The Beginning
While awaiting the delivery of our new 36ft
quad-slide RV, Mo and I had moved into a static caravan, kindly
loaned to us by Mike and Sara Barratt, the owners of Quantock
Orchard Caravan Park, the site we call our home base. The caravan
was 30ft long and 10ft wide with two bedrooms but even so space was
completely limited and we constantly had to move boxes to try and
find our various bits and bobs, it seemed not to matter how much we
planned ahead, the kit we needed was always at the bottom of the
pile. Obviously we were very pleased when we were told that the RV
would be ready for collection on the 16th February at
1pm.
At the
age of 60 I am just about old enough to remember a radio program in
which a character known as ‘Rambling Sid Rumpole’ told his tales of
derring-do to an audience of anyone willing to listen. My family
lived and worked in and around Temple Coombe, near Wincanton in
Somerset and many is the evening that I can remember sitting around
the living room fire listening to that radio. Generally each of us
was equipped with a kilner-jar full of cream taken straight from the
farm-dairy and the idea was to vigorously shake this jar for several
hours in order to turn it’s contents into butter, which my
grandmother would then salt and shape into half-pound blocks. In my
opinion, the only thing that was as boring as shaking that jar and
inspecting it every five minutes in the hope that it’s contents
would transform in record time, was the droning voice of the maniac,
Rambling Sid Rumpole. That’s all very well, says you – but what has
this got to do within the context of the RV Magazine? Well, when Mo
and I decided to record the story of how we became RV full-timers it
was suggested by some friends of ours that we should submit the
story to Paul and Jeni, the editors of the RV magazine, as it might
be of interest to other potential full-timers. Since then our story
has been published over a period of five months culminating, we
thought, in the exchange of Harvey, our beloved Georgetown for the
new RV that, by virtue of the fact that it’s number plate is
BU54MPY, has already been christened “BUMPY”. With Sid Rumpole very
much in mind, we thought that was a good point to halt our ramblings
in order to not outstay our welcome in the magazine and also to let
others tell their stories.
Soldiers have a ‘confidential’ report submitted
annually which records their progress during the preceding year and
occasionally, amongst the many stereotyped comments, there would
appear a pearl of wisdom that could have life-altering affects on
the person concerned and that is exactly what happened to me many
years ago. I had got into some minor trouble to which I had
admitted my guilt and was consequently ‘stamping the boards’ in
front of my Commanding Officer – who, jokingly, told me that I could
easily have lied my way out of trouble rather than be faced with the
impending punishment. On my confidential report for that year he
commented that, although I was a good soldier, I was too stupid to
tell anything other than the truth and that fact could impede my
progress through the promotion chain. I regarded that as a super
‘back-handed’ compliment and history shows that it certainly did not
impede my promotion chances in any way whatsoever. Today that
statement still stands and, in general, both Mo and myself try to
stick to the truth whenever possible – agreed, some stories get
slightly embellished and embroidered to try to make the punch line a
little more effective but they are, nevertheless, totally based upon
true events.
That’s how it was on the 16th March
when the RV Magazine dropped through the letterbox. Initially
flicking through the pages, Mo came across our last article and then
exclaimed with surprise at the part that said we would introduce you
to Bumpy in our next article. We were not prepared for that and,
indeed, having had Bumpy for only a couple of weeks we honestly
didn’t have any stories to report - hence the explanation for the
previous paragraph. If you have read the story of our Irish tour
you might remember one of the highlights was when we kissed the
Blarney Stone – and in the belief that some of the Blarney had
rubbed off onto us, we could have produced another article, although
much of the content would have consisted of events that would have
emulated Rambling Sid too much. We decided to abide by our decision
not to produce another article for the foreseeable future - and that
decision held good - for at least two whole weeks, right up until
the 30 March when we had to take Bumpy back to the dealers for a
couple of minor repairs.
The Middle
Over the Easter holiday we had discovered a
water leak coming from under the shower tray and because of the
location of the inspection hatch I could not get my arm under the
tray far enough to repair the leak which seemed to be coming from a
loose ‘jubilee’ clip holding the cold water inlet pipe onto the
underside of the mixer taps; it was decided that Bumpy would need to
go back to the workshops immediately
That morning it was bucketing down with rain
but even so within a couple of hours we had packed up and started
our journey – it was then that an alarm bell started chiming quite
loudly from the dashboard area. There were no warning lights
flashing, no gas alarms illuminated, nothing was wrong as far as I
could see - so as soon as I could, I pulled off the road and checked
everything else that we could think of, all to no avail, the chime
came back every time I started the engine. We had recently had a
Tracker fitted together with a ‘safespeed’ device which, combined
with a GPS system, was designed to alert us if we were travelling
too fast in a restricted area. This device required approximately 3
to 4 weeks to be initiated from the time of fitting and I thought
that just maybe it could have been prematurely initiated and
required adjustment, so I phoned Van Bitz (the installers) in
Taunton for help. They did not think the fault was coming from
either of their devices but just in case there was a crossed wire
somewhere, we were instructed to cut the cables to the speaker
system and Van Bitz said they would repair the system on our return
to Taunton. At that point I recalled a story of a family who set out
on holiday with their children in an extremely overcrowded and
overweight Volkswagon campervan into which they had just fitted a
rather super-duper car stereo-system. At one point Dad decided to
switch off the radio and pressed the relevant button on the
dashboard but the sound of music still drifted gently through the
bus – so he pressed a few more buttons, and still the sound of music
was heard. He pulled up on the side of the road and disconnected
the stereo from the battery system – and still the music drifted
around so in a fit of pique and desperation he ripped the radio from
the dashboard and without further ado chopped the speaker cables
from the back of the radio – and still the sound of music drifted
gently through the bus. At which point one of the children, in the
back seat, was heard to say “Oh, heck - I think the transistor radio
in my backpack has been switched on by accident”……. I will not
report what Dad said at that moment – but suffice to say Mo and I
decided that we could put up with the alarm chime for a hundred
miles or so!
We stayed overnight in a Service Station near
to the dealership so that the workshop staff could start on Bumpy as
soon as they opened in the morning. Annabel, one of the Company
Directors, had arranged for us to have coffee in the visitors’
lounge where we were introduced to Alan and Mary Stanley, another
couple awaiting a minor service to their RV. To our amazement, no
sooner had we been introduced than Mary enquired if I was still
wearing my ‘Sunday best’ - referring back to our last article when I
had been told off by Mo for getting my best clothes dirty. It
transpired that as seasoned RV’ers they regularly followed our
progress in the RV magazine because in many cases they could relate
events that had occurred to them in almost exactly the same manner
as had happened to us.
Although not involved in their conversation, at
one point I overheard Alan describing to Mark, the Parts and
Warranties Co-ordinator, the sound of a warning alarm (de-dah,
de-dah, de-dah) that was chiming behind their dashboard even though
there were no alarm lights flashing on the console. My ears pricked
because that sounded just like our problem of the day before on the
drive up from Taunton. I actually thought ours sounded a bit more
like a da-deh, da-deh, da-deh than Alan’s de-dah but altogether it
really did sound very similar and, in my mind, cleared the Tracker
of any blame for the alarm. On the other hand Mary, Alan’s wife,
thought the alarm sounded a bit like da-de-dah, da-de-dah when Mo
chipped in and said “Oh no, it is de-da-dah, de-da-dah - at which
point we must have collectively sounded like an American Barber Shop
quartet practising for the next Sunday bandstand – at which point
Mark stumbled off back to the workshop shaking his head in
disbelief.
Musical proceedings were brought to a halt when
another customer entered the lounge and we were delighted to be
re-acquainted with Jacky Pearce – he and his wife Brenda regularly
used to bring their caravan to our site in St Agnes Beacon in
Cornwall during the early 1990’s and we had lost contact when Mo and
I moved onto employment with the National Trust. In the ensuing
conversation Jacky told us that he and his wife had recognised us
from our articles in the RV magazine and very kindly said that they
enjoyed the articles and looked forward to the next one with
interest. Several other people, in passing, have also told us that
our stories were being well received but, in all honesty, we still
find it hard to believe. However, that evening as Mo and I were
mulling over the comments passed, we realised that we actually
enjoyed putting the story together and decided there and then that
we would carry on doing it for as long as we could find a story to
tell and anybody willing to read it..
The day passed slowly and Annabel very kindly
offered to lend me her car in order to take Mo out for lunch, an
offer which we were very pleased to take up due to the fact that
Mo’s drug regime requires that she eat meals at fairly regular
intervals. Without further ado we climbed into the car and pointed
it in the general direction of Telford Town Centre, which somehow or
other we managed to totally miss but luck was with us and before
long we drove into a Sainsbury’s superstore. As I lifted Mo out of
the car and set her up on her sticks, something was niggling at the
back of my mind – I couldn’t think what it was but something was
worrying me all the way through our round of shopping and the
following bite of lunch. It was only as we emerged from the store
an hour or so later, with the rain still pouring ‘cats and dogs’
that it dawned on me what the problem was – I didn’t know what
Annabel’s car looked like, nor did I know her number plate and by
that time I reckon there were several hundred cars in the car park!
The problem was compounded by the fact that we had left Mo’s ‘Blue
Badge’ in our car back at Taunton and therefore could not use the
disabled parking spaces, not that there were any spare anyway, so we
had had to park in the crowded general parking area and, of course,
in the pouring rain we had not really taken too much notice of where
we were! As in ‘Dads Army’ the buzzword was ‘Don’t panic’ – return
to the store, try to remember which door we originally came in and
then retrace our footsteps. Mo was pretty sure that it was a blue
car and I could just about remember a box of tissues in the rear
passenger foot well. We spotted a couple of likely looking blue
cars and I furtively peeped into each one looking for the tell-tale
box of tissues, all the while conscious of several security cameras
zooming into my suspicious looking activities – I could already feel
the heavy hand of ‘Plod’ descending on my shoulder. Very luckily
the third car in the row that I approached turned out to be the
right one and we gratefully climbed in and escaped back to the
workshops in quick time.
Later that afternoon, Mark came in to say that
the problem with the chiming alarm had been traced to a ‘short’ in
one of the electrical circuits apparently caused by excess rain
water getting into an area where it wasn’t supposed to. He had
never experienced this particular problem before, so he had phoned
the Manufacturer in America to find out if this was a design fault
but had been reassured to find out that it was a simple (and very
easily remedied) case of a missing protective cover. However, the
problem of the leak under the shower tray was taking longer than
expected because they had had to remove the wash-hand basin vanity
unit in order to gain access to the pipe-work in the shower cubicle
and this was taking some time to replace. “Was it possible for us
to return the following morning to have the work completed?” “No
problem” we said, “as long as we can use Bumpy, we will go back to
the Service Station where we stayed last night.” We parked in the
same area and Mo began to settle in for the night while I popped
over to the shop to pay for the overnight parking. We had filled up
with diesel there once before and the chap behind the counter,
having remembered me, asked how we were enjoying life in our new
vehicle to which I replied that we were delighted with Bumpy and in
general life was absolutely super. Meanwhile Mo took a comfort
break using our loo – at the end of which she was horrified to
discover that we had no water on board. With hindsight we should
have realised that in order to carry out repair work on the water
system, the technicians were obviously going to drain the tanks to
avoid the possibility of flooding the vehicle when they disconnected
the pipes. No problem, I thought, we can locate the water point on
the garage forecourt and fill up half a tank or so, except that when
we did find the water point, it had been disconnected for repairs
and a sign pasted over the point said that the nearest available tap
was sited at the HGV point and there was no way we could drive onto
the HGV point without going back onto the motorway. So I grabbed
the kettle and went back to the shop where I asked that same
attendant if there was anywhere I could fill the kettle as I needed
it to flush the loo – at which point I heard a lady in the queue
behind me, say to her companion “You’d think they would have running
water in a caravan that size, wouldn’t you? When I told Mo about
this she decided that to save any further embarrassment I wasn’t
allowed to fill the kettle anymore and being as we had plenty of
lemonade on board we could use that to flush the loo. Well, I ask
you! I mean, it actually worked very well; honestly, the lemonade
foamed almost as well as some proprietary toilet cleansers but the
thought of what could happen to the first person to use the loo
after I had driven back along the motorway shaking up a black tank
full of fizzy lemonade was beyond imagination.
The End?
Later on when we collected Bumpy from the
workshops we found that in order to solve the problem of a badly
vibrating television set, they had had to strengthen the housing
over the dashboard and fit a new TV. The windscreen had been
resealed, the mixer taps in the shower had been replaced, the torn
seals on the shower door had been replaced, and the bathroom
rebuilt. They had also repaired the burglar alarm and, once again,
reprogrammed the engine immobiliser then, having decided that it
still didn’t work properly, they replaced the immobiliser with a new
one. The alarm chime under the dashboard had been fixed and the
‘stuck’ diesel fuel gauge had been re-calibrated. Then we were told
that the Cummins Engineer had run a quick check over the engine and
had discovered that the engine turbo was not working properly – but
not to worry, arrangements would be made for him to visit us in the
next month or so in order to fix the problem.
Diana,
Princess of Wales, once said to a television reporter, “There were
three of us in the marriage” meaning that three was one too many –
and we all know the end result of that situation. Those of us that
buy RV’s actually require three in the marriage – the dealer, the RV
and the purchaser and we need large portions of trust and faith
between each of the links to maintain strong bonds in the chain. In
our last article we said that our reasons for choosing Bumpy were
many and diverse and that only time will tell whether we have made
the right decision – unfortunately we are now questioning that
decision because at least one of the links in our chain has been
severely tested despite the apparent attempts by all parties to
maintain the union. Is it the end – still too soon to tell - so
watch this space!
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