This post has been started as we think about our experiences over the last few weeks. We had some amazing sunny and “outdoors” days – which make us feel good about full timing i.e. the “High’s”, followed by, some may say inevitably, some “Low’s”. We want to make sure our blog tells the “real life” story of full timing in Beatrix.

Toby and I are generally optimistic people, looking for the positives in situations. I would, modestly say, we are also fairly resourceful. When working we were both able to make things happen, using different skills, and getting sh*t done. So here is our “High and Low” tale for June 2023.

The High’s: great weather, being outdoors and doing what you want to, not what you need to

In our reflection of a year in Beatrix we talked a bit about what we love about our new life. I’d now add a couple of things to that list:

1) Toby designing and making things for Beatrix. I love it when Toby gets an idea.

He starts studiously sketching on his iPad. When asked what he’s doing I usually get the response “nothing much”. When ready, he shares his work. Some initial sketches to show the concept, followed by more technical detail with measurements, materials and costings to make something we need for Beatrix. The “work” is always awesome, it takes you from thought to the complexities of the designs and they astound me. Most recently he made our “pull out BBQ” which, I have to admit, is pretty spectacular and was designed and created by him.

It’s also very engaging during the “making phase” of these projects. As any engineer knows, sometimes, even with the best planning, you can’t always make a perfect result first time round! With reminders of teachings such as “measure twice cut once” being muttered amongst, some swearing when things don’t quite go to plan. With all of this, once made, the pride and excitement of having something hand made by Toby is pretty awesome. Toby has crafted our sliding TV unit and the BBQ pull out – what will be next? I can’t wait to find out…. So I guess our new life gives time and space to think and design.

2) Another positive we’ve touched before is being able to spend more time doing the things we want to be doing. Whether seeing friends and family, exploring new parts of the UK and Europe or exercising more (running, skiing, walking and kayaking).

3) Food and wine is important and we’re managing to be more adventurous in this space with Toby’s new BBQ with easy access, and having the time to prepare and enjoy the food we make. We now take on recommendations and inspiration from those places and people we visit: Lucy’s paella and Clare’s chicken dishes spring to mind as well as Carol’s stuffed peppers!

We’ve definitely enjoyed those “High’s”. June has been interesting though because there have been some “Low’s”, which is fitting as we were travelling in Scotland during this tale! Some of the “Low’s” may sound familiar to anyone who owns a home, let alone a mobile home, however we want you to understand what happens when things go wrong with Beatrix and in June there were a few Beatrix “issues”.

“The fridge and stairs”: A Low followed by another Low

When we left Ayr at the start of June we’d already been “off grid” (without electric hook up) for a good few days. As we made our last cup of tea before leaving and had our breakfast cereal we suddenly realised the milk from the fridge wasn’t very cold. Unsure if this was just an anomaly, as it had been unseasonably warm and sunny we decided we needed more data. We have a small bluetooth thermometer which we usually use in the Alps to check the the temperature of Beatrix inside and at the batteries. The thermometer was placed in the fridge to see what was going on with the temperature. With this in place we drove to the Three Lochs Drive in the Queen Elizabeth Park in the Trossachs.

We’d booked to stay here for 2 nights.

This was an exciting adventure as Toby had wanted to do this since we’d had Beatrix so we hoped there was nothing too serious going on with the fridge.

Getting to the Three Lochs Drive reminded me of the drive to Montgenevre, it was a windy, steep and “tight” road and there were places where you just hoped you wouldn’t meet anything big coming in the opposite direction. Also reassuringly (?) were the signs saying “Road not de-iced beyond this point in winter” which made us realise we probably wouldn’t do this drive in winter when it would be “more interesting”! When we arrived at the entrance of the Three Lochs we checked in on the fridge and the temperature was showing 14 degrees – this did not look good for us! The food in the freezer was still frozen however there was definitely something not quite right with the fridge.

I remember such things happening when we had our house(s), the fridge or freezer packs up and it’s annoying. The next steps may be to phone someone who can come and fix it or you end up having to buy a new one. If the latter you have choices of where to buy: go to a store or order online. It’s not difficult – there may be a delay because of availability and it’s not what you want to have to sort out, however you have options available to you.

With Beatrix when something like this happens it’s usually a bit more complicated.

First, Beatrix is not new – she was made in 2008 and the world has moved on a fair bit since then. The first action when something goes wrong is to find out the make and model of the non working part – in this instance the fridge/freezer – to see of there are any fault finds in the manual. Initially we didn’t know where to find the model number, so yes a google search was made and we used our network of Carthago M-Liner owners so now know for Dometic fridges there is a model number sticker at the back of the fridge. Our fridge/freezer is a Dometic 7605L.

Toby found the manual online.

Slight aside here, as I am pleased I have a Toby and that he’s an engineer by trade! Our fridge/freezer is not like the one you have in your house or flat, it’s clever and can work on gas as well as electricity and is called a three way absorption fridge – three way I hear you say – how else can you power it – well when we’re driving the battery from Beatrix powers the fridge!

Even though it’s clever there aren’t many things that can go wrong with it. Looking at various sources of info we realised we were not sure how to do the next fault finding step or even what order was best to do them in. Our research showed us it could be an issue with the power getting to the fridge, the cooling system, the exhaust flue…. We phoned Pullingers, which is where we go when we need things fixed with Beatrix, as their technicians and engineers are really good. The helpful chap at Pullingers suggested the first step was to work out if the fridge issue only occurred when it was using gas or if it also didn’t work when it was on hook up. If it failed when hooked up then it would most likely be an issue with the cooling system and we’d need a new fridge…. gulp. If it worked on hook up then it would be a “gas” issue and could be as simple as cleaning out the gas flue on the fridge.

At this point our emotions fluctuated between awesome all we need to do is clean the flue to OMG we need a new fridge which was more scary as it would be more expensive and timely. More google searches were needed. The first was to plan for the worst, even though we were hoping for the best. Worst case we might need a new fridge – how much would a new fridge cost? What were the lead times? Where could we get one? Hopefully you’re realising that if we needed a new fridge it wouldn’t be as simple as ordering from say Curries. We looked at the Dometic website and nearly cried as a like for like fridge (not exactly the same size!) would be £2,500 and fitting would be pretty complicated and we could expect to pay another £1,000.

We started phoning some Dometic dealers as the price was not the only consideration. We were in Scotland at the start of motorhome rental season. Sure enough these calls made us even more unhappy as the few dealers in Scotland that we found who may be able to do the work were fully booked until the end of July. Not ideal.

With us still not knowing whether the fridge worked on electric or gas, we stayed our two nights at the Three Lochs Drive – that is another blog as it was stunning. Luckily we were heading to a campsite in Strathyre. Originally we’d booked a pitch without electric hook up – which we hoped we could change so we could do our electric check! We arrived at the campsite, the owner came to meet us at the entrance and before we even asked if we could move to a pitch with electricity she said she wasn’t sure we would fit on the site. At this point I was trying to be calm as I always mention when booking how big we are!

Anyway – as luck would have it they were not full, we explained we needed hook up (there was additional cost for this). The owner said if we thought we could fit then we could have any of the pitches we would fit on. We walked around the site and there where plenty of pitches that could fit us – although if there had been rain then things may have been a little more “interesting”.

So with all of that kafuffle we pitched up and plugged in. Now we needed to wait to see with baited breath what happened with the fridge temperature.

We called Perthshire Caravans who said they couldn’t even look at the fridge until the end of July. Next we called the Central Caravan and Motorhomes in Stirling – they told us they’d be able to take a look and help us fault find. At this point we were happy as we figured they could help us understand the problem and if it was as simple as cleaning the flue – hopefully we could get back on track with our plans.

They say a watched kettle never boils and it turns out that the same is true with a chilling fridge. It takes a while to cool down and the temperature is really impacted when the fridge door is opened – even for a short period. Never had I so intently watched a temperature graph!

To get away from the tension we went for a walk with Merlin along the A84 to check out the Broch Café (which does a mean bacon and egg roll!) and gave the wonders of electricity at 16amps time to work.

When we returned we saw a steady decline in the temperature – a good sign! It took a while to get to the normal operating temperature, which we’d never have known before this issue! When we were hooked up the fridge and freezer worked. A massive sigh of relief as we may not need a new fridge the coolant side of things was working…..

With renewed optimism we headed across the country to Perthshire and arrived at Central Caravan and Motorhomes. We both thought they’d be able to help us fix the issue. This however, was not meant to be – they took a look, took the fridge cover off and poked about a bit and then said we’d need a new fridge. In their opinion the gas was working as it should – it was burning well and the flue had hot air coming out so there must be another problem which would mean a new fridge. Bugger.

We hadn’t really thought of any next steps as we’d foolishly thought it would be fixed. At this point we were both a bit shell shocked, now were back to the worst case scenario again. To add insult to injury, as we left Central Caravan and Motorhomes, we heard the stairs go – i.e., the small pin that causes the stairs of Beatrix to not work correctly had misplaced and that needed fixing as well.

We were both pretty fed up and down at this point. We needed some time to think of a new plan. Where could we go? We were near Perth. On the way we’d passed a petrol station that looked like it had enough space for us to take a break and come up with a plan.

We drove there in sad resignation.

It’s funny what your brain remembers, as although, yes there was a petrol station, it was too small and didn’t have any rest areas for Beatrix to comfortably sit in. All was not lost though as it was near a small housing estate that wasn’t busy.

With Beatrix fully fuelled we stopped on the side of the road, took Merlin for a quick walk, had some lunch and had a think. At this point in time the facts were – the fridge works on electricity not on gas. We needed to get somewhere where we could look at cleaning the gas flue ourselves to see if that would improve the working of the fridge on gas and also now look at the stairs. The best place would be somewhere where with electric hook up and somewhere quiet where we could have some thinking and doing time.

We found a great site on search for sites near where we were called Islabank, near Auchterarder – you should get Toby to say this in a Scottish accent as it’s hilarious – and camped out for a few days.

Toby decided straight away that he’d take a proper look at the fridge after seeing how the guy at the caravan place had taken the bits apart. Toby started working outside and then I heard “Wow, that’s interesting”.

I was a bit nervous as I was unsure what the wow meant.

“Come and look at this!”

With my small brushes Toby had done his best Dick Van Dyke impression and managed to “clean the chimney”. We could see a fair amount of soot had been “cleared” from the flue at the back of the fridge. Using a hoover and various cleaning implements that were probably not designed to do what they were being used for and certainly would not be used for their intended purpose again, Toby cleaned out what he could.

Would the fridge would now work on gas? We had the electric hook up if needed and crossed our fingers that again, Toby would have managed to fix a Beatrix issue himself with a bit of knowledge from others. We switched the fridge energy source to gas and waited to see if the gas could now keep the fridge cool. We waited patiently and those that know me know patience isn’t always one of my strong points…….. the fridge started to maintain to cool.

Understanding that we’d possibly not fully cleaned the flue we wanted a bit more reassurance. We called some Dometic dealers in the north of England. Although they were busy they could book us in at the end of June to take a look rather than having to wait until the end of July.

We booked in to Lancaster Motorhomes and Caravans with the premise of needing to look at the issue, needing new parts or a new fridge. With the fridge now working on gas and the reassurance of a company to service the fridge and get any parts needed for the end of June we breathed a sigh of relief.

Toby also took the stairs apart and fixed the pin – so all in all a good stay at Islabank for Toby fixing things that had broken!

Gearbox failure again – low 3 – “Seriously?”

We now had some breathing space! During our fridge fixing search we had found Perthshire Caravans which looked like a great motorhome accessories shop and we wanted to buy a few things for Beatrix. We located Fernlea a small CL site nearby and as we left Islabank we got another low as when we started Beatrix we had another darned warning light on the dashboard.

It was gearbox failure – again.

For goodness sake! The new plans may not yet come to pass!

Toby and I both “lost it” for a moment. For me that generally involves tears and for Toby some stomping and swearing. We both took a moment and breathed.

We are learning with Beatrix that sometimes, a bit like a computer, you need to switch off her main power and then restart her. This is what we effectively did. We disconnected the battery and then restarted her. Different warning lights came on and her usual starting sequence was not quite right. Toby was not fully onboard with whether we should travel. We drove, slowly, around the campsite, to check gear changes. Switched the engine on and off using the key a couple of times until the start sequence was back to normal and rechecked that the gears were working as we expected them to. Now we just hoped that we wouldn’t break down on the way – we had places to go.

They say every cloud has a silver lining – Perthshire Caravans was that silver lining for our Low’s over those couple of weeks. We arrived at the centre and quickly learnt how our kitchen tap works with help from their excellent staff at the accessories shop. Who knew that our tap fully pulls out on a chord and that you can have different flow settings on it. We managed to get a replacement tap fitting which had been on our list of wants for over two years. The treasures didn’t stop there as we found the side light replacement we’d been looking for for ages just on the shelf and treated ourselves to some Cadac tapas dishes. This is a great accessory shop where you can find all sorts of parts that you may need for your motorhome! A real gem for us.

Learnings

Hopefully we’ve given you a small insight into what happens when things go wrong when you’re full timing. Life is never simple, it would be boring if it was easy. We’ve learnt that things can go wrong, there is always a long list of things you can be doing or fixing or improving.

There are even moments when you say “can it not just f*cking work”. Remember to enjoy the good moments and strengthen your resilience, as you never know when you’ll need it. You may not always get the help you want and it does help having an engineer who doesn’t mind taking things apart or having a few screws left over when it’s all put back together again.

Lastly there is nearly always a silver lining even when things go wrong – some call them disasters other calls them adventures it depends on your viewpoint!

We hope you’ve enjoyed our post – thanks for reading

Sally, Toby and Merlin