware that it was a naturist site! This time around I was fully aware as it was a kind of deal, I get to go to the mountains with my bike and Lolly gets to wander about in the buff getting a awesome tan.

As I mentioned earlier, we arrived at night and as such the naked crowd had got dressed, sort of…

Turns out this is a bit more than a naturist site, as we were trying to find the night office to check in I noticed a lot of people wearing what looked like S & M gear, lots of ladies wearing string dresses with nothing on underneath and a very obvious transvestite which I have nothing against but just wasn’t really expecting.

We were all knackered so I threw together a camp for us to sleep and stash our stuff while Lolly entertained Stella, when she came back she said amongst other things she came across a couple cracking on and a few people standing around them saying, mmm, yes, very good….

We had the worst nights sleep, it must have been about 30 degrees in the van, Stella kept waking up and when we left the door open to let some air through we were both sure someone stopped to see if there was any action going on, we both agreed we wouldn’t stay here for very long.

The next day we decided to give the place a chance, all we’d seen was some odd stuff going on in the evening and a rushed camp which wasn’t the best start. I setup our spot with the aim of staying for a few days because as I’m sure I have mentioned, it’s a ball ache to get everything sorted.

I also got a chance to set up the hammock and setup the washing line as we are in dire need of doing some washing!

The campsite is massive, all of the avenues are alphabetically ordered so it’s fairly easy to find your way around, all of the avenues look like this.

Some of the properties here are amazing, none of them are permanent which is mad considering how grand some of them are.

Our neighbours in the camp are from the UK and gave us the full rundown, basically this place is whatever you want it to be, for example, when you go to the beach, go right for the family side which is still fully naked or go left to the side where people have sex and other stuff on the beach while a crowd looks on, similar thing at night, if you hang around the site not much happens and nothing is in your face, however if you want some action then it’s not difficult to find so I’m told.

We decided to head to the beach but by the time we got everything together poor Stella was exhausted and fell asleep in Laurens arms..

We all had a little snooze and then went to the beach.

The beach is about a five minute ride through camp from where we are. Back home, one of my oldest friends periodically gifts a us cool things her girls have grown out of, this has been really useful for this trip and Stella absolutely loves it, thanks Steph 🙂

Being a naturist beach it’s not the done thing to start taking loads of pictures so I’ll have to describe it, obviously we went to the family side but en route came across a couple of beach bars that look awesome and are part of the resort.

The beach is sandy and the sea isn’t far away, there is a lot of people traffic by the sea, mostly naked but definitely some wandering along from other beaches to have a look at the naked people of which there are plenty to see!

I’ve noticed there seems to be a lot of penis and testicle jewellery amongst the naturist crowd which is mostly displayed on the beach. Some of it’s piercings but others are rings made of metal or leather with your twig and berries bunched up through it, some men hang chains from their necks down to their waists and then connect it up to their goods, very strange.

Periodically a bell rings which signals the ice cream man in the area, Lolly bought Stella a cone which she consumed with a good helping of a sand.

Stella wasn’t too keen on the sea and enjoyed sending daddy to and fro to fill up the smallest bucket in the world with water, she did eventually get in and was really happy when she realised she could walk in the sea by herself while holding Daddy’s hand.

After the beach we headed home and made some food, time for a family selfie!

We’d booked for two nights but might stay for a couple more, there is no requirement to actually be naked and once you get used to people walking about in the buff it’s just like any other camp site.

The one thing that does let this place down are the toilets. Each toilet block that I have found has a tiny toilet for kids, a regular toilet with no seat and squat toilets, there is no toilet roll in any of them, just a hose to wash your bits. I suspect this is because when you are naked there is no place to stash your toilet roll so it’s quite obvious you’re off for a dump (poo for non British readers) and also it means the site doesn’t have to stock them with loo roll. The showers on the other hand are excellent, they are also open and have mirrors opposite them so at some point you just can’t escape being naked.

As you can see below, Stella has no issues with being in the buff, she’s just like her mum!

At this time of year it’s hot, this is the temperature inside the van at about midday

That alone would encourage you to take all your clothes off!

A trip to the mountains

On By MashleyIn Europe, france, road trip, T4 Camper, travel

The day after Ian’s birthday was spent getting everything sorted to leave for the mountains the following day.

There are many things to be done to the house before it is shut down for a few days so Lindi and Ian cracked on with that while I sorted out the van and Lauren entertained Stella.

First thing to do was change the wheel…

Off with the old and on with the new

Once that was done I got the van hooked up to 240v, turned on the fridge to maximum so when we left it was properly cold and didn’t eat up the battery trying to reach a decent working temperature. Both Lauren and I went round the house getting all of our stuff together with the idea being when we came to leave at 11.30 the following day all we had to do was chuck a few bags in the van and we’d be good to go. That night we had a bbq and I took some awesome photos of the Milky Way, annoyingly they are on my DSLR and I don’t have a card reader to get them on to the iPad.

On the morning of our departure I noticed the van was only getting 9v from the solar panel, this is unusual, it should be getting double that. The system comprises of 2 x 50 watt panels wired in series which gives you 100w of power and I usually see about 18v from the panels. Not sure what is going on, fairly confident it’s not the wiring as if it was I’d get 0 volts as the positive is connected to one panel and the negative to the other, without a ground you’d get nothing, that’s what I think anyway, I proved this by removing the – leg from the controller and sure enough it thinks the sun has gone in and 0 volts is displayed, in my mind this proves the wiring continuity, it doesn’t however prove the solar cells. I didn’t have any more time to test as we were already late leaving.

Shortly after we left Ian stopped for fuel, I checked the solar controller and I was now getting 16.4 volts from the panels, weird…

The drive to Mont Dore took a couple of hours and we headed to the nicer of the two municipal campsites in town called Camping L’Esquiladou, it has a pool which Stella loved, facilities are good but the pitches are a kind of magnetic gravel, big though and they have electricity.

We planned to stay for a couple of nights so made our respective camps, chucked some food from Ians birthday on the BBQ, cracked open some booze and settled in for the night.

Morning came quicker than I would have liked mainly because the bread van comes through the camp hooting his horn to alert everyone to his arrival. The queue is something to behold, lots of bed head and dressing gowns. As I was now up and the sun was shining, I could appreciate a little more where we were camped, the view of the mountain is quite lovely.

Ian and I had planned to go out on out mountain bikes while Lolly, Lindi and Stella went into town.

We aimed for the Mont Dore cable car station which was only 5km away. Unfortunately, that 5km was uphill the whole way and in the midday sun, it was proper hard work but eventually we made it to the cable car.

The trip up was as pleasant as a cable car can be, it was pretty much as packed as one in the winter is.

At the top the view is spectacular, there is also a restaurant that sells beer.

Before heading off on the bikes I took the drone for a little fly about, shot some video and took some aerial shots which I’ve yet to process. As you can see from the picture above there are what appear to be lovely trails down the mountain, this was not the case.

The whole way down from top to bottom are paths made from massive bits of gravel, it’s a bit like riding down a really steep slope made of tennis balls, this photo doesn’t do it justice,

In the world of skiing, this is a blue run but in the world of mountain biking, this was rubbish. I managed to get down unscathed but Ian came off leaving a good portion of his leg on the mountain, ripping his shorts and smashing his bike helmet, I saw loads of walkers take a tumble so you can imagine what it was like on a bike. It took us about half an hour to get down and at the end we grabbed a beer, the day out on the bikes had been a massive disappointment, the best bit was coming home down the road we’d cycle up earlier. We did find a few small tracks and a luge that I had a go on, we headed home via the supermarket to grab some beer. Just up from the campsite is a pizza van with a few tables in a small garden with a lovely view over the valley, the pizzas were excellent as was the sunset, it’s bring your own booze if you ever go there.

During our time here the most mentioned word has been “Funicular” because there is one here and Lindi wanted to go on it. You can take your bikes up there and there is mention of a VTT course, Ian and I cycled to the funicular station while Lolly, Stella and Lindi took the bus, before we all left I got a lovely picture of me and the kiddo.

The funicular station is a lovely old building and the funicular carriage is quite nice too.

It takes about 5 mins or so to get to the top and is well worth going for a ride on. At the top there are all sorts of things you can do in summer, there is an rope adventure playground in the trees as well as the VTT and hiking trails.

There is also a lovely restaurant so we stopped for a nice but pretty expensive lunch.

Ian and I set off on the bikes, we found some signs for the trails but no maps. The VTT trails are referred to as circuits and the only one we found was the green which wasn’t particularly taxing and lead us back to where we started, we did come across a nice waterfall though.

We tried to find the red trail but didn’t manage to as the signs are non existent, this is also a ski resort so there should be some way you can ski or ride a trail all the way to the bottom, if there was we didn’t find it and ended up taking a fast road down to the town, Ian enjoyed it I suspect because he didn’t come off and got to fly down a hill, I was hoping for some technical trails that we didn’t find so left less impressed than Ian.

We stopped for a beer in the square, went to the supermarket to get more beer and then realised it was Sunday so the shop would be closed. Luckily we had enough to last the night.

We went for pizza again because it was nice and you don’t have to generate any washing up. Lindi wasn’t overly happy as she had a load of food in her fridge we could have eaten that was probably going to go off. That’s one of the tricky things about this whole motor home thing, you don’t really know what food options will be available when you stop so we generally cater for there being none which means some food does get wasted if there’s a nice food option at your destination.

I totally understand why Lindi was upset about the wasted food, we hate wasting food too but sometimes it just happens.

At the time of writing we have now left the campsite, the rest of the crew are down in the town looking around the spa building and I’m up the mountain trying to figure out the solar issue. I’ve come to the conclusion that one of the panels is definitely not working, the one closest to the roof box, I’m not sure if roof box is partially covering one of the cells which is causing the rest to fail or if the panel is just busted, I can’t see any obvious damage and they should last anywhere between 10 – 20 years. I’ve called the manufacturer to see what warranty the panel has as they are usually guaranteed for about 20 years as there isn’t too much that can go wrong with them. The puzzling bit is that I have definitely seen a voltage reading upwards of 15volts since I noticed there was an issue, I’ve checked all the connections, reset the controller but it’s still doing the same thing. It’s not the end of the world as we’re doing very little off grid stuff this trip but when things break it annoys me, especially if I can’t fix it myself…

The Party

On By MashleyIn france, T4 Camper, travelLeave a comment

As mentioned in the last post, it’s Lolly’s Dad Ian’s 65th birthday.

Much of the day had been spent getting the place decorated for a small soirée kicking off at about 17.30.

In true English tradition, the bunting had been rolled out!

Even the barn had bunting on it.

Loads of lovely food was prepared, I was in charge of the bbq for the day which is a bit of an honour as Ian loves to BBQ and I’m not sure he entirely trusts anyone with the job!

There are no pictures of me actually manning the BBQ so here is a picture of the BBQ and what became the smokers table.

All of the guests are local to Ian and Lindi and are friends they have made whilst renovating the house, some of their friends speak English, some don’t, one of their guests grew up in this house and lives not to far away, they’ve never been abroad, never really left the village..

It was lovely to see so many people at the house, Lolly and Stella made Ian a cake and we all sang him happy birthday.

The day flew by in no time at all and one by one the guests headed home.

The evening ended with a beautiful sunset.

Ian fell asleep in the garden, I helped with the tidying up and Lindi went on a washing up mission till three in the morning!

What started off as a pretty stressful day turned into a lovely afternoon and evening, hopefully Ian enjoyed it.