167 miles in 4 days versus 592 miles in 4 days. You could say that we’re taking this loop a little more slowly than the previous loop! It’s not gone exactly according to plan thus far, but we’re in Belgium and Bruges is on the horizon for the Easter weekend, so we’re not deviating too far from the plan.

Once we’d overcome the minor hiccup with the fresh water tank cap, our first night was spent in Bray Dunes, just along the coast from Dunkirk. It’s a stunning bit of coastline, which makes it difficult to imagine the atrocities of war amongst the dunes there three quarters of a century ago. Even the wrecks of a few boats that are visible at low tide can’t begin to evoke pictures of the bloodshed there. All we can do is reflect on those who have given their lives and pray for peace in current war zones.

As we were in no rush, after the first evening, we decided that we’d stay there for a second night, so we had a chilled morning (including stocking up on French cheese!) before we decided to go for a wander along the beach together. We were just leaving Bertha, when Kiri spotted a puddle. Under Bertha. A quick dip of the finger into the puddle revealed that it was oil. A quick lie down next to Bertha revealed that it was coming from the drain plug of the sump tank. Not good news.

Abandoning the walk, we researched a local garage and looked up the French for “sump tank drain plug”. Eventually I settled on “bouchon d’huile” as an easier way of describing it and we set off for a garage. It’s amazing how far a few words of French and lots of hand gestures can get you. From what we understood, the mechanic told us we’d need to go to a Peugeot garage to get a new drain plug and we shouldn’t touch the plug ourselves, as all of the oil would drain out (his hand signals for this part were especially pleasing). The Peugeot garage didn’t want to know and they fobbed us off on the Renault garage next door. Here we had a lovely welcome and once again, although they didn’t speak any English, we managed to communicate pretty well. Del Boy would have been proud of my French language skills. We were to come back in the morning, when they would do a “vidange” and re-seal the plug… for just over 100 Euros.

As we arrived back at the aire, we were greeted by Jeff; a very friendly Brit in his late 70s. We explained our predicament and he made it his personal mission to help us avoid spending that much money to get the problem fixed. After a good hour of trying with various tools and bodges, we couldn’t get the current drain plug off (we’d even modified a water container to catch the oil), so conceded defeat. At this, Jeff gave us a bottle of wine, despite our protestations that we should be the ones giving wine to him in thanks!

The following morning came and we dropped Bertha off at the Renault garage and went into the nearby town to have a pain au chocolat (we understand that’s part of the protocol in France when your vehicle is being fixed!). At 12 we returned to be reunited with Bertha, who had a new washer on her drain plug and lashings of sealant too. No danger of further leaks there, and the work done for 20 Euros fewer than quoted. Bargain.

From there it was a short drive into Belgium. Unfortunately I’ve not been too well for the last few days, so we’re having a couple of days of rest on another free aire before we explore Bruges. We’re loving the slower pace of travelling this time though and feel no pressure to rush… I’ve managed to read a whole novel already. This is the life!

This is it; we’re off again! Well, to be more precise, we’ve gone. Scarpered. We are no longer in the UK! It’s great to be back on the road and we’re looking forward to settling into our travelling rhythm once again.

This time we feel a little less daunted by the journey ahead; we’re more familiar with the whole travelling thing and we know (to a certain extent) what might face us in the next few months as we travel through northern Europe. Because of this, we’ve stocked up with all of the essentials that we’ll struggle to find on the road… 160 Clipper tea bags, a few tins of baked beans, some English mustard, peanut butter and wholewheat pasta (truly British!). With this arsenal, we can face anything (within reason). It’s also through experience that we know to caveat broad statements like that – we’re sure to face the unexpected.

In fact, we faced the unexpected sooner than we thought we might. We arrived at Dover this morning in good time and decided to turn on the gas and make a cup of tea. Where was the key to the gas locker though? We thought back to when we knew we had it last. We weren’t on the ferry yet, but we had a sinking feeling. The key had last been spotted (along with the key to the fresh water and toilet) in the fresh water cap when we had filled up at home. I rushed round to the fresh water filling point. No cap anywhere to be seen… just a gaping hole, pleading for more water. We’d seen several lambs on our journey, but none looked as sheepish (sorry, I know it’s a terrible pun) as Kiri did now. From the girl who brought you “how to stand on a bumper”, comes “how to forget to replace the fresh water cap”. Doh. So, we had no cap for our fresh water tank, and the keys for the gas locker and toilet were probably keeping the cap company somewhere.

Fortunately we had spare keys for the gas locker and toilet, but that didn’t solve the problem of the fresh water tank. Clingfilm provided a temporary solution whilst we searched online for a camping shop in Calais. Once on the ferry, we received confirmation from Britain that our fresh water tank cap and associated keys had been located, but looking a little worse for wear. We had made the right choice in not turning back for home and soon the friendly folk at Calais Caravanes were lining our palms with a brand new cap. Sorted.

So we’ve started as we mean to go on! In all honesty though, it was just a minor hiccup and it’s good to be back in Bertha with an adventure in northern Europe ahead of us.

When we last wrote about our plans for loop 2 of our trip around Europe, they were all up in the air. You’ll be pleased to know then, that 2 weeks on, we’re still pretty much in the dark about plans, but we’ll come to that in a bit. The big bit of news is that Bertha is sounding like a totally different van… it’s amazing what a minor operation can achieve.

We left Bertha with our friendly mechanic just over a week ago and he soon came back with a slightly worrying diagnostic; the exhaust manifold gasket had blown… and the studs holding the gasket in place were heavily corroded. If the studs broke when trying to take them off, it would necessitate going in from the other side… which would mean taking the front off Bertha, taking the whole engine and gearbox out, as well as dismantling the front axle and suspension. Just a minor operation then! We waited with bated breath for a few days, then went around to see Bertha. We found her getting intimate with a small crane:

Of the 8 studs holding the manifold and gasket in place, only 1 of them didn’t break! Fortunately we have a very patient mechanic (as well as being friendly) who took everything out, replaced the gasket, had the exhaust manifold skimmed (as it was a little misshapen), put everything back together again and didn’t have any pieces left over! We went round today to pick our home up and he warned us that she sounded like a new van now. He popped Bertha into neutral. Switched on the ignition. Wow. No longer will we rock up to a petrol station and the attendant ask us if she’s a diesel. No longer will we have to shout over the noise of the engine as we drive along. No longer will we have to turn the music up to 11 just to hear it. Our tiger is now a kitten. The roar is now a purr. To be honest, it was a little disconcerting driving Bertha home as you could hardly hear the engine to know when to change gear!

Now we have our home back, there are just a few little things to do before we set out again, including giving her a bit of a groom to go with her new sound. Folks, we should be back on the road by this time next week! We know that we’re heading into northern Europe (probably Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Denmark to start with), but we don’t really have a plan.

So, it’s over to you – have you any suggestions as to where we should go within these countries (or anywhere else within northern Europe)?

Forgive me for a moment as I digress from talking directly about our trip and instead focus on a subject that I’ve been learning about as we travel. Productivity. An output-based measure of value. It’s purely by chance that there’s a BBC news article today with the headline “Move over, GDP: How should you measure a country’s value?”

One of the questions that I’ve been pondering as we’ve travelled around, is “why are we doing this?”, often followed closely by “what am I hoping to achieve through this trip?”. In other words, what will our output be from the journey around Europe? I was part of the first year group to sit key stage 1 SATs at school (most of the class ended up in tears) and ever since then, I’ve learned that output is what counts. It’s coursework and exams that are marked at school. At work, there’s measurement against SMART objectives. I think that’s fair enough. Where I’m questioning my thinking is whether it’s a good measurement against my use of free time.

I’ve never been one to sit in front of the TV for hours on end (well, maybe if I’ve got my laptop on my knee and I’m writing code); I’ve always had a project on the go and I get enjoyment through producing things, setting myself deadlines and benchmarks. The flip side of this is that I end up feeling guilty if I’m not in the process of producing something; am I wasting time? When travelling, there’s a lot of time spent covering ground, there’s a lot of time spent sightseeing or playing games or reading books. Productivity? Almost nil. And this is the place that I’m in when I ask myself why we’re travelling. I could be earning money to provide for my family… I could be producing code to help make some process somewhere more efficient… but I’m not. Does that mean that this lifestyle holds no value? That’s a silly question – I just have to reflect on how much we’ve learned and been inspired so far to see the value.

I’ve come to the realisation that I’ve got too much of a focus on productivity in my home life. Is it productive to play with my neice + nephew? Is it productive to go for a walk with my wife? Is it productive to sit on a hillside, marvelling at the beauty of the countryside? Is it productive to grapple with deep philosophical questions that have no answer? No, no, no, no. Yet each of those things are so precious (well, the last one may be a little self-indulgent). Maybe I haven’t got my priorities straight. There’s a story about two women called Martha and Mary that touches upon this subject, that I really could learn from.

So this Lent, rather than giving up something like chocolate (or plastic, as we did last year), I’m trying to shift my focus away from productivity and towards fruitfulness; where growth is the most important thing rather than output.

You know how it is. You’ve just put the finishing touches to a plan; you know roughly what’s going to happen and then a spanner gets thrown into the works. Or several spanners even… in several plans! It’s not all bad though and after 4 months of travelling we’re now getting used to being flexible with our planning.

The first change of plan / delay has come courtesy of the great British weather (oh, how we’ve missed you!). Bertha was due to go straight to our friendly mechanic the day after we arrived back on British soil at the end of February for a routine medical. Sadly though, that soil was rather saturated and with more inclement weather imminent, Bertha was unable to be seen to properly until the weather had cleared up a bit (as work on her has to be done outside). However, whilst she’s been standing, waiting in the doctor’s queue, we’ve seized the opportunity to move the fuse box in the habitation area, clear up some of the other temporary wiring we put in place on the road (see previous blog post for details), replace the bathroom sink waste pipe that had perished and, most importantly, put our Talbot Owners’ Club tax disc holder up (yes, we know that the paper disc is becoming obsolete)

The other main change of plan is to do with our second loop. We’ve always been keen that our trip should be more than just an adventurous holiday; we want it to be purposeful and we want it to fit with God’s plan for our lives. So, we planned out a route for the second part (in Bertha… we’ve decided that she’s solid enough!) around Northern Europe and contacted a few projects that we wanted to visit. We then prayed that if that wasn’t what God wanted, we’d like Him to make it clear. He’s made it clear… either timings haven’t been convenient for the projects, or there aren’t opportunities there for us to serve… so it’s back to the drawing board.

The time that we’ve spent back in the UK so far hasn’t been wasted though. We’ve managed to spend some really good, quality time with our families and catch up with some of our friends. Going back to London for a while was a bit weird, but not in a bad way… it just seems so long ago that we lived there, even though it was only 7 months ago that we left! As well as socialising, we’ve also been busy with a few tweaks to this website – our route map page now allows you to filter the types of places you want to see, and we’ve made the site responsive, so it should display better on mobile devices and tablets (please let us know if you have any issues!).

So in general, although things aren’t quite going to plan, we’re pretty happy. Saying that though, we can’t help but read the blogs of fellow motorhome travellers Julien + Anais and Rhys + Kristen and feel the call of the road. Our time will come again soon though. Patience.

Looking ahead involves a certain amount of looking back; certainly when it comes to deciding what to pack for our second loop out in Bertha. There are some things that are mandatory for legal reasons (warning triangles, breathalysers etc) and some things that are necessary for entertainment reasons (books, games etc). But amongst these things, there are some items in Bertha that have been worth their weight in gold to us, that would have been very easy to overlook.

Antibacterial hand gel

Who would have thought that a little bottle of antibacterial gel could be so useful? It particularly comes into its own after we’ve emptied the toilet (don’t want those germs hanging around!), but it’s also been good as a substitute to washing hands when we’re running low on water (we only have a 40 litre fresh water tank), which brings us to…

Collapsible water container

This was actually a bit of an impulse buy, but it’s really come into its own. Some fresh water filling points don’t have a suitable hose attachment, or you can’t get close enough, so our 10 litre collapsible container is highly useful. We also use the container to catch cold water coming out of the hot tap before the water has heated up, then use that water for cooking later. No water goes to waste. When it’s not in use, it just scrunches up.

Bodging stuff

Cable ties, string, guy ropes and bungee cords all fit into this category. We’ve used bungee cords to hold back our hob cover, string as washing lines, guy ropes to hold down our vents in high winds and cable ties to fix a leaking fresh water tank tap. In addition it’s been useful to have a few spare cup hooks, screws and sealant, which have all been used on our travels.

Satnav POIs

Whilst we really appreciated having a paper map of Europe, where our satnav really came into its own was with the POIs (points of interest) that we loaded onto it:

• Camper contact – used as our main tool for finding overnight stops
• CCI – also used for finding overnight stops
• LPG – useful for finding places that have LPG pumps to refill our gas tank (for cooking, heating etc)
• Lidl – our favourite supermarket in mainland Europe
• McDonald’s – useful for free wifi (although only used once!)

Add the fact that we got our family to record the satnav direction phrases and it’s been a good little companion to us.

12v chargers

We’ve been off-grid for most of our trip, so haven’t been able to charge things through mains electric. Our 12V universal charger has been great at keeping most things topped up, but we’ve still got a little tangle of 12V charging wires for those things that are outside the universe of the charger. Our 2 110Ah leisure batteries in conjunction with the alternator and our 120W solar panel supply enough juice to keep everything topped up. Saying that though, we don’t have smart-phones, so our requirements aren’t that intensive.

And the stuff that we didn’t take due to their extra weight? The only things we can think of that we wish we had taken are a garlic press and potato masher… I think we’ll squeeze them in for the second loop!

We’re back on English soil for the first time in over 4 months! Despite a few setbacks and several doubts as to whether we’d be able to complete the first loop under our own (well… Bertha’s) steam (or combustion engine… Bertha’s not that old!), we’ve done it. We admire your patience at waiting for the resolution to the cliffhanger about pondering options for the second loop… your patience will be rewarded here! But before that… here’s the journey we’ve done in the last 4 months:

We’ve learned a lot of things about the cost of motorhoming in the first loop; much of which we covered in our blog post about costs. The other thing to take into consideration though is that we’ve spent more time on the road than planned… as we were total motorhome newbies, we hadn’t realised that travelling long distances in a motorhome is different from doing the same journey in a car, often taking twice as long. Our original plan of trying to cover most countries in Europe in the timeframe of a year doesn’t actually give you much time in each place!

So, what are the options that we’re pondering for the second loop? We have to admit they don’t include getting out and pushing (as one friend suggested) and they don’t include doing a total overhaul of power. However, they did include writing to electric / hybrid car manufacturers asking if they would like us to do a long-term test drive; providing photography, film and reviews of their vehicles. Sadly, that came to nothing, although several publishing houses said they were interested in running our story if we managed to procure a vehicle. Sad times.

Essentially we are left with 3 main options, which we might end up combining in some way:

1. Convert Bertha to LPG. Using the LPG calculator at mylpg.eu with some estimated data, we reckon this would be worth it if we were to travel 11000 miles (by the time we’ve factored in conversion cost). Would the rest of Bertha be able to do 11000 miles though…? We’ve learned that mechanics are a lot less willing to look at an old vehicle than we thought… we’re spoiled in the UK by having such a friendly (and willing) mechanic. More to the point though, our estimate is that our current plan of second loop is only 10000 miles!
2. Change our mode of transport and stay in hostels or a tent. In this scenario, we could continue our travels, but either buy a car (that’s more efficient than 20mpg) or take public transport. We’ve discovered that living in a motorhome is actually much more luxurious than we’d imagined; we’re basically glamping and we could certainly live with a lot less. The thing is though, as another friend pointed out (and we agree), there’s a different dynamic to travelling in a motorhome. There’s much more of a “get up and go” option. Plus Bertha’s our home.
3. Cut down the second loop to be shorter. We could prioritise what we want to see / who we want to visit in the second loop, travel directly to those locations and stay there for a bit longer. If we only did a 90 day loop, that would bring down the cost of insurance and breakdown cover too.

We’ve been mulling over various combinations of these options for the last few weeks and soon we’ll have to make a decision. Until then though, we’re going to just enjoy seeing family and friends again.

As we saw our first “Camino de Santiago” sign along by the road and launched into a rendition of “Is this the way to Santiago?” (to the tune of “Is this the way to Amarillo?”) we began to ponder on the theme of pilgrimages. The Cathedral at Santiago de Compostela is the endpoint for many pilgrimages; people travel along different routes, for different reasons to reach this destination. Because there are many different routes, all leading to one point, the scallop shell is the symbol for the pilgrimage (as its lines lead to one point).

As it happened, our time in Santiago de Compostela was very brief due to some rather inclement weather, which didn’t make it the ideal time for wandering. However we did visit the cathedral and saw several pilgrims arriving; some looking a little worse for wear from their journey… we could only wonder what their stories were.

As we reflected, we realised that our trip is a kind of pilgrimage.
The Oxford English dictionary defines a pilgrimage as:

a journey to a place of particular interest or significance

It’s about the journey. Now we’re not sure that we’ve got any one place that we would count as the endpoint of our pilgrimage. In fact it could be argued that even though our journey is physical, our destination isn’t; it’s more that we’ve grown on this journey. But anyway, back to the story!

Having had our wander, we had a choice as to whether to pay an extra 12 Euros to stay in the car park overnight, or drive to the coast where we could stay for free at an aire there. Easy decision. As we left the city and headed towards Fisterra (an optional extra to the traditional pilgrimage), the rain cleared and we had a beautiful sunset drive along the coast.

The following day we drove around to Fisterra, only to find that it wasn’t that motorhome friendly… so we turned back to the last beach before it, parked up, had some lunch, then went in search of some scallop shells. It’s traditional to wear a scallop shell in some form as you do the pilgrimage and as it’s possible that we might walk a route one day, so we thought it would be appropriate to find one from near Fisterra. We like collecting shells!

Now the eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed from our timeline that around the time of our trip to Santiago we’ve had a couple of blown fuses (well, Bertha has), leading to all of the lights going off. That’s partly the fault of a dodgy laptop charger and partly my fault for choosing to have our 12v charging points on the same circuit as the lights. When we removed the old spotlights above the bench seat, that left a couple of wires dangling… which I then attached to a 12v charger. Bad call.

After two blown fuses (we replaced the first one, only to have the replacement go too), I decided to move the charging points to different circuits; one to the solar panel controller load output, and one to a brand new circuit with its own fuse. So far, so good… but then it’s only been a few days, and we haven’t tried the dodgy laptop charger again. One job we definitely need to do in March is move the fuse box so it’s more accessible; at the moment it’s inside the control unit (again, my fault when we were doing a bit of re-wiring) and at the same time we might add an inverter… but that’s stuff to think about when we’re back in the UK.

After that, it was only a short few days of driving (compared to what we’ve done so far!) along the coast to Santander where we end our first loop. As with our journey through most of Spain, we hugged the coast, spending evenings in little villages near some stunning waves. Have we ever mentioned that we like the sea? I think the pictures speak for themselves:

So we’re nearly home from the first loop! Hasn’t Bertha done well!

Forget Marty McFly and his Delorean; we’re Steve + Kiri and we’ve got our Talbot Express Autotrail Chinook. Yes, we’re time travellers. Well, kind of. For the first few days of Portugal we were an hour ahead of everything. You’ve guessed it; we hadn’t realised it was in a different time zone to Spain! Sadly that was the end to the time-travelling, although we did see a dinosaur…

Portugal’s been a funny place for us. Unlike all of the other countries we have visited so far (with maybe the exception of Liechtenstein, Croatia and Macedonia), there weren’t any particular stops planned before we set off. We had no real desire to visit another city (they tend to be quite taxing on both energy levels and the wallet!), despite hearing lovely things about Porto, so we’ve just had a week or so of “pootling” through the country… meandering and seeing where the roads would take us.

Our main discovery upon arriving from southern Spain is that all motorways are toll. Our 2013 Philips Europe road map, which we’ve been using for most of our planning shows several of the motorways as toll-free… but these are apparently electronic toll roads, as opposed to standard cash / card toll roads. At least with the standard toll roads, if you get on them by mistake, you can pay the toll at a gate; with the electronic ones, as there are no toll gates, you have to pay a fine (10 times the toll). Our satnav also didn’t recognise these as toll roads, so journey planning and navigation became a little more involved… trying to get around Porto without ending up on one of the blue toll roads was fun!

So, we’ve established that we avoided the toll roads; the alternatives are some really lovely scenic routes; we got a flavour of real life in rural Portugal, with great natural colours and stunning scenery. It also looked as if the weather system that’s been wreaking havoc in the UK has struck here too. On the way to one of our stops near Lisbon (a little village called Valada), the road was shut due to flooding and we had to find another way around. Just south of Porto, the waves we’d seen previously in the Algarve paled into insignificance as we saw heavy seas and evidence of damaged sea defences.

There is a down-side to taking scenic routes though, and that is that Bertha gets put through her paces a bit more. Some of the road surfaces in Portugal are an interesting choice (cobbles on a main road?), others are in need of a bit of patching up and others have been patched up… but it just seems to have made them worse! Then there are the confusing speed limits. In lots of cases, the only time you know the speed limit is when you see a sign saying that it’s the end of that speed limit. In other cases, you’re repeatedly told (every 50 metres) that it’s a 50 limit. We may have inadvertently sped at times… but we don’t know. We almost certainly inadvertently drove too slowly at other times… but it didn’t seem to annoy the drivers behind as they overtook us; we even got a shaka sign from one!

So, that’s been Portugal for us really, accompanied by some port (who knew that it originates from Portugal!), with lashings of Piri Piri sauce on top

The last place we wanted to visit in southern Spain was Cadiz… as in it being our final stop rather than not imagining anywhere worse! We’d realised that we would be too early for the annual carnival, but we still fancied wandering around the old town, so we found a campsite in nearby El Puerto de Santa Maria where we could leave Bertha whilst we explored Cadiz. In hindsight we probably could have wild-camped just around the corner, but instead we joined what appeared to be a mobile retirement village in the campsite. Having only met other motorhomers on aires, or wild-camping, this opened our eyes to yet another way of motorhoming; some of the vans there were the size of coaches! We were the youngest guests by far and obviously quite a novelty, as lots of the dressing-gown-clad occupants were keen to give us advice about all things to do with El Puerto. However, we were more interested in Cadiz, so were excited to get the catamaran across the bay.

Now with Cadiz we were expecting a beautiful city with narrows streets and exciting little shops. Which we found. What we weren’t expecting was an awesome heavy sea out by the castle. Which we also found. There have to be some advantages of high winds and persistent rain and this is an obvious one. We happily soaked in the power and beauty of the huge waves (as well as a little bit of sea water too… not as happily!) before we had to return to the campsite.

Little did we know that the heavy seas would become a feature of the next few days for us. There’s something about the coast that draws both of us, so once we were in Portugal, it was no surprise that we ended up staying on the cliffs at Sagres. Once again there was a heavy sea, with huge waves crashing against the headland; this time though there were surfers making the most of it. Guess what Kiri wants to learn how to do now?!

Further up the coast (near Sines) we had planned to stop by the sea once again for the night, but this time were foiled by “no motorhome” signs in one spot and high seas in another (with waves that Kiri reckons were the size of a house!), so we ventured inland to get a bit of shelter; staying at an official aire. There, we completed our bingo hand of types of motorhomer when we saw a mobility scooter on a bike rack on the back of a motorhome. It’s interesting how the motorhoming community is so united, yet so diverse. We all have something in common, but you have all types of people on the road. In Sagres we saw a couple with a young baby in a monster-truck of a motorhome. The following morning I had a lovely chat with a Norwegian guy who spends 6 months of every year away from Norway to get away from the cold weather. 10 minutes earlier I’d been chatting with a British guy who was complaining that he could no longer get satellite TV in his van as the signals have apparently been tightened down to broadcast to a smaller area. It seems that we motorhomers celebrate the commonality rather than focussing on our differences… a good life lesson.

And then there are just the surreal moments at motorhome service points:

Yes, that is a 1 horse power vehicle… but I guess they need to empty waste and top up with water too!