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This morning – pea soup and chilly in the hills – this afternoon – blue skies and warm sunshine by the sea! We finally made it to the south coast of France! Will we ever get to Spain, let alone the south coast of Spain?!
Will probably linger here for a few days and catch up. There is laundry to be done, some work for both of us, it’s about time the van got a good wash on the outside (inside has been kept clean!).
We’ve even arranged to meet up with some fellow travellers, Michael is an app developer, and Kathrine is an artist, so we should all have plenty to talk about!
So beautiful! There is no place quite like it for me and I can’t wait to get to the South of France in a few months.
I do have a few questions though after our 5 day trial in a cv, if you can spare a minute from cycling, gazing and the scenery, taking photos, eating french cheese and drinking the local plonk?
Having just spent a few nights in a cv during what was probably the worst weather this century, do you have any recommendations how to stabilise it? Admittedly parking on top of a hill didn’t help, but it had stunning views of the Vale of Aylesbury that were uninterrupted for miles – as I am typing this I am beginning to see why we had a problem….. However, any advice would be gratefully received.
Also, on your travels have you come across anybody who has solar panels on their roof? Apparently they are very popular in Europe.
We had a fabulous time renting out the cv and it was quite well equipped, I would recommend Just Go to anybody else thinking about buying a van and wanting to try one out first. Of course when it gets dark at 4pm and the wind is howling and the rain is lashing down on the roof you do need to have some decent entertainment to hand….
Glad you enjoyed your trip, and what a shame about the weather! Still, it is the UK!
Stabilising – some vans have legs that wind down from the rear corners that effectively lock off the suspension and might have helped. You can probably get them fitted as extras so I wouldn’t make a point of choosing a van on it having them. We’ve seen no need to use ours yet, although not had a gale to contend with. We only have them at the back, so it may not be the best solution. Also, I’m slightly paranoid about drivin goff with them down, which could be an expensive error!
Solar panels are quite popular, I’ve seen perhaps about 10-15% of the vans with them, maybe more but if they are fitted flat to the roof you can’t always see them. I suspect if you spend most of your time in southern Europe it would help to avoid the need to find hookups every night, but you don’t get much juice out of the panels, and it’s worth remembering that you’ll lose roof space you might have used for other things, like Sat dish and storage boxes.
I think if I was travelling longer term I’d be inclined to look at some other form of power generation. I’ve noticed that some of the more obvious long term travellers carry small petrol generators which can be run for an hour or two to top up. No idea how economic this might be (or neighbour friendly), but might get you out of trouble. But then you can run the van engine, although that’s probably not very economic either (we’ve done so a couple of times for a bit of battery boost on days we’ve not motored).
I’ve been running our inverter off the leisure battery whilst motoring in order to recharge the laptop battery which has worked well, and not impacted on the topping up of the leisure battery (rather than trying to power the laptop off the inverter in use). All depends on how much sitting around drinking the wine, taking in the views, eating the cheese, etc, etc you want to be doing!