2½ big moments

Yesterday's big moment:

Van swap day went fine, thanks largely to the professionalism and approachability of Brad and Jason at Oaktree Motorhomes. Most experiences we have had with the 'autotrade' over the years have been dreadful. It was refreshing to come across a place that seems genuinely committed to customer service and seemed honest and up-front when you dealt with them. We had an opportunity to have a good look at the new van this morning, some of our concerns about having sufficient storage space for long term touring have proven unwarranted. In fact the rear garage is bigger than Maisy's and there is more cupboard space inside than first appeared. In fact we are delighted with it. Although it has  2013 plates the van was registered in late December so now is just over four years old. It has only 6000 miles on the clock and apart from a scratch or two on the stainless steel sink the vehicle looks unused. In effect we have a Burstner that looks brand new but cost £20,000+ less than a similar one with 2018 plates. So, we're happy, if a little shell shocked at having purchased the poshest thing we have ever owned. I mean us - Pete and Gill - we don't do posh as a rule. Shame we won't get to play with it for a couple of months, because...

Tomorrow's big moment:

We're heading to Heathrow. Singapore, New Zealand, Shanghai here we come - goodbye winter, hello to mid-summer in the Southern Hemisphere. We planned the trip last July, so long ago in fact that it had ceased to be something we were excited about. Now suddenly it's imminent, but somehow until our Singapore Airlines A380 is bowling down the runway tomorrow evening I won't believe it is really going to happen. 

Today's not quite so big moment:

I left work five years ago today. At the time I was adamant I had not retired. Aged 57 I had fallen foul of a merger. The University which acquired the small further education college where I worked already had someone in place doing exactly the same job as me, I went through the charade of a competitive interview but I knew what the outcome was going to be. They offered me a role as deputy at £15,000 a year less than my current salary. That would never have worked, so I sued for voluntary redundancy. It was a tricky time. In retrospect I can see that by the time I left I was far from well, neither mentally nor physically. The only positive aspect of the whole sorry experience was how lovely my staff were, supportive and kind even though many of them were less than fully secure under the new regime.

Now unemployed I thought about doing some management consultancy working around the Masters degree I had signed up for. In the event I enjoyed being a student so much looking for work went on the back burner. A few months later we bought Maisy, Gill reduced her hours to half time. Gill's management increased her area of responsibility, fully expecting her to manage a bigger work load in half the time. Impossible! She resigned. Now we were both on reduced occupational pensions earning a third of our full-time salaries. However, we were free - mortgage paid-off, no debts. So we became happy wanderers on a shoestring.

Of course the last five years have presented challenges, but in the main we have lived life to the full, travelling southern Europe for five or six months of the year. Looking back at the person who left work five years ago I am a little over a stone lighter, fitter, healthier - happier and more positive. In fact, apart from being a little less supple and suffering the odd arthritic ache, actually I feel younger. We have to enjoy the here and now, there are no guarantees, the future is always a big unknown.

Goodbye Maisy...Hello Bertie

Readers of the blog will have concluded long ago that spontaneity is not my style. We never venture abroad without a detailed plan with distances noted, accommodation costs calculated, possible routes explored through 'Streetview', hazards evaluated. I don't think I have ever been any different. I always was, even as a kid, the class slightly spotty, myopic geek. So for me any unexpected outbreak of impulsive behaviour seems more than disconcerting; it feels a little disturbing, a tad transgressive.

By the third week of January a prolonged period of downpours punctuated by blizzards had taken its toll. Since Christmas Buxton has been cut-off by heavy snow three times, in-between it has been bitterly cold, we have only had two bright days between dull periods of rain and snow punctuated by fog  We are used to being active, the feeling of being trapped indoors becomes claustrophobic. In an attempt to occupy ourselves we dug out the kid's Wii Fit gaming console and took to jogging around its virtual island on the basis that at least in Wii Fitland it was always bright and sunny. 

However, there are only so many times you can circumnavigate the virtual island before you begin to reconnect with your inner hamster - we needed to get out. So we went to the moho show at Events City in Manchester a couple of Sundays ago. We failed to escape the rain, it was torrential, but the event itself is under cover  and we entertained ourselves for a couple of hours fiddling with shiny new vans; none of them came close to meeting our baseline requirements - transverse rear double bed, rear garage big enough to accommodate two Ebikes when we use secure storage abroad, solid simple design, no frills, big enough to live in during the winter without getting cabin fever. We did find a rear lounge style Adria that seemed to fit the bill so far as simple no frills design was concerned.

Later that evening we searched Autotrader and found an Adria rear garage model for sale in Geoff Cox Motorhomes near Derby. So, we decided to take a look there and afterwards pay a visit to Oaktree Motorhomes - their site had a low mileage Burster Ixeo for sale with our preferred layout. The continuing  saga over the malfunctioning 12 volt supply and problems with the fridge last autumn has sapped our confidence in our current van. Perhaps we need to change vehicles later in the year, we mused, if not before we head for Scandinavia in late spring, then certainly by the time we depart next autumn for a six month trip. What we were absolutely clear about was that right now would be a ridiculous time to swap vans given we were headed to the Far East in less than 10 days and were not due back until mid-March.

So that's exactly what we did. I am unsure how we ended up putting a deposit down on the Burstner Ixeo in Oaktree given Maisy's malfunctioning electrics - but it happened. My reputation for risk aversion and overplanning is in tatters. I am shocked!

So, tomorrow - goodbye Maisy....

Hello Bertie...

Well not quite, in fact hello to the photo of a van identical to Bertie filched from Google. Such was our impulse to buy the other day at Oaktree Motorhomes that we forgot to take a photo of our new family member. I realise that  Bertie the Burstner must be a commonplace nickname, but it was deemed 'cool' by the family Lisboastas, whose credentials in the creative industies help keep we greyhairs on the straight and narrow so far as contemporary questions of cultural propriety and matters of style are concerned. If Sarah deems Bertie a cool name, then Bertie it is.

Struck by a burgeoning sense of buyer's remorse I enquired on 'Motorhome Adventures' Facebook group, somewhat in trepidation, what other owners of the same van felt about it. The majority were very positive, a few moans and groans about the lack of electrical sockets and lack of lighting in the cab, but on the whole a big thumbs up. This proved to be quite different to the response of friends, family and neighbours who all were keen to point out how much we would miss Maisy - as if we were about to take some long term furry friend for a final journey to the vets. I am not so hard-hearted that I will not feel a momentary pang of sadness when we hand over Maisy's keys tomorrow. We have had a fabulous time over the past four years thanks to Maisy. In the previous post I mentioned we had travelled over 42,000 miles in that time; more to the point, we have lived for about 600 days in the van. By my reckoning that is 10 - 12 years of 'normal usage' in less than four years. The logic of this is inescapable, Maisy will need lots of bits and pieces fixing soon, both in terms of the habitation equipment and mechanically.

It will be a worthwhile project, there are tens of thousands more miles in the old girl and I hope whoever the next owners are they have as great a time as we have had. I have nothing but respect for the people I see travelling in older vans - classic Hymers and the like. Motorhomes should not be throwaway toys. I am also a realist. To make a success of touring in a vintage van one of you needs to have a modicum of technical skills and understand some basics about electrical systems and minor mechanical repairs. Neither Gill nor I possess that knowledge, on long trips we need the reliability that a more modern van offers. Of course any machine can break down, however a newish, low mileage German built van proffers a little more peace of mind we hope. There are other advantages too, a much better bathroom, dual fuel heating and compared to our double wheeled Transit considerably improved mpg. I worked out that a mere 5mpg improvement in fuel efficiency will reduce the bill for diesel on one of our six month trips by about £280 - that's more than a fortnight's camping fees at a mid-price ACSI site, or more impressive still, 56 bottles of wine at 5 euros a shot.

The new van will demand we change our behaviour somewhat. Without the extra overcab bed  and the tons of cupboard space we have at present we will have to be a little more minimalist about what we pack. This is a good thing, in terms of material goods, more is not necessarily better. On the face of it swapping motorhome two days before we fly to Singapore is not the most sensible thing we have ever done. It does mean we have something exciting to look forward too when we return in mid-March. Scandinavia in the spring, Croatia, the Balkans and Greece next autumn with a return planned early in 2019 through Sardinia and Corsica....the planning spreadsheets are completed already....Heels for Dust!

Happy New Year & Bon Voyage (whoever you are....)

What better a way to spend a rainy New Year's Day than stare at the blog dashboard, re-read a few of last year's favourite posts and ponder who were the 42,500 or so visitors who dropped by over the past twelve months. I do think we need to say thank you - though I blog mainly for my own satisfaction it is heartening to know that others do follow what we get up to, so - a big Happy New Year from Gill and Pete - wishing everyone safe travels and fantastic journeys in 2018.

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We are back on our travels in a month or so, though Maisy stays behind - as we are heading to New Zealand for five weeks with a few days in Singapore on the way out and a visit to Shanghai on the homeward leg. It's now six years since our last long-haul trip. Europe is amazing - but there is a whole world to see beyond it. I do love peaceful places, but mega-cities are intruiging too, especially those on the Pacific rim; they are the global economic powerhouses now. 

The contrast of the remote Southern Alps in New Zealand  with teeming Shanghai will be amazing I think. With a population of over 24 million, Shanghai has over 5 times as many people living in it than the whole of of New Zealand, yet the city is 300 times smaller in area. It is these kinds of astonishing contrasts that turns travel into a mind expanding drug; probably less harmful than cocaine and having the advantage of being legal, nevertheless, long haul is probably as wallet-emptying a habit!

After we get back Gill has some major dental surgery to contend with and it's a bit unclear how long those appointments will be scheduled over -still,  we are hoping to squeeze-in a two month trip to Denmark and Sweden before the moho's MOT is due in late June. As for the autumn, as yet we are unsure. We are due a return trip to Greece at some point, Italy calls as ever, what about Corsica and Sardinia? In among all that we are still thinking about moving house and that could put the kibosh on our travel plans for later in the year. So, lots of things to look forward to in 2018. 

Wishing you well with whatever you have planned.