Our November arrival back in the UK was to pretty awful weather. Rain with wind that creates the sort of cold that you only seem to get in the UK. You know, the type that seems to seep in and chill you to your bones.

Wintering in the UK isn’t ideal, we’ve got friends and family to visit plus admin/health tasks to tick off the list so here we are.

Little did we know, things weren’t going to go according to plan!

The first task was my diabetes eye check in Welwyn Garden City. It’s a pain, once a year the optician puts drops in and takes a photo of the back of my eye to check I don’t have diabetic retinopathy. The good thing is that I can see the results as soon as they’ve taken the photo. Considering I’ve had diabetes since I was 5, the results were pretty good, some mild retinopathy which needs monitoring once a year – nothing had changed. That was relatively easy – tick one thing off the annual checks.

Beatrix service and MOT

Our next stop was for Beatrix. Her annual service and MOT. Everything went swimmingly with both with all the fluids changed and no findings on the MOT. We left Iveco in Dunstable excited to be heading out to our winter time adventures with time booked at the Norfolk coast.

The first and second occurrences of an unexpectedly loud noise and loss of power

Alas, it was not meant to be. Driving only a few miles after we filled up with diesel, Toby exclaimed “I’ve lost power”. At the same time there was a loud rubbing noise coming from what seemed to be under my feet, maybe the wheel arch? We had no idea what it was.

The power loss was short lived and we had no real time to assess it and continued to drive. At the next roundabout just outside Luton the same thing happened, loss of power and the noise.

We immediately phoned the garage (they’re on speed dial at this point), swung around the roundabout and took Beatrix back for triage. The mechanics had her on ramps for a couple of hours trying to diagnose the intermittent fault – the worse kind! They couldn’t find anything under the wheels nor the source of the power loss.

Uh oh.

We were left with no option but to head out without knowing if we’d make it to our destination…….

And here we go again

Happily, our destination was a local Farm and Stables site that was recommended by friends. This was lucky as it was now getting dark.

On the way we had another instance of the power loss. Despite the problem, there was no warning light or message on the dashboard. This is a real pain as it make diagnosis really difficult. At least with a warning light there’s proof something ain’t quite right.

I can’t believe I was wishing for a warning light!

After a few restful days in the countryside, we continued our journey to Norfolk . After starting fine and building some confidence, the power loss and noise happened once more. We were pulling onto the M11 which was a bit unsettling. Finally, as we reached King’s Lynn, Beatrix got so fed up with her tickly cough that she spat up an engine warning light. Enlightened, it appears our issue is Fault 148?

We’d travelled 111 miles and now had our proof that something was wrong.

Parking up at Tesco’s on the Hardwick roundabout we called our recovery company, Trinity. They were absolutely brilliant. Within an hour we were greeted by a mechanic with a suspiciously small recovery van to diagnose the fault.

The news wasn’t good for us hapless travellers. The mechanic said there was definitely an error that he couldn’t fix and he’d recommend taking it to an Iveco garage. He also recommended we not drive Beatrix as the fault could have something to do with the turbo and driving could make the problem worse and cost more to fix. He added that he wouldn’t be able to recover us as his vehicle was too small!

Not the best news all in all.

Luckily our friends live literally just down the road. Tentatively, we drove Beatrix to the yard so we could decide on our action plan. Phoning the local Iveco dealers, we were told they couldn’t help us until the New Year. This was not good enough as we are talking about our home!

Losing Beatrix for a week

The helpful, and perhaps slightly guilty feeling, team at Iveco in Dunstable stepped in to help. They were able to get her booked back in after a week and a half. They would need to have her for a week to be able to diagnose and get the work done. Obviously we wouldn’t be able to stay in her whilst she was at the garage.

OMG – we were going to have to lose our home for a week.

We decided to make the most of the opportunity we were given – we hired a car, stayed with some friends and saw my parents. Meanwhile Beatrix was fully “closed down” – something we hadn’t done in the 2.5 years we’d been living in her. This meant draining all water from her as there was a freezing, cold snap forecast and any water could freeze and damage her water system. We removed all the food – to make sure no mice or other creatures would want to move in whilst we were not there. She was then towed away on a low loader for the second time this year (see the first time here) back to Dunstable to get fixed!

Luckily Iveco fixed her and after a week of being without our home we had her back.

Finally we get to Norfolk and are full of gratitude

Our Norfolk autumn adventure could finally begin. Our first night was at Sandringham. We looked at the ‘Luminate” light festival and restarted all of Beatrix’s systems in a fully serviced, campsite environment. Thankfully, everything came back up OK and we could all breathe again.

We spent some time at D’arcy Equestrian Centre in Tiptree visiting my family and then headed to the CAMC site at Gatwick. If you ever contemplate staying at the site at Gatwick, it’s worth remembering that you are parked right at the end of the take off runway. You can literally wave at the passengers as the planes take off.

This means the airplanes are quite noisy to say the least! You do bizarrely get used to it however the site staff do mention it when you arrive.

Thankfully there aren’t planes flying overnight. At 05:30, the first one that took off in the morning made all three of us sit bolt upright in bed. We had a couple of nights before heading into Wimbledon and celebrating Christmas with our family there.

After having chance to reflect on our arrival back in the UK, we decided that we just needed to be grateful. We have some very amazing friends and family who helped out when we didn’t have a home, for Beatrix being pretty awesome most of the time and for our rescue company.

All in all the whole thing just reminded us that life isn’t always plain sailing and even when you’re temporarily homeless, there’s still a lot to be grateful for.

We hope you liked the tale and will give you more reading of our start to 2024 soon.

Thanks as always for reading,

Sally, Toby and Merlin