In the end, we enjoyed four wonderful days in Exeter.
When we stay with my parents, we usually abandon Beatrix in a campsite nearby for a few days and sort of ‘move in’. A little bit like university days, this also entails arriving with a large pile of washing…. or three. Thanks Mum!
After a great catch up, we’re now heading cross country to a planned stop at Iveco in Dunstable, to sort an irritating red warning light on the dashboard and to get Beatrix a shiny new MOT before travelling north to see family in Sheffield.
We’ve booked a few sites when we’re due to visit friends but learning from our Autumn trip in France, we’ve decided not to book anywhere for the one night ‘in between’ stops. Time will tell how this works out but there are literally hundreds of potential places to stop, even in Winter.
To find them, we prefer to use an app called ‘Search for Sites’ which has proved both easy to use and reliable in terms of the site descriptions and reviews although I know there are a few other out there too.
It is worth pointing out that it’s also started to get quite a bit colder, after an incredibly mild November.
This could make things more interesting as a lot of the ‘in between’ stops won’t offer electric hook up which means we’ll be reliant on our batteries/solar panels for power and our LPG tanks for heating. All of this means, I suspect, that Winter “vanlife” in the UK could be a challenge but we were looking forward to finding out how we’ll manage.
Our first stop is at a place called Wyndham Farm in Dorset. This turns out to be a great first step as access to the site is really straight forward, even for us, and the location is in really beautiful, peaceful countryside.
It’s a perfect Autumnal afternoon with clear blue skies, the bright sun low in the sky and when you really need your woolly hat so we decide to walk a few miles around the local area returning to the farm with a happy and filthy dog!
On the way, we stumble across a lot of really gnarly looking oak trees, the biggest and oldest of which has a plaque and a name. It’s called Judge Wyndham’s Oak.
The oak could be 1000 years old and is named after Sir Hugh Wyndham who was Justice of the Common Pleas in the time of Charles II (1660-1685) and apparently used to sit under its shade relaxing, smoking his pipe and thinking.
Harder to imagine on a sunny afternoon, is that the oak had also been used a gallows to hang some of those people convicted of the Monmouth Rebellion.
I’m always amazed to discover these wonderful little hidden secrets all over the country that we find from the road less travelled.
For our next stop, we were hoping to head over to Oxford. For some reason, it’s a city that I’ve never been to before which perhaps comes from spending my formative years closer to Cambridge. Anyway, I was excited to visit and was hoping we could find a Canterbury style ‘Park and Ride scheme’ that would allow us to stay close enough to the city that we could easily get in for an afternoon. Alas, the best we could find at Redbridge, didn’t get the most positive of reviews and seemed pretty expensive so Oxford will have to wait till next time.
We settled on a site nearby Abingdon instead and ended up at Peach Croft Farm which was perfect for the night. It’s a lovely little farm with a surprisingly popular tearoom and farm shop attached with excellent cheeses and deli produce for sale.
The final stop of the trip was at the Fancott Pub near Dunstable. As this was just 15 minutes from Iveco for the next day it made an ideal overnight spot. The pub was beautifully lit up for Christmas and was really quiet. After a quick drink we headed back to Beatrix for dinner and got everything ready for an early start the following morning.
So we’ve had this red engine warning, ‘EDC’, light on the dashboard for sometime now. Even though I know what it relates to and that it shouldn’t cause us any issues, unless we’re driving in the Sahara…… in summer, it really bugs me everytime I start Beatrix. In fact when I’m driving it’s always there too, beaming at me, just on the edge of my vision.
It reminds me of HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The issue that caused our red light happened way back at the start of our trip to Scotland in May this year. We were just starting out on the A1 when a series of warning messages rapidly flashed across the dashboard then disappeared again to be followed up by the ominous, red EDC warning.
In order to resolve it, we’ve visited a couple of Iveco dealers in England and one in Scotland but despite several confident starts it has always ended up with head scratching, uncertain “uummmmmm’s” and doubtful suggestions about needing to check the wiring. We always end up leaving with the persistent little light still taunting us.
To be fair, as our travel arrangements usually mean we were only stopping in for a few hours of a day there has been limited time to really get to the diagnosis which may well mean taking things apart, so our plan in Dunstable was to be there for a couple of days to have time to get the problem resolved and the light extinguished once and for all.
It’s weird when we drop Beatrix off for work at the garage. By that I mean it’s not like leaving a vehicle for a service as she is also our home so we end up packing a rucksack each and the three of us head out into town feeling a wee bit homeless. Thankfully there’s a great dog friendly café in Dunstable and we head there for breakfast which we extend as long as is reasonably possible before heading back to the garage.
There is good news and bad news from Iveco when we head back over. The wiring doesn’t appear faulty and nor, unsurprisingly, are the parts we needlessly replaced in Scotland however it would appear that Beatrix’s brain (ECU) may have been ‘slightly’ damaged when the original electrical short happened. Whilst having a non-standard brain means she’s a good fit into our little family, it’s clear that something needs to be done if we’re to sort the red light and more importantly, pass the MOT.
So a new ECU is ordered, which has become our Christmas present to each other, and thankfully after some delicate surgery and reprogramming, Beatrix’s new brain is installed and happily it has resolved the issue! Red ECU light gone! She then belatedly attends and passes her MOT test with no observations which is a huge relief and by 16:00 on the second day, we’re on our way again.
The team that look after us at Iveco Dunstable are very helpful as always and we know it’s not easy working on a 14 year old van, especially when it’s been converted into an A Class motorhome.
We load up and pull out of the garage heading towards our campsite in Ashwell with the dashboard looking strangely unfamiliar without our red EDC warning. But wait, what’s this…… another flickering red light with warning message….. no it’s gone….. no it’s back…… I struggle to read the warning message whilst negotiating the traffic.
Unfortunately, the further we drive the more certain the warning becomes and finally it would appear we are now the proud owners of a ‘Check Brake Pads’ warning light.
Bugger.
Slightly frustrated and a day later than planned, we make our way across to the Ashwell Club site, which is a place we love and have visited a few times before. We’re given a really warm welcome on what has become a very cold evening and we’re both really looking forward to the next couple of days when we have plans to see old friends from our work life which will be great.
As for our new red light; well its coming up to Christmas so we’ve decided to think of it as a seasonal, festive light for the time being and we’ll deal with it in the new year!
Hope you enjoyed coming along,
Sally, Toby and Merlin.
PS: For anyone who may be worried, we did of course check out the warning with Iveco who had physically checked the brakes and confirmed that we have plenty left so it would seem to be a bit of a pre-emptive alert.
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