When you live in your motorhome even the smallest things can be an adventure or, depending on your perspective, a real pain in the arse. Something as simple as getting fresh water for a cup of tea becomes much more difficult when it’s freezing outside and all the campsite pipes are frozen until early afternoon. Sometimes I think that because of these little things, however you choose to see them, we’ve come to love our lifestyle and our home on wheels.

It’s early February and before we head to the Alps in a couple of weeks time, we’ve got some tasks to do. The first of which is to stop in at our friends in Iveco to fit some new brake pads. As usual, it’s not quite as simple or cheap as expected but also as usual Beatrix is returned to us with all her issues resolved and this time there are absolutely, no warning lights on the dashboard! Amazing, the first time in nearly a year.

After a short stop at Mark’s nursery, Mill End Camping, which is really looking great now for a CL site, we’re off to Suffolk to see family and friends.

We end up having a busy and really enjoyable week with some great connections with family and our friends which includes us learning to use a Vorwerk cooker, an unexpected trip to see Ipswich Town play football and a classic long lunch in the pub on Friday afternoon.

Completing the count down of the days on our ‘Brexit clock’, means we can head back into Europe, we say ‘Au Revoir’ which is a bit sad but it’s also really exciting to be on the road again.

Our now comfortable departure routine sees us stay over at Canterbury’s New Dover Road Park and Ride. As Sally has a workday booked before we leave, I finally take a trip into Canterbury to go and see the Cathedral.

I probably say this every time we stay here, but I really love what the city has done with the Park and Ride for motorhomes. It’s super easy to jump on a bus and get into the city and by making it easier for motorhomers, we head in and spend our money in the local area. It’s such a winning idea, I’m always frustrated that more cities don’t do the same thing.

Canterbury Cathedral certainly exceeds expectations and is well worth a pilgrimage. What a fantastic place. It’s really strange to be here so recently after we visited the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey. The sites have such similarities in their histories and development but where one was destroyed, Canterbury survived, albeit without its monks.

For some reason I’ve always wanted to see where Thomas Becket was murdered by the 4 knights freshly returned from the crusades with the whole “who will rid me of this turbulent priest” thing. It must be a hangover from school history lessons but I was very happy to find the spot and sit for a while contemplating what happened here some 853 years ago.

I mooched about the Cathedral for an hour or so being particularly taken with the view up through the tower crossing, the tombs of King Henry IV and the Black Prince but also by the Hymn books in the choir stalls which made me smile as they’re still the same as when I was at school.

Another great thing is that the reasonable priced entrance ticket is one of those annual pass jobbies which means we can come back to visit when we’re next in Canterbury. Excellent.

We booked a really early train to Calais, partly because it was cheaper and partly because it feels like more of adventure when you get up in the dark to start a trip. The downside of this, and a lack of street lights, is that we’re left to feel our way slowly down the road, both peering over the dashboard as our headlights cast their dim, tealight candle glow in front of Beatrix.

Having used the tunnel crossing a few times now I have to admit we’re a bit blasé about it. Funny how times change as I remember that the first time we arrived at the tunnel, Sally had to get out to see me through the check in gates as I thought they were too narrow for us!

This time, we decided on a quick canter through France as our goal is to get to the Alps for skiing.  Our route was closely based on last year’s return leg and we decide to try and avoid tolls where we can.

Our first stop is in the champagne region and Sally found a lovely vineyard, Philippe Hautem, close to our road but in the little village of Vaudemange. We arranged a tasting with our hostess who looked super busy but was happy to make time for us. Although she spoke a little English and our French is a bit pidgin, we had a great time and learnt a bunch of stuff. This little village has quite a few champagne houses and they seem to share some of the responsibilities cooperatively with each house creating its own unique tastes with different blends of grapes. Our host explained that grapes from 4 of their 6 acres is sold to the big brand Mumm, which is pretty common I think. It in part explains why the big brands have a more generic taste and can produce such large volumes each year.

As the smaller houses produce more distinctive bottles, it also means we’ll need to try lots more establishments until we happen upon our favourite! Sally thinks this is a great idea as champagne is one of her favourite drinks. We start by taking 3 delicious bottles away with us which seems like a good trade-off for not using the toll roads.

The next stop is Beaune where we stayed in April 2022. Sometimes it’s great to come back to a place you’ve been to before and arriving and parking up this time is more chilled out as we know what we’re doing. We head out for a walk in the old city and enjoy a glass of Cote de Beaune in the evening sun.

If you’re visiting the Aire here in the town centre, it’s worth noting that although it was fairly quiet in the afternoon, it completely filled up for the night with big vans passing through. By morning time the carpark looked like a showroom for Morelo motorhomes!

The next day we’d planned to get past Grenoble and into the Haute Alpes. Of course I’d forgotten that it was a Saturday, therefore a changeover day in the Alps, and its school half terms. This meant that the 4 hour drive actually took closer to 7.5 hours. Just outside of Grenoble, in a town called Vizille where we stayed last year, the first of the mountain climbs begins with a 10 kilometre drag at 10% incline. This is pretty hard work for Beatrix as we sit in 3rd gear, climbing at about 15mph, holding up traffic. As we pull into the deserted park up at La Mure for the night there’s a strange judder from the clutch or driveshaft or some such gubbins as we pull away in first or reverse. I’m a little worried by it but figure we’ll see how we go tomorrow and if it’s any worse as there’s an Iveco garage in Gap on our route.

Unsurprisingly, and despite our positive thinking, the judder didn’t get any better overnight but it wasn’t any worse either so we decide to push on through Gap to a stop at Savines-Le-Lac. We really like the drive by the turquoise blue lake and across the bridge to get to the site. This time around there’s almost no water in the lake…. it’s really strange. We later find out that the lake is used for generating hydroelectric power and it’s been deliberately drained to help with electricity generation this winter.

After a restful night, the next day we’re off to the mountains proper. The route up to Briancon, where the Tour de France visited last year, takes us up a massive valley with a series of spectacular views around every corner. As tends to happen, we pick up a bit of what I call a ‘tail’ on roads like these so I try to pull over a regular intervals to let traffic past. That’s easier here in the mountains too as there’s lots of spaces to pull over to fit snow chains.

After a slow, gently descent we see a picnic area and as I pull over a series of amber warning lights appears on the dashboard accompanied by a loud beeping! Noooooooo……

The issue, which declares itself to be Gearbox Failure number 078, prevents us from getting into gear at all and once the engine is turned off, it won’t start again. Pants.

This feels like one of those problems that no matter what tools I try prodding the underside of the van with, we won’t be making progress without some professional assistance. So we dig out our insurance policy and breakdown cover for the first time with our fingers crossed that this will work.

So I should say that the people at Trinity Lane breakdown were absolutely fantastic for us. Quick to answer and very reassuring on the phone they importantly recognised that we’re a bit on the heavy side, so they sent out a suitably sized recovery truck. We had an hour or so’s wait and once the recovery chap arrived and tried the ‘turn it off, turn it on again’ trick and realised it wasn’t going to work, he set about loading us onto his truck!

This was all pretty disconcerting as we’ve never done anything like this before. Beatrix is our home and as I mentioned, we have a certain amount of affection for her so we were both pretty worried. Once assured that the truck could fit us on, we fussed about the front bumper getting damaged and then about the back rubbing on the road as we loaded…. It was a bit traumatic.

The recovery chap decided we should go to a bus repair place near Gap which wasn’t what we or the Trinty Lane people were expecting but it turned out for the best.

Once we’d dismounted, the female mechanic plugged a computer into the hyperdrive and after two hours of prodding, head scratching and beeping inside the van it was declared that something was properly broken and we wouldn’t be going anywhere tonight.

In the end we stayed in the yard of the bus repair shop for two days waiting for our new clutch actuator, which I’m likening to a left leg when driving a manual car, to arrive and be fitted. We managed on electricity from the sun, drinking water from the garage sink and cheap pizza from across the road.

Through the whole incident, we both reflected on how lucky we’d been. It would have been so easy for us to have stopped in a dangerous place on the road, we could have had a really difficult time trying to recover Beatrix and we met and were helped by some really lovely people. I’ll have an enduring memory of our mechanic walking across the yard to see us whilst tapping progress updates into google translate on her phone and us both standing talking into our phones then sharing translations back and forth.

It was about 16:30 when we pulled out of the yard and we didn’t feel we had time to get up to Montgenevre so we settled back in Savines-Le-Lac with the hope that we’d make it further the next day.

Not wanting to tempt fate, there was quiet cheer in Beatrix as we drove past the site of our breakdown and we continued on to Briancon for some supplies and then up the little winding road into Montgenevre. We were four days later than planned but we’re hoping to be here for a month or two so in the end it doesn’t matter too much and with some snow forecast over the next week, we managed to get out for a cheeky hour on the slopes.

We hope you enjoyed the tale,

All the best Sally, Toby and Merlin

Links and useful sites

Phillipe Hautem: https://www.vignerons-independants-champagne.com/en/champagne-philippe-hautem