2024 Morocco

I had a very difficult nights sleep without the use of my CPAP machine but we were still up and ready bt 6am. Taking the bags down stairs we met Asa as he had just arrived at the hotel. We placed our luggage in his car. We were soon sitting down for the buffet breakfast that I had booked for all of us at 6:30am. It was such a relief to know that we were no longer going to be stuck in France.

At sometime after 7am we got into the cars and Asa followed me to the fuel station to top off the fuel tank before dropping of the Avis hire car at the railway station. It was only a few minuted later we were making our way around to the Pet reception at Eurotunnel to check in Tucker so that he could travel. Our deadline of 11am was met. No onto the border control and customs. Once through these we were now booked on a train at 9:15am. Asa ignored the wait, which I couldn’t believe, and drove around to start the boarding process. He turned the ticket over that should have been visible and no-one questioned it. We are now sitting in the queue for the next train…. it was approximately 8:30am]

At the point I asked Tina to put the blue badge we had been using at the hotel into her handbag. Where is the handbag the cry came. Tine had left it on the chair when we left the breakfast area. Decided we could risk turning around and going back as we may miss the deadline. I contacted the assistance company who made a call to the hotel and they had possession of the bag and agreed to post it to us if we paid for the postage. I had no hesitation in agreeing to this.

The journey through the tunnel and back home was uneventful. We had never travelled through the tunnel on the upper deck in a car. A new experience!

We were soon home and totally relieved that we had managed to overcome all of the problems in the last couple of days. Now we must wait for the van to be repatriated to the UK and to the garage in Southampton.

P.S. We waited a week to see if the postal charge for the return of the handbag had been charged to the credit card. Nothing had happened so I asked our friends who were returning from their winter break to detour and see if the bag was still at the hotel. It was all packed up and in the boot of someone car ready to be posted. We met Terry & Brenda the following day and had lunch and retrieve the missing bag. I had been missing my reading glasses that I had placed for safe keeping in Tina’s bag.

We were up and ready for the 8:30am appointment for the engineers to look at our van. It was about 10:30am when 4 men came across and pushed the van into the workshop. Around 30 minutes later we were given the bad news… When we were filling the AdBlue at the motorway services on Sunday we ended up putting it in the diesel tank. This has caused the whole diesel system from working and will need a complete overhaul ie Pump, injectors, filters, tank and lines will need washing out and / or replacing. Once again with the help of google translate it was explained to us that it could be more than 6 weeks before they could look at the repair and more importantly have all the necessary parts. I explained I had no breakdown insurance and that getting the vehicle back to the UK could be a problem. My options were limited

1.Stay with the van but they were not sure how practical that was

2. Book into a hotel with Tucker for a very long stay which would be expensive

3. Return to the UK and allow the van to be recovered separately

The service manager suggested I contact our insurer, NFU mutual, to see if I could make a claim. After making the call and them checking with the relevant teams their end they confirmed that they would cover the cost of recovering the van back to the UK to a garage of my choosing. Thet might even cover the cost of the repairs. The bill will be in the many thousands so they explained I would lose my No Claims Bonus and the excess on the policy was £400. I found this most acceptable. The assistance company that use was now on the case and being fluent french speakers I was able to hand my phone to them to talk to the garage. By now the time was ticking on and we still needed to exit France by 11am tomorrow. The Car Hire company was only 200m approximately down the road but were closed for lunch and reopen at 2pm. We needed to hire a car and get to Calais and then try and find a Channel crossing operator that would take foot passengers with a dog. Once again after calling Eurotunnel and P&O they stated that Tucker needed to be in a vehicle to cross. We started o make preparations to travel to Calais knowing that we would probably be carrying whatever we take with us.

At 2pm the garage took me to Avis hire car offices to get a one way hire to Calais. Yes they could do that but they only had one car available even though the yard was full of cars. I was offered a Fiat 500 which I had no choice but to accept. I took a 2 day hire. Drove back to the Garage and loaded up the small car. We were soon on our way after thanking everyone for their kindness and getting reassurances they would take care of the van.

Driving a left had car was not a new experience but one I hadn’t done for many years and also I have driven automatics for the past 20+ years and this was a manual and was very small and basic. During the journey I am relying on the phone / iPad for navigation and Tina to relay instructions which she would confess she is not very good at. The USB sockets were not charging our devices but we later found out that the radio need to be switched on and apple car play became available. We asked the assistance company to find us a dog friendly hotel in Calais which they duly did. They also got us a quote from a french Taxi company to take us through the tunnel and return …. €1500 Ouch. The trip was stressful what with the driving, the navigation and trying to sort out the logistics of getting home.

We arrived at the hotel at around 7pm. We had contacted my son Andrew to see if he could came over to France and collect us. However he has no passport. We thought about asking our friends to return home early but it would be another 4 days before they would get to us. Eventually we contacted our daughter and her partner immediately volunteered to drive through the night and meet us at the hotel early in the morning ready for a 8:30am crossing. I changed the booking to his car and added him to the adults being carried. He took so much pressure of our shoulders by offering to collect us… He is a star.

We ate in the bedroom of the Hotel Ibis and settled down for the night. Tina remembered my CPAP machine and even brought the power adaptor however it was used in the van on 12v so no good for a hotel room. I will have a very uncomfortable nights sleep. We are due to see Asa for breakfast in the morning.

We spent a quiet night locked in the storage yard but wondering what the problem with the van is and how quickly can it be fixed.

We had Tucker wormed on Friday 11am and have until Wednesday 11am to exit France otherwise we will have to go through the vet worming treatment for Tucker again. We were up early and expecting the technician to come and fix our van this morning. He was with us most of the morning trying all sorts of IT equipment to get the van to talk to his diagnostics set up. Eventually he declared that he couldn’t fix our problem and we would have to be taken to a Fiat Professional garage which thankfully was relatively close by. We were invited to pay their charges of £300 before they loaded us back on to the roll back and we were transported less than 5 miles to the dealer.

The recovery driver placed us outside of the fence-line of the dealership and then invited me to go and talk to the service manager. They had already got us an appointment for Wednesday. However sitting down with the service manager and using Google Translate he booked us in to the workshop for 8am in the morning. There was nothing more that could be done today so we settled down and waited for tomorrow. Disappointing but there was now pressure on us so I changed the day and time of our Eurotunnel crossing to Wednesday morning.

What a disastrous day….

We set off this morning at about 10:30am for the approximately4 hour journey to Wissant ready for the tunnel crossing tomorrow. We have had a low AdBlue light on since yesterday so I stopped to get some at the services and buy some items for lunch. After figuring out how the pump worked we filled with about 10 lites and then started to exit the services. After about 100 meters the van lost all power and came to a stop.  It seems it is complaining of low AdBlue level and a diesel filter issue.

I tried calling for emergency services on 112 and they said they would attend. We waited 2 hours and it was now 2pm. I decided to walk back to the main centre and asked the girl if she could help. With the aid of google translate I did get her to call us a tow truck. It took about 45 minutes to arrive from Dreux and we were winched up on to the rollback. We were left in the van when we were taken back to their yard. We are to stay here in the yard until they can get someone to look at our problems.

I have delayed our Channel crossing by a further day so all being well we will be on our way home on Tuesday.

When we left Brenda in Tarifa a few days ago she was suffering with a head cold. Well I have been suffering a similar complaint these last few days. It means that I am finding the driving particularly tiring on these long journeys each day. I am unable to take too much medication just in case it makes me even more drowsy.

We left our overnight stop a little later today at around 11am. We may well use this stopover again as it was very acceptable and very popular. Our drive was 5 hours incorporating a 30mins lunch break. We returned to Chateaudun where we have been many times b ut it seems they have removed the borne and the dedicated Motorhome parking bays. We still parked up and intend to stay the night unless we get a knock from the police asking us to move on.

Tomorrow we continue to drive north east towards Calais for our departure on Monday. Its going to be a long drive tomorrow.

We tapped our code from the parking ticket into the machine and exited the site just before 11am. The short drive up to the village meant that we were entering the vet before 11am. The vet hid the worming tablet in a cream cheese triangle and Tucker was non the wiser. On completing the Pet Passport we paid our €15 and exited the practice just after 11am.

Our journey today was a long and boring drive along dual carriageway for close to 200 miles. We decided to use a new site to us just short of Clermont Ferrand. It certainly beats the one I had earmarked previously.

Tomorrow we have a similar journey to continue north through France.

Today we needed to get to Leucate in readiness for the visit to the vet in the morning. It was another long drive along mostly free motorway and we were soon on the French part of the journey using the toll road.

On arriving in the village I had decided we would try and get a pitch at the village municipal site but the office was closed and I didn’t want to wait until opened so we drove around the other side of the village to the Aire we had used many years ago.It had a ticket barrier to pay for your stay and the issued ticket is used to get out of the area by pushing in the code on the ticket. The screen was difficult to see in the sunlight but it was in English and we managed to buy one nights stay. There were a small number of vans on the multiple levels of the parking area.

I watched the darts using the excellent mobile signal. Our appointment in the morning is 11am.

We left the site at Valencia knowing that we needed some supplies so we set the Sat Nav for the local Lidl. After driving around we finally found the entrance and went in and bought the essentials. We had run out of Milk and bread along with a lot of other things.

We now made our way east along the free motorway towards France. I wanted to get somewhere close to Barcelona by tonight so I picked out a rural aire that looked good on the app. We came across a large car park with Motor homes crammed in like sardines. I mistakenly thought that this was the place I had set to be our overnight stop. I very nearly hit a tree stub on entering the parking and would have done if Tina had not shouted…. It was a close thing to another disaster.

We travelled about a further 10 miles to a small village with a designated Aire. We were the only van occupying one of the four available spots. I thought that the mobile signal would be awful as we were so far out from the main town but it was extremely fast and allowed me to watch the Bournemouth match with no buffering at all. Very impressed.

I streamed the match against Luton town and by half time I was depressed as we were losing 3-0 however things changed in the second half as we finished the game winning the match with a 4-3 scoreline. A great result.

Love the Aire we are on and would certainly return.

Not been the best of days…

Whilst I was preparing breakfast Tina took Tucker out down the beach. She allowed him to run but a camper decided he didn’t want Tucker any where near him or his wife. He pulled a knife and was trying to stab Tucker and threatening Tina. She was screaming but she was too far away for me to hear. She returned to the van with tears streaming and very upset. It has spoilt it for her to return here as this was becoming one of her favourite sites. The guy complained as he felt all dogs should be on leads.

We soon packed up and paid the fees and travelling east towards Valencia. We travelled over 4 hours and arrived at Devise Gardens a site we visited in early January. We were fully expecting to stay on the overspill car park but were offered a pitch next to the amenity block. I reversed onto the pitch but Tina wanted me to move the van over more towards the edge. As I reversed back I hit a laundry line sticking out from the building and made a hole through one of the door windows. It went through both the inner and outer plastic layers. With the help of one of the other campers, a dutchman, we fitted the fragments back into place and gaffer taped it back together and then covered it with plastic. Another expensive  mistake to go with the door sill damage a week ago at the Moroccon garage.

Phoned the vet and made an appointment for Friday morning for Tucker to be wormed and his Pet Passport updated and also changed our Euro tunnel crossing to late Monday morning so will be back home by early afternoon.

An eventful day and not all good ….

Nice quiet day today. We should have gone shopping but we will cope with the supplies we have.

I finished my latest edition of the series of books I have been listening to. I did start to watch the Monday Night football but the stream was not great so I watched some YouTube videos in the end. We have decided to spend another night here before moving tomorrow further east towards France and home.

We did get a call from Stacie wishing Tina a belated happy Mothers day which she was pleased to receive.