Who would choose to travel around Europe in a motorhome in the autumn / winter? This is a question that we guess the countries in the Balkans have considered, choosing the answer to be “no-one”. Instead, I think they’ll find the correct answer is “mad dogs and Englishmen”… well, with a good heap of Welsh heritage thrown in!

Our plan, following a lovely time in Ljubljana, Slovenia, was to head south along the Croatian coastline; landscape that we have heard great things about. With wild camping strictly prohibited in Croatia (we found horror stories on the internet of wild campers being woken at 3am by armed police), we started scanning for campsites to stay at. There are plenty of them along the coastline… only they’re pretty much all seasonal… and closed by the middle of November! As we scoured the remainder of our planned route down through Croatia and Montenegro, then up through Bosnia + Herzegovina towards Belgrade in Serbia, we were struck by the scarcity of campsites or even overnight stopping points for motorhomes. Hmmm. Issue. We found this out the night before leaving Ljubljana!

This is the map showing camp sites in central Croatia:

(Map courtesy of campercontact.com; one of our main sources for places to stop, along with campingcar-infos.com and campingcard.co.uk)

A bit nervous about the coming few days, we chatted with our hosts about our plans (or lack thereof!) for the next few days. With a bit of local knowledge, we were given the details of a hotel on the Croatia/Serbia border which is friendly towards motorhomes, so we contacted them and they gave us permission to stay overnight in their car park. That’s a long way from Ljubljana though! With Kiri’s birthday wish being to stay on a campsite for a couple of days, we realised the nearest open one in reach would be in Ptuj, Slovenia, so we headed for a campsite there which is attached to a spa.

On the way we filled up with LPG for the first time since leaving the UK; Slovenia uses the Italian “dish” LPG adapter. It was pretty intuitive to use (screw the adapter in, put the pump in place, pull the trigger to lock it, then press the button on the pump to operate) which is a good thing, as all of the instructions were in Slovenian!

We had a lovely couple of days in Ptuj, including half a day soaking in the pools and steaming in the sauna, before the long push through Croatia – 366km in total. Now in a car, that doesn’t seem like a massive distance, but when your top speed is around 90kph, you realise that’s at least a 4 hour drive. We sometimes forget that actually the base vehicle of Bertha (a Talbot Express / Peugeot J5 / Citroen C25 van) was built to drive long distances each day. However, on the other hand, there is a “block of flats” built on the back (to use our friendly mechanic’s words!). She’s doing well though, and was happy to cruise at between 80 and 85 kph for the duration of the long trip.

This is the route we took through Croatia; driven in 1 day:

It’s a shame that we haven’t been able to experience the true beauty of Croatia this time; instead speeding(?!) through it on the motorway – we’ll have to come back in the summer at some point.

If we told you that “kje je” means “where is” in Slovenian, you would probably come to the same initial conclusion as us and think that the title of the blog post was asking where the toilet is. Not quite!

When we left you last, we were in Schwaz, Austria. From there we travelled to Salzburg (via an overnight stop in Germany, as that was the most direct route) where we had quite a drizzly wander around the city. The cold weather was beginning to set in and as we travelled south towards Slovenia, the snow on the mountains was creeping closer and closer towards our altitude. Suddenly we were in a winter wonderland in the midst of snow-covered forests and mountains. So much for us trying to avoid snow on this trip!

After all of that snow, we descended to a campsite by Lake Millstätter, where we endured an extremely windy night. As the only motorhome (and possibly the only campers!) on the campsite, we were rather exposed and sure that we might be blown away at any minute. When we heard what sounded like an air raid siren in the middle of the night amidst gusts that were rocking the van, we decided to seek safety in the main building until the winds had died down a little!

The wind continued as we travelled towards Slovenia, dying down by the time we reached Ljubljana and met up with our hosts for the week. Whilst in Slovenia, we have been helping the team at ZVEŠ; a society working with universities, encouraging open, creative and critical discussions about the bible. The theme of this week: “Kje je Bog?” – or in English “Where is God?”. During the week there were several events; a talk, a concert and a creative workshop, exploring some of the questions around this. Our task was to help publicise these events. The best way to get attention? Dress up a Danish person as God and wander around Ljubljana!

Kiri and I aren’t really designed for giving out flyers; we don’t have the confidence to strike up a conversation with random strangers, so we watched in admiration as we saw Slovenian students willing to stop and have a chat with those who were handing out flyers. “Where is God in suffering?”. “Where is God in creativity?”. Often the conversations started with the question of “Is there even a God?”. One thing that I’m loving about this trip is that it’s given me brain space to get back to the basics of my faith and do a bit of grappling.

The first event was a talk by (and discussion afterwards with) Stefan Gustavsson; a Swedish philosopher who led us through an examination of the apparent dichotomy of an all powerful and loving God and a world where there’s a lot of suffering. As a result of this talk, I think I’m going to add Richard Dawkins’ “The God Delusion” to my reading list.

The other two events featured Andy Mayo; firstly an acoustic concert in Semafor; a cafe in the heart of Ljubljana. Andy’s a very talented guitarist and his music is raw and from the heart with some pretty thought-provoking lyrics. It was a great night in a student bar… made us both reminisce over our student days!

The second event run by Andy was a creative workshop; exploring what creativity is, what the tensions are within creativity, how to cultivate creativity and lastly where God might be within that creativity. This workshop also featured a couple of local musicians; Urban and Laura.

All in all it was a cracking week and it’s been great to settle in one place for a short time, rather than constantly being on the move. It’s also encouraged us that we might be of some use at the other projects we intend to visit!

Sadly our time in Ljubljana is now over and we’re hitting the road again; once more trying to keep ahead of the snow and cold weather!

Following our last blog post, we had lovely warm showers at the campsite near Interlaken the following morning, and as a result, decided to stay an extra night there as well. It might not have just been the showers that convinced us, but they helped. A little investigation (as a result of lots of help from friends in the UK) suggested that oil was probably getting into the carb through a breather pipe. but the clutch was ok. Placated by that news, we proceeded to have a lovely day in Interlaken; loving the stunning snow-capped mountains and appreciating the symphony of cowbells.

After another hot shower the next morning, we bought some engine oil (for our Swiss readers, there’s 20% off Mobil oil at Co-op Bau+Hobby), topped up, then set off to conquer Brunig Pass; the mountain road that would lead us towards Zurich. 2nd gear was required to get to the top, but Bertha climbed well and there were no signs of any smoke… at that stage. However, once past Lucerne we caught a whiff of burning once again, and spied smoke from the exhaust; clearly blue. This got worse and worse and the oil level was dropping, so we decided to take Bertha to a Peugeot garage. They fired her up and asked how long the engine had sounded like that… it didn’t sound any different to normal! Their reaction was that there might be an oil leak inside the engine, but they didn’t want to investigate, so they told us to top up the oil and get on our way. How encouraging… ummm… really?!

At this stage, our plans changed and we decided to head to Germany to see if any German mechanics would be willing to look at Bertha. However after a very long tunnel, which we polluted heavily with thick plumes of oily blue smoke, we conceded defeat, donned the mandatory reflective jackets, put the warning triangle behind us and called breakdown. I think the Swiss may have taken our smoke signals as a sign of invasion, but as they’re such a peaceful people, they just let it happen. I hope it doesn’t mean that we are inadvertently ruling Switzerland… only time will tell!

When the Swiss breakdown arrived, they took one look at the engine, said it looked terminal and asked whether we wanted to be taken to a Peugeot garage (which would probably be the one we went to earlier in the day… no thanks!) or their depot, prior to being sent back to the UK. A quick call to the UK breakdown people led to us being informed that we would spend the night at the depot, then they would decide in the morning whether Bertha would be repatriated or scrapped. Scrapped? Bertha? But she’s part of our family!

We didn’t sleep well that night, but began to adapt to the idea of going home; already planning how we would continue this adventure even if Bertha was condemned. The night brought heavy rain and hail, which dented Bertha a little, but not our resolve to fight against her being scrapped. And then the sun came out… in the form of Paschal the mechanic, who informed us that they would investigate the problem a little further to see if she could be fixed. To cut a long story short, a compression test revealed that all of the cylinders were sound (to everyone’s surprise), but a blocked air filter was leading to the carb sucking oil into the engine rather than air. With a new air filter and 300 Swiss Francs lighter (labour’s expensive in Switzerland!), we were off again; a little dazed and bemused by this turn of events

That afternoon we drove 80 smoke-free miles to Liechtenstein, where we stopped overnight in a stadium car park, overlooked by beautiful mountains. All for the princely sum of 1.50 Swiss Francs! The morning brought sunshine and although we were still a little nervous about Bertha’s health, we were able to enjoy the journey into Austria. We didn’t see much of the sun though, as we were mostly driving in tunnels. Lots of tunnels. And then a toll tunnel. And then more tunnels!

We stopped in Schwaz, just past Innsbruck, where we parked up for the night and had a little wander around the town. One thing we equally love and dislike is that our destinations are basically decided for us in terms of where we can park overnight. Without the limitations of finding somewhere to stay, we would have probably gone to Innsbruck… but then we would have missed the beauty of Schwaz.

So we’re on the road again and back to Plan A (carrying on south east), via Plan B (heading to Germany) and Plan C (being sent back to the UK). Happy times!

We’re on the road. We’re actually on the road. In Bertha. What a change of lifestyle it’s been as well; we’re only just beginning to settle into a routine and get our heads around how to travel, cook, eat, sleep and live in a 5.6 by 2.5 metre space. We’re rising to the challenge though and now have a daily routine of getting up, mopping up the condensation (our biggest enemy on the road!), getting dressed, brushing teeth, airing our bedclothes, having breakfast, reading our bibles, doing the washing up, then stowing things away and switching things off ready to drive. Oh, and checking the coolant level!

So, where are we, and where have we been so far? You may have been following our timeline, from which you will have gathered that we pretty much sped through France (sticking to the speed limit naturellement… as if Bertha could speed!) and are now in Switzerland. We’ve had some absolutely stunning driving days with amazing sunshine and although we’ve basically been staying in car parks that allow motorhomes to stop overnight (to keep costs down!), the views when driving have made up for it. Neither of us have driven a right hand drive car on the right hand side of the road before, let alone a beast like Bertha, but it’s surprisingly intuitive and already it’s feeling natural for us both.

As we’ll be going back through France a few times on this trip, our aim was to get the kilometres under our wheels as efficiently as possible and head south and east before the cold weather sets in. For this reason, we spent most of the days in France just travelling (as well as adjusting to full time life on the road); not stopping to take in the sights. We did make sure that we bought a baguette, some onions and some cheese though!

Switzerland has been an altogether different ball game. Yes, we’re still aware that the snow could come at any point, and we’ve had a couple of cold nights to suggest it’s imminent, but we’ve spent time taking it all in. We had an amazing day next to Lake Geneva on Saturday, wandering around the autumnal vineyards before a bread and cheese lunch with an incredible view of the lake.

Yesterday we worshipped at a church in Grandcour and were overwhelmed by the welcome they extended to us. We were a bit nervous about going to a random church in a small village and especially worried about the language barrier. As we got out of Bertha, we said “bonjour” to the first person we saw, to which she replied “Are you British?”. It turned out that she and her family were also British and have lived in Switzerland for 12 years. Not only did we then, very kindly, have a personal translation from French of a tricky passage (anyone fancy translating Revelation?), but we were also invited back to their house for lunch with them and some other friends from the church. We were really bowled over by such warm and inspiring hospitality; they even offered to wash our clothes for us (we hope it wasn’t because we smell!).

And how’s Bertha holding up? Well, she’s stayed dry so far. The waterproof mattress protector has made the world of difference on our bed over the cab. She’s also bravely chugged up some pretty long and steep hills; our highest altitude has been over 1000 metres so far. However, there have been a few suspect smells when she’s been climbing the hills, which we think may be signs that her clutch may be on the way out – we’ve got some investigating to do today!

If you’d like to know more details about our individual overnight stays or where we’ve topped up with fuel, we’ve also got a map of our route that we’re keeping up to date. For more photos, check out our KIST 2EU gallery

Community. What does it mean? Where can we find good examples? These are questions that we thought we would try to answer with this trip; finding community in different countries and learning from it. On reflection though, even in the planning stages of our adventure we’ve found some great examples:

Village life – we’ve loved being immersed in the life of a little East Sussex village; enjoying a summer fete, a barn dance, several quiz nights and a couple of harvest celebrations. A far cry from our experience of London, most people know their neighbours and actively want to spend time with them. A visit (of which there have been many!) to our mechanic isn’t just a case of being processed; it’s been great to stop and have a chat each time. Similarly, the re-welding of the front bumper was done by someone known through the village pantomime group and even the gas safety engineer enjoyed having a good chat about our plans.

Motorhome owners – we’d read online prior to purchasing Bertha that motorhome owners waved to each other when they passed on a road, but we got really excited when it actually happened for the first time! There’s a general camaraderie, mutual understanding and respect for other motorhomers, without the feeling that it’s some kind of elite club. We’ve also been bowled over by the responses to this blog from other motorhomers who we haven’t even met, yet who are wishing us all the best.

TalbotOC – we realise that the Talbot Express Owners’ Club is a subset of the motorhome owners, but they deserve a particular mention. Often online fora descend into bickering over misunderstandings, or active “trolls“, but TalbotOC is full of people who are all passionate about motorhome versions of a van which was produced between 1981 and 1993. Everyone is willing to pass on advice to those of us who aren’t particularly knowledgeable, as well as offering support and encouragement when our van springs another leak!

So what do these groupings have in common? Firstly I think each one unites people around a common focal point, whether it be a locality or ownership of an item. This then appears to breed an active interest in the lives of other people within that community. Secondly there’s a respect for differences; in any group of people you will have different personalities which lead to complicated politics, but that’s what adds richness. The acceptance of me, even though I’m different helps to forge a strong bond. Thirdly, we’ve witnessed a general benevolence; the willingness (and in some cases eagerness) to give freely of time, advice and skills, sometimes with little promise of reward.

I’ll be honest, it’s this last one that I struggle with the most. I’m very happy to be in the position of giving something for nothing. Me man. Me provider. I’m a bit rubbish though at being at the receiving end of something that I haven’t done anything to earn; why do I deserve it? Am I taking advantage? Yet at the centre of my faith is the belief that Jesus was killed so that I won’t be punished for the wrong things that I have done and continue to do. Can I really get my head around that and accept that I don’t have to do anything to earn that sacrifice? Something I continue to ponder!

The title of this blog post is, I guess, a little flippant. We’ve found some good examples of community, which we can learn from, but we’re not at an end state. As we set off around Europe in Bertha I’m sure we’ll learn a whole lot more about community!

P.S. Brownie points for spotting the mistake…

The first of our films about the trip is now available on YouTube

After 711 miles in Bertha, we’ve finally completed our UK tour. It was great to see all of our families within a week, as well as road-test Bertha on a long journey and test our various ways of documenting the travels. By the very nature of saying we’ve completed the tour, you’ll have worked out that nothing went badly wrong, which is great news!

Bertha’s main test was water; we had several days of heavy rain and a lot of driving in spray. Leaks-wise, the condensation from the solar panel leak cleared up after a couple of days, however it wasn’t such good news for our coolant. Remember we mentioned previously about the coolant warning light coming on at Bristol? A couple of days later, as we were driving in motorway spray, the warning light came on again. This time the coolant level was fine, the temperature gauge was still below 90 and there were no visible signs of overheating (the fan wasn’t even on, and there was no steam). Rain and spray dried up, and the light went off. This happened again a couple of days later; again after driving in spray. Again, no visible signs of overheating. So we think we have a dodgy sensor, which we’re trying to troubleshoot with the help of the lovely people over at the Talbot Owner’s Club.

As you’ll note from the map above, our GPS tracker did its job well, allowing us to see exactly where we’ve been (in case we forget!). We also had a test run of keeping a daily log to fit in between blog posts; these can be found on our KIST 2EU timeline. We’ll be aggregating the data within each daily log onto a statistics page, which hasn’t had any styling applied to it yet, but here’s a sneak preview summarising our UK trip. Finally, the tea-fuelled nature of the travelling inspired us to start a gallery so we can remember the cups of tea that we’ve shared in Bertha, which we’ll add to as we venture further afield!

Other than the warning light and a couple of suspect smells, Bertha held up well, plus the Great British Bake Off has now finished, so we have no reason to procrastinate further; the ferry tickets to France are booked for next Tuesday! This announcement on Facebook (which happened to include the word “conquer”) has elicited such a positive response, that I think we may have enough support for a minor invasion! In the meantime though, work continues on “bitty” jobs, the main one of which was the re-shodding of Bertha, with winter tyres (5 new Continental VancoWinter 2 tyres delivered from Germany).

We’ve then spent today doing a bit of pro-active sealing with Sikaflex around some of Bertha’s joints that looked a bit dodgy, as well as testing our LPG alarm, sticking back a few things that had come unstuck and fixing the windscreen washer. We might get a bit of rest before we depart… but there are still plenty of things on the “to do” list

You know we said we wanted to test everything before we set off around mainland Europe? Well someone upstairs must have been listening, because we had absolutely torrential rain the night after our last blog post (last Friday). We were sleeping soundly in Bertha, when at 2:15am, we were woken by an ear-piercing siren. Blearily, we worked out it was our smoke detector; taking out the batteries to shut it up, before we turned on the lights and saw the damage. There was a heavy mist of water vapour clinging to the ceiling and water was pouring onto the floor through holes we’d drilled for the solar panel on the roof. Just what we needed 2 days before setting off on our UK tour.

The next 48 hours saw us re-sealing every screw hole on the roof and the seams (just to be on the safe side) and running a dehumidifier and heater inside at full blast to dry Bertha out. This was alongside trying to pack her with all our worldly belongings that are going with us, whilst trying to keep them dry. Quite a challenge, but we got there eventually and on Monday morning we set off on our UK tour to say goodbye to family. Bertha hit the road!

Now when your friendly mechanic tells you that you should check the water level every day, even if you check nothing else, you would probably not forget to do that. What did we not check before we set out? Yes, the water level in the radiator expansion tank. It was hardly surprising then that when we got to Bristol the warning light came on. A quick top up sorted us out and reminded us to listen to people who know what they’re talking about!

Over the last few days, we’ve spent some really good quality time with family; being fed incredibly well (we suspect our families may think we might not eat when we’re on the road). We had a lovely day out in glorious weather on Tuesday, visiting some old childhood haunts of Burrow Mump, Glastonbury Tor and Wells. Sadly, the rain came down once more that night; again leaving us with lots of water vapour, but this time no evidence of leaks. We hoped it was just residual water coming out from behind the ceiling… only more rain would confirm or refute expectations.

We then had a lovely visit to Cardiff to see Kiri’s Nan, checking the engine water level before we set off this time! Bertha behaved though and we were rather relieved to find out that the Severn Bridge toll for Bertha was the same as a normal car. We then stayed overnight at a very basic campsite with just fresh water and waste disposal, getting a flavour of what our life will be in the coming months, before we travelled on up to Stourport to visit Kiri’s other grandparents.

Even though we’ve had the fridge running on gas almost permanently since we filled up with LPG in Taunton, the gauge is showing almost full still, which is encouraging, as our gas should last longer than first though. If only the same would happen with our petrol… we’ve moved to 20mpg with the longer journeys – Bertha’s a thirsty beast!

And then on to Birmingham to visit my brother and sister-in-law. We were just giving them the tour of Bertha when the heavens opened. We’re talking monsoon here. And hail. The rear window of Bertha turned into a beautiful water feature (outside!) and my finger nails ended up being bitten almost down to the quick! Amazingly, she remained watertight and even after very heavy rain last night, there was no sign of a leak or water vapour.

We’ve got one more stop on our UK mini tour before we return to East Sussex to get our winter tyres fitted… then we’re off.

This week’s seen us clearing up a lot of loose odds and ends; inching ever closer to leaving. We sold our old water heater for parts (below left) and our new water heater arrived (below right), so we got to work installing that, adding in an extra flue (the old one didn’t have a flue!) and spending an hour or so in B+Q to try to get the right connectors. Once fitted, it seemed to hold its pressure well and it didn’t seem like there were any leaks (gas or water), but we had to wait until yesterday to know for sure.

I was going to wait until the end of the blog post to give the outcome of the gas safety check today, but the title kind of gives it away! After some pressure testing and fixing of a minor leak, there was the smoke test (literal smoke, not like software smoke tests!) and other tests (I think something to do with emissions) and Bertha passed! We’re self-sufficient now – just need to sterilise the water system today.

As for the other bits and pieces, we had a speaker floating around in the cab and a gear knob that was disintegrating, so we had to do something about that. A bit of bodging later, and the speaker now has a little carpeted surround… I didn’t have a plan with it… I just played around, adding bits to it until it looked vaguely complete (if a little odd). And then the gear knob. We didn’t really want to have to buy a new one, as that would mean creating a thread on the gear lever (the current knob is just pushed on and glued), but couldn’t let the current one keep disintegrating on us. The solution? Papier mâché! I’m sure no-one else in the world is odd enough to have a gear knob like this:

Aside from that, we had a further water leak – this time in the bathroom behind the basin. It turned out to be just another loose jubilee clip – I guess the 23 year old water system isn’t used to being used so much! However, in the course of fixing that, the plastic of the plug split (due to having perished with age), so we had to mend that too with glue, sealant and some plumber’s putty. I’m sure this won’t be the last leak, so we’ll take some tools with us!

So, it looks like we will be leaving… and within days, rather than weeks. It’s strange, as up until now the idea of leaving was just a concept – now it’s reality. Bit scary that! Better get packing!

We’re currently waiting to have our new boiler tested by the lovely gas safety man, which should be the final modification to Bertha before we set off. In fact, we intend to start packing the van tomorrow! In the meantime, Kiri’s been editing chapter 1 of our KIST 2EU video and I’ve been frantically researching road rules, foreign phrases and the like for our country profiles as well as sorting out travel insurance. We were pleased to find out that we’ve got kidnap and hijack cover. Less pleased to find out that it only pays out £25 per day. If any would-be kidnappers or hijackers are reading this, it’s not worth bothering – monetarily we’re worth very little, although we’ve been told that we hold a lot of sentimental value…

Anyway, back to the country guides. It’s been worth us doing all of this research, I mean who would have guessed that:

You’re not allowed to use your horn near a hospital in Austria

Speed limits depend on the time of year in Lithuania

It’s illegal for a drunk person to sit in the front of a moving vehicle in Macedonia

It’s against the law to have a dirty car in Romania

Your GPS device must not be attached to the middle of the windscreen in Slovakia

You must not indicate when entering a roundabout in Slovenia… only when exiting

If you hit a moose and it runs back into the woods, you must mark the position it went back into the woods with a plastic bag in Sweden

Now some of those would make great questions in a pub quiz round! We got rather scared when researching driving in Albania, and have concluded that Bertha would probably struggle on the roads there, so we’ll give it a wide… ummm… berth.

It wasn’t all fun and games though – as part of researching, we realised that we would probably need an International Driving Permit for some countries, so we’ve ordered those. We also possibly need an “Umwelt-Plakette” for Germany – basically a sticker to say what your emissions are (by this we mean Bertha’s emissions), which will then dictate where you can and can’t drive… a bit like the low emissions zone in London. That’s been ordered too… they might turn around and say that our emissions are too high for a sticker… we’ll see!

The main impact that the research had though, has turned out to be another big hit on the wallet, but hopefully not too much more of a delay. Due to all of the setbacks we’ve faced, our departure date has been slipping further and further towards winter. Now we’ve got snow chains – they’re all good – but it turns out that winter tyres are mandatory in a lot of places between November and March. I don’t want to scare anyone, but November is only just over 3 weeks away. Without winter tyres, we’d basically be restricting ourselves to France and Spain in our first loop of the trip, which isn’t ideal. We’ve therefore decided to order a full set of winter tyres (including spare wheel), get them fitted before we go, then change them back to our current tyres when we come back to the country in March. To be honest, we’d probably have to change a few tyres on the trip anyway so it will be a worthwhile expenditure that will give us a bit more flexibility, even if we’re still planning to avoid driving in snow (where possible).

Hopefully tomorrow we’ll report back that we have a gas safety certificate… at which point we should be in full control of our timescales again and we’ll be able to buy ferry tickets! Hmmm, we’ll see!