Bertie has been a bad motorhome, using most of our annual repair budget getting through the MOT. We knew that we had an ABS issue, but a couple of other issues and four hours labour doesn’t make a cheap bill. Bertie passed first time last year so I had high expectations. I am very disappointed.
We also bought two new leisure batteries for Bertie; we knew that our current battery wasn’t always going to be sufficient especially with winter approaching and because we want to spend more time wild camping. Leisure batteries aren’t cheap, but the advice is always to buy matching batteries if you are increasing the number you are using – the same capacity and the same age – otherwise the battery performance is always dragged down to the lower of the two.
To top it off our water pump decided to bite the dust. We got back to the motorhome on Saturday evening after a day at the rugby (watching the Gareth Steenson 10 year testimonial which was very entertaining) and could hear the pump running – very odd. I went through and checked all of the taps, none of them seemed to be open. In the end we had to turn off the electricity at the control board to stop it. When we checked the water tank it was completely dry, so maybe one of the taps had been open a fraction. When we re-filled and tried to use the taps we weren’t getting any water – the pump was making feeble whirring noises but not sucking. To cut a long story short we ended up replacing our pump, luckily we have OutdoorBits in Exmouth – a good source of parts and advice. We took the slightly more powerful Shurflo pump than our existing one. Not only does this mean we can now get water from the taps, but it also seems to have cured Bertie’s spluttering and spurting issues and made showering dangerously enjoyable (dangerous for our water usage that is). In all it’s been a good outcome for us, but frustrating that we were forced into spending the money rather than choosing to.
Having the work done also meant we were delayed leaving Exmouth and I started to get a bit ansty; there is a certain feeling of frustration when you make travel plans that are thwarted, I’m sure there must be a specific word for it, if not in English then in another language. We’d had a lovely time being tourists in what we still consider to be our home town, seeing friends and indulging in meals, days out and too much alcohol but we were ready to move on and tackle the next bit of our adventure.