On the road – Judy and Valerie On the Road

Cruise America

On Tuesday, after tearful farewells to our lovely cousins we set off to the motorhome rental company to pick up the motorhome in which we were planning to spend the next ten days. We were very excited when we saw it and after being shown how everything worked, we set off for our first stop, Santa Barbara.

However our enchantment with the motorhome, or RV as it is called in the US, was short lived. We soon noticed water running across the floor and realised that there must be a leak. It got even wetter when we switched on the water heater. We called Cruise America’s Travelers Assist and they arranged for us to take it the next day to a repair shop which was on the way to our next stop, Morro Bay. We duly went to Sky River repair shop the next day only to discover no appointment had been made and they were really busy. However we waited a while and they managed to squeeze us in.

The bad news was that after doing a thorough check, the manager of the Sky River, which is a specialist RV repair shop, announced that in his professional opinion it was not safe to continue in the vehicle because it had a serious black mould problem. He said it had clearly been leaking for a long time. Also, he was concerned about the state of the vehicle generally. By this time we had noticed lots of problems – electric sockets which either didn’t work or were broken and not safe to use, lots of panelling coming away, rust inside the microwave…to name but a few.

After lots of phone calls back and forth Cruise America agreed to replace the RV but refused to deliver it to us. We either had to drive back to Los Angeles or drive on to San Francisco,so we opted to drive on. By the time we picked up the replacement vehicle, which was in a much better condition and had a considerably lower mileage, we had lost three days so we decided to cut our losses and not try to resume our trip by driving down to Morro Bay and then on to San Simeon but instead spend longer in Monterey. All was fine with the replacement vehicle, but we would definitely not use Cruise America again and would not recommend them to anyone.

Flight across America

We flew from New York to Los Angeles, east – west across America which took about six hours, and here are a few photos of our journey along the way.

Visiting cousins in Luxembourg

On the way back we stopped off in Luxembourg to visit my cousin Júlia and her husband Nicky in their fantastic house with a labyrinth of rooms for every type of activity – gym, preserves, workshop, sewing etc. They too have a camper van the same size as ours and so were well set up for van visitors. Júlia has a wonderful garden where she grows fruit and vegetables and then preserves them in jars and as bottled juice. We were treated to fantastic meals with virtually everything from the garden. Nicky goes out for a 2 hour cycle ride every morning at 6:30am (he has inspired me!) and before we left he sorted out yet another problem with one of our taps.

We left with a box of preserves and a huge bag of walnuts from her tree.

Visiting friends in Chiemsee

On the way back we visited our friend Ingrid who lives near Lake Chiemsee – a very pretty area in Bavaria. Unfortunately it rained every day but in between the downpours we were able to go for a swim in one of the nearby lakes and it was lovely to spend time catching up.

Ferry from Igoumenitsa

We got the ferry back from Igoumenitsa to Venice. It left at 6:30am and so we decided to park overnight in the car park at the terminal. After a bit of confusion where we found ourselves in the parking area for trucks we found a spot for the night. In the morning we were glad we’d made this decision as by 5am there was absolutely nowhere to park.

We had been told to go to the check-in at 5am which we dutifully did to be met by a huge queue. It took us over one hour to reach the counter – next time we’ll get there earlier.

Croatia to Greece

The next stage of our journey took us through Bosnia Herzegovina, Serbia and Bulgaria but we just passed through without doing any sightseeing. For our first stop we made for a campsite across the border into Serbia. The road through Bosnia close to the border with Montenegro looked very windy (this means mountainous) so we started early.

The journey was fine and we stopped in a small campsite called Camping Viljamovka in Kremna (N43° 50′ 42″ E19° 34′ 26″) finding ourselves in a pear orchard managed by a very friendly chap called Jarko who insisted that we tried the pear brandy that he makes. The only other people staying were a Dutch couple on motorbikes travelling to Turkey.

The following day we again set off early and driving through Serbia saw a wonderful stork’s nest with youngsters craning their necks and lots of cows wandering on the roads which reminded us of India.

That second evening we reached Sofia in Bulgaria and managed to stay at a small motorhome stop in Park4Nite on 220 Bulevard. There are two MH stops in Sofia and this is the one in the back garden of an older couple. The gate was closed and padlocked but there was a bell to left. Eventually a very friendly man called Ivan welcomed us in. It’s a smallish area but he managed to pack in nine vans, and some pretty big. It was fairly basic but had everything we needed. By that time it was quite late and we asked Ivan if there was a restaurant nearby. He pointed towards a tower block and said we’d find everything there – restaurant, gym, swimming pool … We eventually found the restaurant, but it wasn’t the usual traditional type of restaurant in surroundings that we would normally seek out. Still, the people were friendly, someone spoke English and we had very tasty pizzas and salad.

Driving through the four countries we became aware of some of the differences. Croatia has a lot of tourism and people had wonderful gardens with beautiful flowers. In Bosnia Herzegovina any land around a house was given over to growing vegetables. Serbia had some amazingly ugly buildings. The part of Bulgaria that we drove through was very industrial with chimneys belching smoke and a pollution haze covering valleys, although the south west also had a forested national park and was very beautiful.

This was the first time we’d driven in the van outside western Europe and outside the EU/Schengen. We had forgotten about queues at borders!! It was quite usual to spend one to two hours waiting to get through the border, and having to show the van registration document and my driving licence. And for the lorries it was much much longer.

Autogas: virtually every garage sells GPL so no problems there.

When things go wrong!!

Yet again we had tap problems! Water leaking/streaming from under the kitchen tap. Oh dear. Fortunately the campsite were able to give us the details of a mobile motorhome repair company operating in Croatia and cheery Mr Nottebohm came to the campsite in his green van and saved the day.

We needed a new tap and he had one of the right type in his van!! Within half an hour it was all fixed.

Stops en-route to Croatia

We took three days to drive to Croatia via Germany and Austria. After Belgium the stops were:

Car park in Hochspeyer (park4night) by an outdoor swimming pool. Very well set up stop with all facilities. N49° 26′ 28″ E 7° 53′ 35″
Car park in Siegsdorf (park4night) by a railway station. Went to a very nice Italian restaurant – Il Porcino. N47° 49′ 17″ E 12° 38′ 45″
Parking lot Vrhoulne, Croatia (park4night) – couldn’t quite make it to our destination N44° 51′ 7″ E 15° 25′ 27″

First stop Belgium

Spent our first night in a little town called Veurne just across the Belgian border. A pleasant town – completely dead by 9pm, but buzzy in the morning with people doing their shopping. Stayed in a parking area by a canal. Very pretty and it has somewhere to empty the toilet cassette. What could be better??

GPS N 51° 4’ 14” E 2° 39’ 56”

Oh dear … a problem with the Webasto boiler

Second day in Spain and something went wrong with the Webasto boiler. It gave off error messages about no combustion.

After phoning Webasto in Madrid we found an authorised dealer in Valladolid with a skilled engineer named Cesar who could fix it. But of course it needed a new part which had to be ordered.

Evidently if you’re only using the water heater (as we tend to do over the summer) carbon builds up around the burner and eventually it stops working. Evidently these boilers need to be set to very high heat every so often to prevent this build up.

The workshop was in an industrial estate just outside of the city but as this was Spain there was a very good bar/restaurant where all the workers from the surrounding businesses went for lunch. It took three excellent ‘menus’ at €10 each before we were on the road again.