Happy Ending Revoked

I can't quite bring myself to write this update... so I'll let the pictures tell the story.

I packed the bus and drove South from the Minervois. I was stopped by the Gendarmes for a random document check, which I passed, picked up a hitchiker who only wanted to go 500m, and was waved to by no fewer than 5 other VW buses (all of them more modern - T25s and later). Just before the Spanish border, I stopped for petrol and a sandwich.

As I was about to go again, my Generator light came on. Now, normally a bit of revving persuades the bus that it actually is charging, but this time no luck... revving would dim the light but it always returned. So I peered into the engine bay. Everything appeared to be working mechanically. And then a nearby Spaniard pointed out the growing puddle of oil underneath... 

Because I was on a motorway, I had to call 112 to get a tow from the service station (we made it 150 metres on this setup before the guy realised how stupid it was and swapped the vehicles over). I shared my lift with two chatty middle-aged sisters and their pet bird.

After the tow, once the sisters were sorted out, we lifted Cecil into the air and took a look underneath. The engine was still starting and running all right but there was a clear leak of oil coming from the gasket area - exactly the same as last time. The mechanic also did a quick test of the alternator but he didn't trust his own results.

Finally, after a lot of argument and discussion between me, the recovery mechanic and the RAC, a tow truck arrived to take me back to the Minervois and to the garage that was supposed to have repaired my bus on Friday. It was a bumpy road and an old french lady shouted at us when we arrived, but at least it was done. My heart sank when I tried to start the engine to park it and found the battery flat. Is it possible that a brand new alternator has met the same fate as the last one?

Well today (Monday) is a bank holiday in France so we just have to wait until the mechanic returns tomorrow. In the meantime, I'm going to get very drunk and snap at people who don't deserve it. Feel free to leave a comment to test this conviction!

A post with a happy ending

I think we're all bored with "my campervan's broken" by now... well it's not any more!

Waiting for attention

What happened this time?

You'll remember that before I went to Belgium I discovered a nasty oil leak at the back of the bus, which prompted me to take it into a local garage in France rather than drive any further. Well, after a couple of days, the mechanic came back with news:

Good - the oil leak was not a serious problem and he could fix it manually.
Bad - the oil had leaked all over the alternator and broken it, so it needed replacing (groan).

I stopped in the garage for a chat and he said he may be able to source a reconditioned alternator for around 300 Euros. Woah there! VW Heritage in the UK have a brand new unit in stock for £119. So he agreed to let me buy it.

The WiFi wasn't working that afternoon, so I did the old-fashioned thing and telephoned the supplier. We had a quick conversation in which I described my bus and the operator assured me that he had the exact part there for only £104. Bonus! I paid over the phone. The next question was regarding postage - their standard service to the South of France was £48. I declined this and instead asked them to print out a label for Parcels Please, who would collect it from their warehouse and deliver it to me for only £17.50. I'm afraid this did confuse them a bit, but they got to grips with it in the end.

Unfortunately this meant another week's wait, so I relaxed again and painted some more yoghurt pots.

My Mum can sell them at the Poppy Fayre

Did it go smoothly for once?

The next week, my parcel was delivered and I tore it open, delighted to see a real life alternator inside. My Dad got his car out and we buzzed down to the garage to present our wares. "Non", said the mechanic. My bus was already in the air with its alternator removed and it was clearly different. We were baffled... if this was the correct alternator, then was my bus in fact fitted with some bizarre non-standard engine?

The bit that was causing all the trouble

I sloped home and got online to check it out. It didn't take long to work out that the problem was simple: VW Heritage had sent me the wrong part. Again. Although I really have to give them their dues - the next day they admitted their mistake and agreed to rush a replacement alternator out by Express service within 24 hours. And so I repackaged the incorrect part, waited at home and did the swap when the courier arrived (apparently following a long lunch).

That was on Wednesday. And today, I'm delighted to share that everything is done. The bus is back with me, shiny and healthy and raring to go.

What next?

Here I come, Barcelona! Monday is a bank holiday in France (yes, again) so I'll make my escape on Sunday when they're all busy drinking wine. Barcelona should be reachable in about 6 hours and it's one of the European cities I'm most excited to visit. Vroooommmm...

Dam Tourists

Escaping Belgium

I breathed a sigh of relief as the train accelerated away from Bruges station and whisked me over the border into the Netherlands. First stop: Rotterdam.

I jumped on a tram at Rotterdam Central station and was dropped off outside a huge 1920s building, a fairly unusual sight in the city centre since most of it was flattened in the second world war. I was very impressed with the hostel which was big and solid and not too expensive. A singer / guitarist set up for the evening and I enjoyed a quiet night of live music and beer before settling into my bunk bed for the night.

Rotterdam's Weird

Sadly I only had 24 hours to spend here so I spent the little time I had walking round the city and taking photographs of the fascinating sculptures and buildings. I was told that, since so much of it had to be rebuilt following the war, the city has moved away from tradition and adopted an 'anything goes' attitude to architecture that allows for some very interesting and adventurous designs. Here's one of my favourite examples:

The Cube Houses - a self contained estate based on trees

Back to Amsterdam

I've visited the capital several times before, so there's an odd sense of 'going home' there. But this time I was going to meet a large group of friends from London, some of whom had been before and some of whom were coming for the first time. This actually made quite an odd combination - who wants to go to the Van Gogh museum again? But who'd want to miss it?

So the mission became very simple: get drunk and go clubbing. This is a dangerous way to behave in a city that's hungry for your cash and will charge for anything (50c to use the club loos!).

L-R Gurvinder, Rob and me

I had booked a campsite on the edge of the city, thinking that Cecil and I could park there and enjoy some luxury for a few days. Of course, with Cecil not feeling too well that just wouldn't work, so I attempted to cancel. The policy of the campsite was to retain 50% of the booking as a cancellation fee, and since I'd prepaid online there was no way to guarantee I'd even get the balance back. So instead I switched to one of their wooden cabins.

It actually proved to be rather a lovely retreat... the campsite was in fact a small island accessible only by bridge and therefore very peaceful. Its facilities included a tiny private beach, canoe rentals and a petting zoo. And the tram stop on the bridge was serviced very frequently, taking just 7 minutes to reach Central Station.

I was in the yellow cabin in the middle

Yesterday I flew back to the South of France and was kindly collected by my father. This morning we drove to the garage and dropped Cecil off to have his oil leak seen to, something that should be finished on Friday according to the mechanic. My new fuel gauge has arrived although we're not sure what to do with it yet.

Is the secret in the diet?

There's a long-standing theory in my family that one's mood is directly related to the food one consumes. In other words, a healthy well-balanced diet will lead to a happy, intelligent and reasonable person in a jolly old mood.

So is that were the Belgians went wrong?

It's not long since I got back from Japan, where I felt that I was surrounded by the most polite, curious, hard-working and considerate people at all times. And of course the Japanese diet is widely considered to be the most healthy in the world with its fish, tofu, rice and often nine portions of fruit and vegetables per day.

So how can the poor Belgians possibly be expected to keep up on their waffles, chocolate, chips and beer? The poor devils have no choice but to be ignorant, selfish, beaurocratic and unhelpful. They just have to scowl and bear it.

A Belgian diet?

Hints at Groezrock


Some of this culture had managed to leak into the weekend's festival, although of course it was impossible to realise it at the time - my natural assumption was that these things were symptomatic of a less-than-perfect festival organiser:

1. Signposting. On arrival, we approached the gate only to be told that we would first need to exchange our tickets for wristbands at a different location. Where was this location? Back where we had come from, at a small unmarked kiosk. Everybody at the entire festival must have followed our same exact steps. And at the unmarked kiosk, oh no, no, you're too early for the festival wristband. You'll have to take a camping wristband but retain your secondary ticket and come back in the morning.

2. Queuing - you had to queue for the cash machine, then queue to purchase drinks vouchers, then queue separately for food vouchers. Only then could you join the queue for food or drink.

3. Just 'avin' a larf - on the first day, I approached a food counter, waved my vouchers and stared at the staff on the other side for a full 8 minutes before they confessed they weren't open. And later I approached a food counter with no queue, under a sign with a picture of felafels and asked for, uh, felafels. The woman told me I had to join the half-hour queue next door and buy them from her colleague. While she stood there failing to sell any paninis.

In Brussels


Brussels seemed like a nice city, with an Art Mountain a pretty square lined with traditional buildings. We had a beer in a cafe that employed a freakishly talented waiter, able to mentally record and relay 20+ food and drink orders with perfect accuracy.

After I said goodbye to my companions, I marched off in search of a youth hostel. My plans were 1. Stumble across one (there were plenty of hotels so why not?), 2. Find a tourist information spot or similar and ask for directions, 3. Charge my phone somewhere and look them up.

Well plan 1 wasn't going so well - I marched up and down a number of streets with my rucksack and started to tire of it. Equally there had been no luck finding tourist info so I moved quickly onto Plan 3.

Walking through the gay hub, an exuberant young man tried to call me into a dingy corner bar. I stopped and peered insight for electrical sockets. The man asked if I'd like a drink and I replied "I'd love one, if I can plug my mobile phone in!". The man, named Kim, passed my request on to the surly landlady who simply shook her head without looking up from the beer glass she was polishing. I sighed and explained my quest. Kim immediately lit up and told me he knew of a great Auberge round the corner and that he would walk me there.

We chatted as we walked and Kim was immediately apologetic about "his people". He had a strong belief that his countrymen were cold and without humour, and confided that he was desperate to escape to Barcelona. I was incredibly grateful for his kindness in taking me to the hostel and tried to buy him a drink but he was gone as quickly as he'd appeared.

That evening I walked into the city centre and took some photographs. I seemed to be surrounded by grumpy faces and stubborn elbows, and had to push my way through a crowd of people who took no notice of me "excuse-moi"-ing my way through. I found a supermarket with the longest queues I've ever seen - in fact before long I'd learned that the technique was to enter the store and join the queue immediately. This way you could pick up items for your basket as you followed the line up and down aisles. Certainly no-one would allow you to browse the items alongside their bit of the queue. I witnessed several people, mostly mothers with buggies, smuggling items out rather than queuing to pay... and many, many more just leaving with nothing, choosing their freedom over nutrition.

In Bruges


I resolved to move on the next day. Capital cities are often unrepresentative and anyway, Colin Farrel had filmed an amusing film in this medieval city near the coast. So I packed my rucksack and caught a train.
On arrival in Bruges I was once again baffled by the system. The train station is out of town so buses run to the centre. But there were queues, ticket machines, bus stops and LCD screens, none of which seemed to relate to one another. Eventually I just pushed my way onto a bus, a technique employed by the locals. It worked.

A pretty van selling waffles in Bruges

At the hostel I was cut off halfway through saying "I have a reservation -" by the emotionless request "passport". This turned out to be fairly typical customer service. When I asked for a launderette I was told "over the bridge", a direction so vague in a city with at least 9 bridges that it took me an hour to travel the 1.5 miles to it. On arrival, I discovered a machine that exchanged €1 coins for tokens. I abandoned my laundry and bustled into a nearby bar who explained curtly that I would have to buy something to get change, so I swallowed an overpriced orange juice. I poured my money into the machine and got the tokens but guess what? No laundry detergent. None in the machines, none for sale, none without walking 2 miles to the supermarket and buying a whole box. My clothes had to rely on whatever suds had stuck in the machine's tray.

The final straw


Two days later I packed up again to move to the Netherlands. I queued up to buy a ticket at the train station but the man in front of me was clearly having some sort of trouble, so I approached the counter next door when it became available. "Oh no, no, that's an international ticket - you have to see my colleague next door". While he sat back in his swing chair, his fingers interlaced across his ample chocolate-and-beer-filled belly, watching the clock tick.

Perhaps it really is the perfect base for the EU.

Rocking in Belgium; waiting for Belgium to rock back

This is technically day 5 in Belgium, although can a music festival really be included as time spent in a particular location? I'm not sure. But here's what's been happening:

Sharing a tent with the ex


Groezrock 2012 was supposed to be a festival spent in luxury. My campervan was loaded with baked beans, my solar panel carefully checked and stowed, my fridge filled with cider and wine.

Well clearly dear old Cecil wasn't going to make it so instead my good friend (we've been split up longer than we were ever going out) sent out a last-minute Facebook plea and managed to secure the loan of a slightly mouldy but otherwise adequate tent. He also found a bed roll (I tried not to think about the circumstances that might lead to one losing their high-quality camping equipment before a festival) and I supplied a pair of my old sleeping bags, originally acquired for Girl Guides so probably not made with the most recent technology.

Thanks to an unexpectedly useless public transport system I finally arrived on site shortly after midnight on Friday night / Saturday morning and found the tent ready-pitched and surrounded by good-natured blokes from Switzerland and England. My original Welsh friend was already pretty blotto so I poured myself a glass of wine, chuckled at him for a while and then bedded down, looking forward to a weekend of punk and hardcore.

Weather


This was by far my biggest fear. All predictions pointed to three days of hardcore rain to complement the tunes, possibly adorned with a hail or thunder storm. And cold. These are not the conditions that sheets of green canvas held erect by poles are best known for providing comfort in. I prepared myself with plastic trousers, plastic bags and even went to the length of lining my purse with tupperware, to protect smaller items such as money and phones.

None of this, however, proved necessary. We had one shower of serious rain on that first night but this was contained within the small hours and had no particular effect on the surface conditions. In fact I could almost call the weather perfect overall - most of the time it was dark and cloudy enough to allow daytime sleeping and to keep us warm at night without actually raining. Win!

The neighbours


Um, well. Aside from our immediate neighbours, who were of course lovely, this was something of a problem.

For starters the wine, the wine that I'd retrieved from the campervan and smuggled across Europe using Ryanair's ample luggage charges, was stolen. From our tent. In the night. Two glasses had been poured from a three litre bag at the time. Of course, it could have been worse - whilst booze at a festival has an increased value it's often abandoned once the last band has played. And they could have taken the Doc Marten's stowed immediately beside the wine, which would have been far more difficult to replace.

No, more than the wine, it was the sleep theft that bothered us. It seems to me perfectly reasonable to drift around drinking speciality beer, listening to live music and hurling yourself into pits of overexcited revellers until 3am and then to return panting with exhaustion to your tent, allowing your body just enough recovery to do it all again.

Nuh-uh.

I consider myself a pretty easy sleeper. As long as I have something warm to snuggle into, I'll curl up in any corner on any surface and sleep through any noises I choose to ignore. At a festival it's often amusing to drift off listening to random snippets of conversation outside, such as the american guy talking about his family's gun ownership history (I'm not stereotyping, his Dad was crazy) or the group of Netherlanders singing the wrong words to a classic tune in unison.

However things you can't sleep through include:
- firecrackers being set off within 10 feet of your head?
- girls calling "Fire! Oh God oh God, FIRE!",
- groups of drunk 16-yr-olds from Manchester shouting, nay screeching, their favourite football chants as if in direct competition with everyone around them. At 4-5am.

I can't just blame it on the brits either - I might not have understood everything the locals said but I could hear them phlegming and pissing between the tents all night. And who knows which nationality of person it is that keeps stepping on your pillow (narrowly missing your head but sometimes catching the hair) as they attempt to stagger from one place to another?

In my days as a Girl Guide I never once woke up to find my tent and all those around me buried in discarded food and rubbish.

The good bits


All this paints Groezrock up to be a disaster but that would be entirely unfair! There was great food, a range of Belgian beers and most importantly rock. The tented stages did suffer from sound difficulties but Lagwagon, Reel Big Fish, Your Demise (I wasn't impressed when my Welsh friend said he was looking forward to this in an earlier conversation), Rancid, The Bronx and Refused were all excellent. We drank, rocked and enjoyed.

Sunday headliners: Refused

Next


So I got back to Brussels yesterday, hugged friends new and old and checked into a youth hostel to shower and sleep. Boy did I sleep! And today I caught a train to Bruges from where I write to you. Tomorrow I'm doing an official tour of the city (oo-er) so I'll let you know whether it's worth blogging about...

Err...

By now I should be writing to you from Eastern France. But I'm not. Here's why:

Waiting for a delivery

As mentioned in my last post, the fuel gauge I'd been chasing for 5 weeks was finally due to arrive yesterday. We had agreed by telephone to pay the cost of an 'Express' courier service that would guarantee its arrival before midday, therefore delaying my departure by no more than a few hours.

However by 1pm there was still no sign of it so I logged on to view the tracking information and see what was going on. Well, everything there looked normal except that it was apparently sent by 'Express Saver' which was only guaranteed to arrive by the end of the day.

I marvelled somewhat at the journey this thing had been taking to get here. Originally sourced in Germany, it had been obtained by a France-based company called VW Heritage who had sent it to their French-speaking agent in the UK office because it was for a 'UK customer' in France. She had then given it to a courier who had flown it from London Stansted Airport to a sorting office back in Germany, in fact very close to the Belgian border where I will be staying this weekend. From there it had, overnight, flown to Montpellier in the South of France and loaded onto a van for delivery. (I would be passing through Montpellier on my journey to Belgium.) So none of this tracking information made me any happier about the delay we were experiencing.

The spare part had done more miles than the campervan

Finally at 2pm I gave up... I had about 8 hours of driving ahead of me and couldn't wait any longer. So, after agreeing with the supplier that they would refund my postage costs, I packed up the van, filled the petrol tank and said a tearful goodbye to my parents and friends.

I knew the bus was low on oil so I stopped at the first big garage shop on my route, about 25 minutes away from the departure point. Unfortunately the shop only stocked one grade of oil which wasn't right for me so I sloped back to the campervan to find my phone ringing. "It's me", said my Mum, "your package has just arrived". Dad kindly offered to drive out and meet me with it, since his car is much faster and it would help to reduce the extension of my journey.

Noticing a problem

As Dad got out of the car, he pointed at the back of my bus and asked, "Did you spill that when you were filling it up?". I followed his finger, confused, and realised there was a fresh pool of oil under my engine bay. Since I hadn't yet bought any oil, this was certainly not down to any spillages. In fact on looking further back there was a clear drip, drip, drip every yard tracing my route into the carpark. Oh.

There were no two ways about it - I could not drive to Belgium like this.

We bought a can of oil (any grade will do at this point) and sloshed it in, forming a convoy back home. My Dad called a bilingual friend of his who happens to be rather an expert in VW mechanics and the friend suggested that the oil seals could be leaking as a result of my engine performing at a higher pressure than it would have done when they had been fitted. He recommended a mechanic nearby and offered to come with us the next day to help explain everything in French.

Noticing another problem

Dad had given me the package that had delayed me so long so I started opening it, saying "let's just check this is actually a fuel gauge", to which we both chuckled. I opened the box, the paper filling, the inner box and the bag... and found this:

Not a fuel gauge

This is a rear suspension brush. It's for my campervan, I'll grant you that, but it's certainly not a fuel gauge.

I actually roared with laughter and tried to call my agent at VW Heritage, eager to share this news and feed on her resultant dismay, but was told that she was on her way to France. Perhaps by a similar 'Express Saver' service..? So now I wait to hear back from her colleague.

Plan B

In the meantime, I still have a festival to attend and friends to meet - nothing will keep me from that. Rather than driving, I will be flying Ryanair to Belgium on Friday for some traditional tent-in-mud camping, then making my way to Amsterdam with hiking boots and rucksack. The campsite I had booked there also has cabins - they're slightly more expensive but, since I've prepaid and can't get a full refund at this late date, I may as well enjoy the luxury.

On returning to the South, my repaired bus and I can go wherever we like. We can drive South into Spain, East into Provence and Italy, or across into Switzerland and Austria. Europe will be ours. (In a fun, light-hearted, touristy way. Not in a Hitler way.)

Will they arrive in time?

Today I leave the South of France to start my journey North.

In the last couple of weeks since getting here I have been on eBay and other websites ordering last-minute essentials, taking advantage of the fact that I had a fixed address to have them delivered to. These were namely:

- The new fuel gauge (of course)
- Second-hand hiking boots
- Foldable wellington boots
- Haynes manual for the campervan
- Travel SIM card
- Basic mobile phone to put the SIM card in

I did well at finding good prices and using gift vouchers to pay for the above - the only question was, would it all arrive in time for my departure?

Boots for £8.07 from eBay Germany

Well, as it happens, as of yesterday afternoon almost everything was here. We had four different couriers knocking at the window to give us parcels and packages... the only thing we still desperately needed was the bloomin' fuel gauge, now 5 weeks after ordering it from an agent.

The agent called. She told me that she now had the part in her hand. I asked where she was: "the UK" she replied. It seems that I had contacted a French company who had deferred me to their UK office, simply because that's where my bank account is registered... they had then proceeded to obtain the part from Germany and have it shipped at a snail's pace to England so that they could charge me a fortune in postage fees to get it back to France. And we were almost out of time.

It was supposed to take "11 days" to order online

However, she said that she had an express overnight service available. For an extra £7 on top of the already extortionate postal charge, I could have it delivered this morning guaranteed before midday. I agreed. And now we wait. There will be no opportunity to fit it, of course, but at least I can take it with me and perhaps meet a knowledgeable person who can help me wire it in.

Friends on a journey of their own

Back in London, when I was squatting in an old college there, I met two beautiful people who were staying in another room on my floor. Jenny was working in an office but was full of tales about travelling the world and working as crew on tall ships. Indeed I would count her as great inspiration for my own journey - she's such a lively and enthusiastic character that no-one could fail to be attracted to her description of the backpacker lifestyle. And Gauthier was working as a postman after his dream position in Ireland had collapsed. You see, he wanted to be a violin maker. He had travelled to Ireland to meet a man and become his apprentice but the man had sadly died before the training could begin.

Well, my parents came for a visit last Autumn and met these guys whilst cooking in the shared kitchen. My parents told them about an old violin maker who lives just down the road in their French village. Gauthier's eyes lit up on hearing this and soon it was arranged: he and Jenny would come to the South of France.

Unusually for an emigration, these two crazed adventurers decided to come by bicycle from London Luton, through Portsmouth and down the entire French countryside to the Mediterranean. They were very much out of contact during this time but we would occasionally hear a quick update online about how far they had travelled and what they had seen. And what a way to see things!

On Sunday we saw an update that they were in Toulouse, a city some 150 km from here. I sent a quick message to say 'hello' and to tell them I'd be leaving on Wednesday. I was thoroughly convinced that they would arrive after I left. But yesterday evening at about 8pm, just before the last of the sunlight could dip behind the mountains, two smiling faces appeared at the front window. They were here! We drank wine and ate pasta and shared stories all night long.
http://instagr.am/p/KP5nCDEt2v/
I really think that my adventure pales in comparison to theirs. They have already achieved so much! With their bicycles piled high and their spirits even higher, they look forward to starting a brand new lifestyle.

Off I go

As soon as the fuel gauge arrives, I'm off. I'll travel East and then North today and settle in a free service station for the night, then make the long push to Belgium tomorrow where I'll be meeting a Welsh friend who's flying in for the weekend. I have a new audio book to listen to and the campervan is tidied and (almost) packed.

I'm excited to be back on the road, of course, but I'll be sad to leave the home comforts my parents have provided. Is there anything more refreshing than staying with family? Where you know exactly how things are done and how to communicate, where you're 'at home' but with none of the responsibilities.

I do have a little something to take with me... I bought a small set of glass paints from a local craft shop:

Yoghurt pots with a little extra detail