RV Stories

 

It doesn’t happen until your pride and joy becomes three years old and then it only comes around once a year - I am, of course, talking about the Ministry of Transport road worthiness test on your vehicle, the MOT. It should be a piece of cake, as the saying goes, so why is it that a simple test can scare the life out of so many of us when it concerns one of the most precious commodities that we own – the RV that we wash and polish, wax and shine, pamper and preen and look after as much, or in some cases perhaps even more, than our dearly loved ones. Our RV (Bumpy) was due for his second MOT in the middle of February this year and I really didn’t have too much to worry about, with the exception that the Examiner had commented on superfluous rust on the brake pipes on the last test, saying that I really ought to consider having it sorted before I attended the MOT again. I tentatively asked for Bumpy to be booked in for his annual service in December or January and sat back and waited – unfortunately the workshops were tied up in new RV conversions and various other ‘workshoppy’ things so that before we could do anything we were into February and only had a couple of weeks left before MOT day. 

The problem now was that we were due to take the Big Pitch Guide stand to the NEC Outdoor Show with Itchyfeet in the third week of February, just when the actual MOT had to be completed – and that situation was not improved by the unseasonal snowfalls which brought most of the Country to a standstill for a week or so leaving Karl (of KJS RV services) stranded in the Midlands when I wanted him down South in Cornwall! 

Being full-timers, we cannot just leave the keys to the vehicle in the workshops with the instruction to call us when the service was complete – we had to stay in the RV as long as we could in order to print enough stock to fulfil the expected demand of a huge indoor Show at Birmingham followed almost immediately by a smaller Show at West Point in Exeter – things were getting to be more than a little worrying. We had no intentions of taking Bumpy out prior to his MOT so it wasn’t too much of a worry not getting the new MOT on the due date and we agreed with the Workshops that we would wait until after the two Shows had taken place then on the following Friday Bumpy would have all his needs attended to and his attendance at the Bodmin MOT station was booked for the following Tuesday.

All went to plan and Bumpy presented himself for service at the allotted time on the Friday, with a quick reminder to Karl to check the superfluous rust on the brake pipes mentioned on the last inspection, whilst Mo and I, complete with the two cats, piles of cat food, cat toys and cat-litter trays took off for the day in our car, with the intention of having a leisurely nostalgic drive around some of our favourite old haunts in Cornwall. The sun shone for most of beautiful early spring day and we ended up late in the afternoon, looking out towards St Michael’s Mount whilst munching on oven-fresh ham salad baguettes, watching the marine world go by – magic! 

Time to return to reality, we arrived home about an hour before the service had been completed and Mo suggested that we pop over to St Columb Major for a fish and chip supper at the end of which time Bumpy would be ready for collection – this day was turning into a really memorable one – never a truer word was spoken in jest, I assure you.

Due to the severe weather conditions that season and the fact that Bumpy had not moved much during the preceding months, Karl warned us that the brake discs were quite badly corroded and really needed a decent outing where we could frequently apply the brakes in order to polish the discs so that the brakes would not ‘grab’ and bind during the MOT testing. Problem with that is that Bumpy had now run out of MOT and even though he was properly taxed and insured, I didn’t want to take him on the road without a valid MOT because I just knew that every Policeman in Cornwall was waiting around the next corner to pounce on me. The MOT was booked for 11am on the Tuesday morning – I knew from past experience that as long as I was on my way to a pre-booked MOT that I could legally drive on the public roads – so I should just have to take the ‘scenic’ route to the test station and make sure that I used the brakes as much as possible before I got there. Preparations were made for Mo to stay in the car with the cats (for those that haven’t met us, the cats are American Rag Dolls and all the books tell us that they are more susceptible to cat disease than normal cats and are therefore usually considered to be house cats) which is why we can’t just boot them out of the house with a packed lunch and told to come back at tea time, whilst I took Bumpy for his test.

That is when things started to go wrong!

We arose and breakfasted really early in the morning and started to pack ready for the road, which is when Michael, the Itchyfeet Sales Manager, asked if we could swap times with the MOT test – we would go half an hour earlier in his 10.30am booking and he would then follow us in our 11.00am booking. We were sufficiently ahead with our preparations so we agreed and speeded up slightly – cats in the car, Mo’s books in the car, radio switched on playing softly, RV jacks up, disconnect electrics, final check around the RV, settle Mo comfortably in the car and off I go in the RV at about 09.40am. I arrive at the Bodmin turn off at about 09.55am which gives me half an hour to play with before the test – so I can drive another quarter of an hour up the road turn around and a quarter of an hour back, plenty of time to get to the test station and book in for the test.

Ten minutes go by, I have been braking regularly and feel that the discs must now be relatively clean so I start looking for somewhere to turn around – which is when I realised that I am in the middle of the Moors and there are very few turning points big enough to take a 36 ft RV. Another five minutes go by and I am beginning to get desperate, if I don’t turn around soon I will never get back to the Bodmin turn off in time – and then in the distance I see a bridge over the road – quick turn left around the roundabout, over the bridge, quick turn right and I am back on the A30 heading south – speed up a bit to try and catch up on a bit of lost time, overtake a couple of articulated lorries, a tractor and another couple of cars – if nothing gets in my way I can still make the test on time. I can see Bodmin looming up on the right; a sign post pops up telling me to turn left into town so another quick left turn around the roundabout and off into town I go – well, I would have done if I had not suddenly been confronted with an absolute army of traffic cones spread all over the road which force me to concentrate on where I am driving and I cannot see the road that I would take to get to the MOT station. 

Then a very large sign announces that this road has a 7½ ton weight limit on it and my RV weighs at least 11½ tons but with all these cones everywhere, I cannot see anywhere to turn around and there is a police car parked on the other side of the road watching me, and it is now very nearly 10.30am and I should be at the MOT station and I am going to miss my appointment - and I won’t continue with my thoughts at that time because this is a family magazine! Then a supermarket appeared on my left with a massive car park and I promise you I pulled at least five G’s going around that bend on two wheels, straight onto the car park scattering shoppers and trolleys like snowflakes in a blizzard, screech to a halt because there is one car blocking my exit so a quick thirty yard reverse to take another exit – pass in front of the checkout desks seeing checkout operators staring in dumbstruck amazement as this madman is rallying a coach around their car park, another quick right-hand turn over the bridge and I am back on the A30 heading south once again. 

Mo’s father lives in Paignton and whenever we go to visit him we take the Bodmin turn off to get onto the A38 which leads us straight into Paignton. When coming up from the south there is a very pretty little suspension footbridge over the A30 just before you get to the Bodmin turn off so I am looking ahead searching for that bridge because as soon as I see it I know I can turn left and get back into Bodmin the correct way – I am already a couple of minutes late but I am pretty sure that I can get back on schedule without losing much more time – yes, there is the bridge - so I slow down looking for the turn off – there must be one because that is the way we come back out of Bodmin onto the A30 – I mean surely they would give us a turn off into Bodmin from the north, wouldn’t they? With a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach I realise that I have just passed under the bridge so there is no turn off there and the next one that I know of is about five miles up the road at ‘Innes Downs’ and there is no way that I can get there and back and still get to the test station without being at least fifteen minutes late – but that is not so bad, the testers generally run a few minutes late so maybe I can get away with being ten minutes or so overdue. Once again I put my foot down and race away down the A30, I overtake the same lorries that I have overtaken already, and the tractor and one of the cars, the driver gives me a knuckle to forehead signal which in the old days used to signify ‘Nutter’ which I think is going a bit too far so I throw up a few loose stones off the kerb side just to sprinkle his windscreen a bit – teach him to call me a nutter! 

And then, thank goodness, I can see the bridge over the road at Innes Downs; this is the start of the recently built Indian Queens bypass and the first turn off is one of these modern designs where you go through a roundabout to get onto a central roundabout where you then go onto another roundabout in order to get off onto the road that you want – a little bit like the olden days when you see the village idiot going into a revolving door the first time and after a couple of minutes he emerges in exactly the same place into which he entered. I am back on the A30 going north and just as I settle down I see the lorries coming toward me that I have already passed twice going the other way and the look of amazement on their faces just didn’t need any explanation whatsoever, they all with one accord spelt out the word ‘Plonker’ as they saw me start to accelerate up the A30. I am now about ten minutes late for the test, there is the bridge, the left turn, take the first right up the hill, take the first left then look for the entrance way into the test station, cars all over the place but I get through and finally pull up in a screech of tyres, the stench of overheated rubber permeating the RV and the smell of very hot engine oil coming out of the air ducts but as I climb down from the RV to report in I see, with some sense of satisfaction, that my brake discs are gleaming brighter than the Crown Jewels behind the gently smoking brake pads. Job done, as they say!

Bumpy passed the MOT test with flying colours, of course, and what was even better was when the examiner told me that I could go out of the depot the wrong way around the one-way circuit because of a very, very tight turn on the normal exit route. I knew that turn because I had negotiated it twice already during the previous test when the examiner told me that was the only way out – I now know for sure that he was so jealous of people who owned RVs that he took great delight in trying to embarrass us but much to his chagrin I did get out safely both times although I must admit that it was very tight and I only inched through very, very slowly with my fingers crossed.

For some time now Bumpy has had an alarm chime which intermittently beeps from behind the dashboard for no apparent reason, and so it was on the way back to Summercourt. I tried everything that I know to identify a problem with the RV that would make the alarm go off – there were no warning lights to point me in the right direction, it didn’t matter if I went faster or slower, turned left or right, in ‘cruise’ or out of cruise that darned alarm chimed away very annoyingly, so much so that as soon as I got back to base I went straight into see Karl to let him hear it. It didn’t take him long to pinpoint the actual ‘chiming’ buzzer but it didn’t help much when he said that there were five actual systems which could switch on that buzzer to alert the RV driver that there could be a light come on the dashboard to pinpoint a problem. My problem was, of course, that no lights had ever come on so it pointed to a faulty sensor in one of those five systems but which one was anybody’s guess! Mo and I had already decided that we were going to visit the children and grandchildren in Andover on the morrow and then we would decide whether to carry on to Scotland or France or wherever the fancy took us and having to listen to that chiming alarm for hours on end was very definitely not mentioned in our planning. The simple answer, in the short term, was to disconnect the buzzer and pay much more frequent attention to the lights on the dashboard – if one was to come on, then I would know which of the five systems was at fault – well, that was a week and several hundred miles ago and nothing has happened but I still have my fingers crossed!

It is now 12 ‘o’ clock lunch time and I realised that Mo was still sitting in the car waiting for me to return from the MOT, she has been there for a couple of hours patiently looking after the cats, she cannot get out of the car without my help and just possibly needed the ‘little girls’ room by this time, so I rushed back to the car with a view of driving her up to the facilities block. Disaster! In my rush to get out this morning, I had clicked the car ignition into place so that the radio would play but I had forgotten to switch off the air conditioning – and the battery was flatter than yesterday’s pancakes. The car interior was freezing cold; the cats were bored stiff with being confined to such a small space and Mo’s legs were even stiffer due to her enforced inactivity, all the things that are needed to recreate an absolute nightmare were there in abundance. 

Say no more, this time next year Mo and I have booked a week long package holiday to Tenerife – we will hand over Bumpy’s keys to the workshops, together with a blank cheque and explicit instructions not to phone us until they had an authentic MOT test certificate in their hands, a bit more expensive maybe but far cheaper than an extended spell (for me) in the local cardiology unit at Truro.