Poole, UK

It’s organisation day! But first, emergency repairs: Bertie’s having a mid-life crisis – his air-con has packed up and I’m not doing another van trip in a sauna!

We took him to the local Mercedes dealer and they had a look. Turns out he had no gas! They tried to re-gas him and failed. More diagnostics are needed. They won’t have time to fix him before we go away, so we decided to leave it until we get back. We’re heading north. How hot can it get?

Other than that, the day was spent sorting our van. We took some stuff back to storage, picked up some more stuff and bought more stuff. What stuff? I have no idea!

Then it was time to wash Bertie. This was a bigger deal than it should have been. First there was a queue, so we decided to check the air in our tyres. But it cost £1 just to find out. Outrageous! We didn’t even know how much air we needed. So, back in the car wash queue we went, grumbling about being charged for something that’s literally everywhere. Then it was our turn to wash. 

We chose the ten minute option thinking this would be heaps of time. There were three different hoses. The black hose for fresh water, the blue hose for soapy water, and the hose for the brush. Straight forward enough, except they’d all got tangled up in a mess by the last person. Why hadn’t we thought to check that beforehand? The clock and our money ticked by as we desperately tried to untangle them.

In an attempt to make up for lost time, we tag-teamed it: Mike wielded the squirty hose, I chased after him with the brush. But when it was time to use the soap, it just trickled out like an old man having a pee. By the time we’d dribbled soap all over the van, we were down to our last minute. We need to rinse, NOW! I grabbed the black hose and started spraying like a maniac, but only soapy water came out. Shit! We’re not gonna make it! God help us if we have to pay more money! And then everything went quiet. The frantic hustle gave way to an unsettling silence. The stupid machine had left us with a half-clean and soapy Bertie.

I sent Mike into the shop to complain and he came back with a lady, a refund, and a queue of annoyed people waiting to wash their cars. So, Bertie is partially clean. That will have to do.

I think we are now all ready for our big adventure which starts tomorrow! Driving on the M25 to Dover! (Oh, and we’re catching a ferry too, if we can get out of the M25 car park.)