Bournemouth to Poole
Today we picked up our van, Bertie! First challenge: me in the driver’s seat. What could possibly go wrong?
Mike’s daughter, Mich had been looking after Bertie while we were away. She’d taken him for little adventures, just around the block to stretch his wheels. But just before we arrived, he went on a big adventure. Bertie went to a festival! He’s been living his best van-life without us!
Mike was only insured to drive our rental car, which meant I had to drive Bertie. I’d never driven him before, and he’s very big. And manual. The last time I drove a manual was in a different lifetime, on a different continent, in a car that was much smaller and far less judgmental.
It took a few moments to find reverse. The little guideline that usually sits on the gear stick had fallen off. I found it in the ashtray. Reverse was to the left and down. I did this, but the van kept creeping forward. With a massive big fence in front of me, I didn’t have much room for error. So I called on the “expert” for help. Turns out, Bertie has a secret handshake: to get reverse, you have to lift a hidden collar thingy before moving the gear stick.
Next I had to manoeuvre this beast out of the car spot. It’s weird not having a rearview mirror. How do I know there’s nothing behind me? The side mirrors worked fine. I had to call in the “expert” again to make sure I didn’t hit anything. He walks up, laughs, and points to the dash. ‘You’ve got a reversing camera!’
That would’ve been handy five minutes ago. Little did I know, the reversing camera has a personality all of its own. But more on that later.
Next, I had to try to keep up with Mike on the way to drop off the rental car. For anyone that knows Mike, put him in a car in England and he instantly drives like a maniac. (He calls it rally driving).
Surprisingly, Bertie was a dream to drive. The real challenge wasn’t the gears. It was squeezing his chunky frame into England’s idea of “lanes”.
As for changing gears? Turns out, muscle memory is a thing. Just like riding a bike. A very large, intimidating bike with a house strapped to it.
I made it to europcar, incident free. No curbs were harmed. I even managed to vlog a bit while driving, because why not raise the difficulty level? Clearly, I’m now a professional van driver.
There is one small problem with the van. His air-conditioning isn’t working. Apparently, functioning air-con is just too much to ask from our campervans. First Rodger, then Poppy, now Bertie! But I managed to get an appointment tomorrow at the Mercedes dealership. Not cheap, but it beats sitting in a mobile oven.
I’m guessing our readers might be confused at this point. In the previous blogs we were preparing for the arctic and extreme cold, and now we’re worried about the air-con not working. Well, it’s just the way things work in Europe.
The rest of the day was a blur of “just a few errands” that somehow swallowed the entire afternoon.
First stop: the storage unit, where we played a fun game of Find Our Stuff. We loaded up, drove to the campground just outside Poole, feeling quite accomplished… until we realised we’d forgotten the camping chairs. You know, those minor luxuries like somewhere to sit. So, back to storage we went for round two. By the time we returned, we were absolutely wiped out. And to top it off, we had the kids coming over for dinner.
The kids arrived around 4:30pm and we had a nice evening catching up. Mike cooked some Chinese pork burgers but we completely forgot Jessie’s now a vegetarian. Oops. Thankfully, the food truck on-site came to the rescue. Mac and cheese chips for Jessie. Crisis averted.
After they left, all we wanted to do was fall into bed. Tiny problem. There was stuff all over it. We’d basically regurgitated our storage unit into our tiny living space. Then I had a revelation. The cab area … totally empty!. Within minutes, we’d relocated our crap heap onto the front seats. Problem solved. Out of sight, out of mind. Sleep restored.
Tomorrow, we attempt “organisation.” Wish us luck.