Day Thirty Two – Sunday 8th August 2010

As Edith and Didier had paid for dinner on the previous night we thought it would be good to take them out for brunch on Sunday. We went to the oldest inn in the oldest town in Belgium. We enjoyed a hearty brunch then made preparations to head off. We had hoped to spend our last day in Brugges and stay overnight in a hotel but with the van needing its nightly charge we had to change our plans and decided we would head for the coast near Dunkerque as we had a ferry to catch at 10.00am on Monday.

Didier, Edith and Dandy

We toyed with the idea of catching a ferry later that day but it was going to cost more than the return trip to change the booking so we decided that was not a good plan. We tried to get into a campsite near the port only to be told it was full, the receptionist was kind enough to phone around some other sites in the area but they were all full. We needed a shower and some groceries to get us by so we came up with a cunning plan. While I had been in the reception Dandy had been ‘casing the joint’ and we sneaked back into the site with our toilet bags and used the shower facilities. The reasoning behind this was that if we could get cleaned up and buy a few bits and pieces at the shop we could go back to a really nice spot beside a marina where we’d seen some other camper vans parked up.

In the Ladies I joined a small queue for the showers. The young, bikini clad girl who was at the front of the queue faffed about and admired herself and adjusted her hair in front of the mirror while the queue got longer and I got increasingly angrier with her. Finally she picked up her mobile and started playing some hideous, tuneless rap music at a ridiculous volume. I could see that she was going to leave her phone in this state of noise on the shelf while she showered and we would all be subjected to this racket. I cracked and enquired of the selfish young nymph whether she thought it was reasonable that we should all be subjected to her noisy music and would she turn it down please? She was French and indicated that she had not understood my request. The lady next to me obliged by translating my request and the young girl shrugged her shoulders and moved towards the cubicle, phone still blaring. I was incensed by now and resorted to some very visual sign language and a full verbal rant, so loud that Dandy heard the commotion in the Men’s block. She got the picture and turned it down a fraction. I was sorely tempted to pick it up and flush it down a toilet, but my desire for a shower overrode this compulsion. Nothing like drawing attention to yourself!

We picked up some wine, beer and bread at the camp shop and sneaked back out of the site and made our way to the marina where we spent a very pleasant evening looking out over the tidal river and watching young guys fish for eels.

Day Thirty Three – Monday 9th August, 2010

As we had no electricity hook up overnight we hadn’t been able to charge the batteries so we made the decision to get the van to Dover and finally admit defeat and call in the breakdown services. It was highly unlikely that the batteries would survive the 500 mile trip from Dover to Edinburgh without an overnight charge. We called Britannia and warned them of our predicament, they told us to call them again when we reached Dover.

We endured the usual hideous ferry holiday makers and screaming brats for the two hour crossing. Luckily the van started when we reached the white cliffs and we rolled off the ferry through the security checks. Dandy’s phone rang as he was driving and he was waved aside by a policewoman who gave him a real dressing down about driving and talking on the phone, she let him off with a stern warning. It was amusing to see Dandy so contrite and I had to suppress a snigger.

We found a car park near the front in Dover and spent the next few hours negotiating with the breakdown service. It was finally agreed that a mechanic would come out to confirm that the van was genuinely broken down and then we would be able to get a hire car. The van would be trucked back to Edinburgh separately. There were no hire cars to be had in Dover so we finally got one in Canterbury some 17 miles away. The technician arrived to inspect the van and agreed with Dandy’s diagnosis then some time later the breakdown truck arrived to pick up the van and he agreed to take us to the rental company in Canterbury.

On arrival at the Enterprise Rent-A-Car office Dandy went to complete the paperwork while I emptied all our possessions from the van onto the pavement with the help of our driver. All our dirty washing and other stuff that had been on the go for the last five weeks were piled up, it was like a jumble sale and I felt I had to keep apologising for my schemieness. Dandy had a tear in his eye as he waved bye bye to his poor Hiace leaving on the back of the truck.



Poor Hiace takes the slow route home

We got an upgrade car that had just come in – a Seat Leon which was a great car. We piled all our possessions into the boot and the back seat and finally got on the road just after 5pm. There was no petrol in the car so we asked Thomas, our SatNav, where the nearest petrol station was and as usual he took us off in completely the wrong direction then he found us one that had obviously been closed for years. Finally we found a petrol station, we were running on fumes by this time, and filled up. Dandy went in to pay and the friendly cashier asked him how his day had been. His face contorted and his eyes rolled, he placed his hands on the counter and replied ‘Right, where do I start?’ I bet she doesn’t ask that question again in a hurry!

The journey through Englandshire was great. We made good time and the car was good to drive. We stopped halfway for some food and made it home at 1am on the Tuesday morning. We were exhausted yet strangely on a high and chatted until at least 3am before finally falling into a well deserved sleep.

Our adventure was finally over and we were home safe minus our Hiace which arrived on Thursday morning and is still lying in bits at the bottom of my garden much to the delight of the neighbours! We had agreed that the van was definitely getting sold when we got home but are now having second thoughts. The problems were not caused by flaws in the van but by the replacement of a high pressure oil pipe which turned out not to be fit for purpose. This high pressure oil escape is more than likely also the cause of the alternator failure later in the holiday. It’s staying for the moment!

Some Statistics:
Travelled 4217 miles
Used 170 Gallons fuel
Used 12 litres oil
Cheapest diesel in Luxembourg @ .80p per litre
Most expensive diesel in Italy @ £1.20 per litre
Visited 10 countries
Highest temperature in camper van was 48 degrees centigrade
Steepest gradient 12.5% for 35km
Highest point - the Grosglockner in Austria at 8,000feet
Lowest point – falling out over icepacks

Day Twenty Eight and Twenty Nine– Wednesday 4th and Thursday 5th August 2010

Woke up to great weather and blue skies with very little cloud, after speaking to the site owner it seemed that the Glockner road would be good with visibility until around 3pm. Dandy took the decision that we would go for it even though it was a pretty reckless thing to do. The scenery on the climb up the pass was once more absolutely stunning. How many more picture postcard scenes can a person take in one holiday? Dandy drove and we took it quite gently even though Dandy ranted at all other drivers who got in his way or didn’t drive to his standards in order to not have to use the brakes too much.

We got to near the top of the pass, parked up near the glacier and took loads of photos. I kept disappearing to track down Ibex and get sandwiches for lunch etc. Dandy had to keep texting me to track me down. We decided to take the funicular car down to the glacier as we thought it would be quite an experience to walk upon it. Unfortunately the funicular was built in 1960 when the glacier was hundreds of feet higher than it is today and we had to descend the rest by foot. It was well worth it and quite spectacular with huge cracks in the very blue ice that you could have stuffed annoying Dutch folk and their kids quite easily.

The bad bit was the really steep climb back up to the funicular in the very thin air. There was a queue when we got there and I joined it while Dandy went off to take some more photos. A car had arrived, loaded up 30 people and left before Dandy returned and I had sat down on a handy bench at the side of the queue to catch my breath. I could see him frantically scanning the queuing people for me and then looking at the disappearing car which was ascending the cliff side. Other people had noticed too and we were having a good laugh at his expense especially as I had his return ticket. He finally spotted me, much to his relief that he wouldn’t have to climb the rest of the way up.


Grossglockner Glacier


Dynamo at the Glockner


The final high was the very highest point of the pass which had very tight hairpins on an old cobbled road. Dandy went for that too and did wonder at his own sanity but the van coped with its very clever gearing and ratios. We were 8,000 feet up – utter madness with a sick van!

Found a campsite that was part of a working farm that night, it was fine, spoiled only by a mild disagreement between us as I hadn’t done my duty by putting the ice packs in the freezer. My hairdryer blew up that night in the toilet block and Dandy interpreted this as me not making an effort for him since we’d had words! As if!
We had to be careful not to offend our neighbours on campsites from now on as we might need to ask them for help with the van. By getting a jump start from someone each day preserved the batteries and while on the move we were careful not to turn off the engine if at all possible.

On the Thursday morning we got a jump start from a helpful Dutchman. On the Autobahn we experienced terrible rain and drove with no lights and using wipers only occasionally. My job was to keep checking the voltage in case it dropped below a critical level where the engine shut off switch would kill the engine. It was very stressful and we barked at each other a lot that day.

Found ourselves in a really daft campsite in Germany that night. The rain was still hammering down and when I got out of the van my feet and ankles disappeared in about 5 inches of wet mud. It was so depressing. For lack of any real choice we ate at the site restaurant – schwein schnitzel and a glutinous sauce and once more the language barrier led to us ordering three very large salads between us as well. We took what we couldn’t eat away with us in a Tupperware box and finally jettisoned it four days later in Dunkerque.

It was still hammering down when we retired to bed and we reckoned that they probably ate their children in this part of the world.

Day Thirty and Thirty One – Friday 6th and Saturday 7th August 2010

We were up very early, it had rained all night long and the ground was sodden. We got a jump start from our German neighbour who was quick to point out to Dandy that he would not normally vacation in this area but had to be there for a family wedding.
We were heading for the Rhineland area and we had two options - to stay with an acquaintance of Alan’s in his guest house in Rupertshoffen where we had been two years previously, the other option was another daftie campsite near the town of Bogel where we had also stayed previously. Andree, the hotelier, was not in and his home looked pretty closed up, a neighbour said he was on holiday in England. We headed off to Bogel, and got a pitch well away from the long stay natives, especially the mountain troll (see 2008 blog) and tried not to make eye contact with anyone. We were looking forward to our steak meal in a favourite restaurant that evening.

The troll accosted me when I was on my way back from the toilets to warn me about her two year old child who would appear at some point and run around beside us and snort, she demonstrated this by making the noise of a pig with a lot on its mind. She warned me sinisterly ‘not to be scared’, then she went through the whole story a second time. Strange, I thought, she couldn’t be a day under 60 so I couldn’t figure out why her ovaries were still active and it also occurred to me that we were incomers that she wanted to warn away.

Fifteen minutes later Dandy and I were running round the field making strange noises hotly pursued by a very angry wasp much to the amusement of the troll and other assorted dafties. The strange child never appeared.

Dandy carried out a routine oil check and this revealed more problems – the engine breather pipe had been nipped and become blocked. I had to dismantle the bed to allow Dandy access to the area. I thought – what has gone wrong now, can we take much more bad luck? I went for a shower and on my return relations between us were fractious. We headed off for the 1km walk to the restaurant. As were walked through the cornfields on this lovely summer evening tension between us really escalated. Dandy expressed his disappointment that I had not dealt with the ice blocks again and I flipped – ‘all to try to preserve about 1 Euro worth of food’ I said! The knives were out and we had a heated argument. This was getting us nowhere, then I sniffed the air a couple of times and declared ‘there’s a stink of shite here’. That broke the standoff, Dandy burst out laughing and we kissed and made up realising that we were taking the stress of the fragile, broken down van out on each other and being silly and spiteful.

We enjoyed a great steak in pepper sauce washed down by a couple of beers and sauntered back to the site again. We stopped at the campsite bar for a nightcap. I went to the ladies and when I walked into the bar I was so conscious of everyone staring at me that I walk smack into the cigarette machine. If you’ve ever watched the first Star Wars movie it was like the bar scene from that film! Bizarre. We drank up quickly and escaped to the safety of the van.

We begged a jump start from the owner of the site and headed off again next morning. We took a route along the Rhine rather than risking the river ferry and having to turn off the engine unnecessarily. It was a lovely day and we enjoyed the scenery and the interesting traffic on the river – coal boats, cruise boats etc. We stopped off for a coffee and cake at an outdoor riverside café. Behind me sat a large, overweight, very ugly man. Dandy spotted that he was surreptitiously filming the young blonde waitress. We found this very sleazy as we figured out what he would use the footage for later on. Dandy felt it was his civic duty to tell the waitress about his behaviour when he paid the bill and she was quite shocked. Then he wanted to have words with fatman, he was going to demand that he ‘delete or bluetooth the files’ to him! Fatman paid up and legged it.


Pervy fatman to my left

We were heading for friends of ours – Edith and Didier who live on Tongeren, Belgium. Tongeren is the oldest town in Belgium. Still checking the voltage and fretting over the alternator all the way, we arrived at their house at 5.30pm. We hooked up the batteries with their power and enjoyed a beer together in the garden. We ate in a fantastic restaurant at the cathedral that evening. We enjoyed great food and Didier regaled us with tales of his recent deployment to Afghanistan and how he would sort out the Belgian political system. It was a great night and we enjoyed their company once more.

Days Twenty Four and Twenty Five – Saturday 31st July and Sunday 1st August 2010

At breakfast Dandy was keen to absolve himself of all blame from the farting incident and kept enquiring if my stomach issues had resolved themselves in a particularly loud voice. We said our goodbyes and took some photos.


Outside the guest house in Slovenia

It was a beautiful day and the mountains were stunning. We hadn’t travelled very far when we came across an idyllic campsite beside an amazingly clear, emerald green river. We decided to stop even though it was only early afternoon as we loved the setting so much. We just chilled and watched several coach loads of pished local geriatrics return from their Sunday school picnic by the river, it was hilarious.
Sat with our G & T’s watching the sun go down and the mountains gradually change colour. The night sky was clear and full of stars and the Milky Way. What a place!


View from our campsite at Soca


We decided we would stay an extra day as we liked it so much and that was what the holiday was all about. We had very little food left so instead of packing up the van and driving to the nearest town Dandy investigated catching a bus. The campsite owner told him that we could get one at the junction on the main road, about 500 metres away, at 11am and we could get one back at 1.15pm. Off we set and right enough the bus turned up and we clambered on. The bus driver was busy gassing on his mobile and drove most of the way to Bovac along narrow, twisty roads multi tasking phone and steering wheel. We checked that there was a bus back at 1.15pm but no, it was Sunday so we would have to wait until 3.30pm. This was a pain as we wanted to make the best of the day back at the campsite and it was a very day hot so our perishable food wouldn’t survive till then and the supermarket closed at 12.00pm. We had a quick dash around the very busy supermarket and reached the till only to be sent back to weigh and label our fresh produce, this made us quite unpopular with the rest of the queue.
We went into the tourist office to enquire about taxis back to our site and hey presto before you could say Ljubljana there was one outside for us. We were back in no time at the small cost of 10 euros.

Our neighbours, the Klagenfurts, were a German family who’d travelled on motorbikes and a sidecar combination (the dog went in the sidecar as well as one of the kids). We got talking to them a few times and they seemed very nice. At one point we were speaking to Mrs Klagenfurt point while they were getting packed up ready to go on a day trip. Mr Klagenfurt was clearly not pleased that his missus was not pulling her weight and barked at her to join them to which she responded immediately, Dandy wished he had this effect on me.

We went down to the river to enjoy the sun and the breathtaking colour of the water. I noticed a strange phenomenon in that there was no algae or weed on the stones on the bed of the river, just bleached white stones. It was excruciatingly cold and even paddling in it made your legs go numb. Some swimmers were wearing full wetsuits. Dandy went for a dip and suffered the cauliflower beanbag effect mentioned earlier. I think his genitals actually took refuge inside his body. We barbequed, lit a campfire and watched the stars and mountains again.


Frogmen in the river at Soca

Days Twenty Six and Twenty Seven – Monday 2nd and Tuesday 3rd August 2010

We reluctantly left the campsite at Soca in order to move further north. We both agreed that we could have stayed there longer. Our plan was to go over the Grosglockner pass, the highest mountain in Austria. This had been planned as one of the highlights of the trip.

To leave Slovenia we had to head over another high pass into Austria. Once more the scenery was stunning and we stopped at the top to take photos. However the arduous second gear climb had caused the engine to overheat and the Hiace resembled a steam train. The aftermarket turbo had caused the cooling system to work overtime so a litre of sparkling water was added to the system. Within 50 metres of starting the descent the dashboard lit up like a Christmas tree and a warning buzzer suggested something may be amiss. As quickly as it arrived the fault sorted itself and the lights went off and the buzzing stopped.

We stopped part of the way down the mountain for lunch and to give the van and Dandy a rest. He had been ranting extensively at an old bastard in a Talbot camper that was being too cautious by descending the pass in first gear and at a young guy in a car of whom he enquired ‘how much of the f**kin’ road do you want?’

We got involved in a conversation with an Austrian cyclist at the next table. Dandy asked what he did for a living and he replied that he was a sailor. We looked quizzically at one another then Dandy enquired if there was a huge requirement for sailors in a land locked country. It turned out he was a seller and not a sailor and he explained what he sold by saying ‘you have this in Scotland’. We were thinking Haggis, Whisky etc. but it turned out he was involved with internet and telecommunications. We were quite impressed by his challenging cycle but it turned out he had got the bus from Austria and was cycling downhill back home!

The lights and buzzer returned with a vengeance as we entered a small town at the bottom of the pass. We headed for a filling station and 5 minutes of testing revealed that the alternator was dead and the batteries weren’t charging with over 1,000 miles still to cover before home. WTF? Dandy thought that this was going to be the end of the road for our trip, he wasn’t going to be able to fix this problem readily. We limped into a campsite at Sachsenburg on the River Drau in Austria. This campsite was beside a medieval walled village and was proliferated by masses of Dutch and their hyper, badly behaved offspring. I had to have words.

Between us we hatched a cunning plan to get back to Blighty using a combination of rewiring the three batteries on board and charging them up at a campsite each night with the mains hook up. The down side was that brake lights, wipers, headlights and indicators all used up the valuable electricity and had to be used minimally.

We spent an enjoyable couple of days here and ate both nights in a local restaurant where the owner, Kristoff, poured Schnapps down our necks on a regular basis. On both occasions Dandy was pleased to see that the bill was less than thirty Euros.

We had picked the only town in that area without a bank or a cash line machine. A train line ran close to the site so we decided to have an adventure on a high speed train to Spittal an der Drau. It cost us 12.5 Euros for the return trip so we’ll never complain about bank charges again.


Our train in Austria

Because of the van problems and the poor weather forecast we had scrapped our plans to go over the Grosglockner and had decided on a less demanding route through Italy. I was disappointed but thought it best.

Day Twenty Three -Thursday 29th July 2010

We were up quite early and packed the last few bits and pieces into the van. Dandy had checked the oil levels and declared that ‘she hadn’t used a drop of oil’. I smiled wryly and thought ‘apart from the two gallons that had emptied itself all over the side, underside of the van and the poor gits following behind us’.

We had decided to pay a visit to Bosnia and Herzegovina, a well known tourist destination. So we set a route on Thomas and off we went. We were stopped at a border checkpoint by an armed policeman and his mate who rigorously checked our documents and asked us various questions about our insurance. Things weren’t looking good, it seemed that our only option was to head back on the road we’d come on and try to purchase insurance in a town about 60 miles away. Suddenly the conversation took a new turn and after finding out that we were from Edinburgh Dandy and official chap had an engaging conversation about Hearts FC who had been gubbed by a Sarajevo club in a UEFA Cup match a few years previously. A sudden change of heart and he waved us across the border. His mate had a prosthetic arm, probably blown off in the war 16 years previously, an armed man without an arm I thought!

I had been to Bosnia two years previously and had visited the city of Mostar where the bridge was blown up and most of the city shelled during the conflict of the early 90’s so I thought I knew what to expect. As we drove into Bosnia we had a feeling that we shouldn’t really be there. I was driving and wasn’t too confident about the insurance situation and given Dandy’s fidgeting and barking he wasn’t either. We found the area and the small towns quite depressing after Croatia, so after a few hours we decided to head back to Croatia and chalk it down to experience.

We found a great campsite nearby the Plitvice Lakes National Park, Dandy’s eyes were out on stalks at all the fancy camper vans. We found a nice spot, cracked open a couple of beers and people watched, one of our favourite pastimes. We ate in the local restaurant that evening and had a great meal washed down by a litre of local ‘yellow’ wine.

Day Twenty Four – Friday 30th July, 2010

Dandy was dispatched to get milk and bread for breakfast from the campsite shop. Sometime later he returned empty handed and looking rather sheepish. He admitted to having got involved in conversations with other camper van owners en route and the shop was closed by the time he got there. I held my tongue as I know what he’s like.
We set off towards Ljubljana in Slovenia with very little fuel and Thomas was being absolutely no help in trying to find us some, he seems to be an expert in locating fuel stations that went out of business many years before! We rolled into a small town on the border of Croatia and Slovenia and we were shocked to see so many shell attacked houses next to undamaged ones and could only surmise that when the war was taking place it had turned neighbour against neighbour during the ethnic cleansing. We found out from a local cafe owner that the area used to border Serbia and was the scene of terrible fighting. We stopped to view an outdoor homelands war museum in the same town, which was quite shocking as well.



Two Mig jets at the museum and one of the shell blasted houses

In Slovenia the roads were narrow and the driving just plain silly, they seemed to have no idea what the white line down the centre of the road means, Dandy predicted we’d see a crash that day, I hoped that we wouldn’t be involved in it. He was right and we saw two, neither involved us! Being a right hand drive vehicle the driver had to rely on the passenger to check for oncoming traffic at junctions, we had a bit of an altercation that day as Dandy couldn’t distinguish my ‘go’ from my ‘no’. We compromised with ‘go’ being replaced with ‘yes’ which I found quite difficult to remember.

We started to look for a campsite late afternoon and found quite a basic one beside a river. I got out to inspect the toilets as I feel that it is quite important to have clean loos, they didn’t meet my high standards. When I came out I was aware of a heated argument going on. Being a nosey type I took a stroll in the general direction of the voices to witness an angry Frenchman and a hippyish looking woman with a baby in a pushchair shouting at each other. I went to tell Dandy about it and he being the nosey type too wandered over and struck up a conversation with partner of hippyish woman about places to go in Slovenia. The argument had ceased by now and the man was very helpful and recommended that rather than head for the touristy area around Lake Bled we should head west towards the Slovenian Alps. The chap was dressed very strangely in brown corduroy breeches, a harlequin type top and funny pointy shoes, a small sign on the back of their van read ‘small elf on board’ so we surmised from this that they were a family of elves on holiday, they looked liked extras from a Lord of the Rings film.

His advice was good and the scenery was amazing. It was getting late and we’d hoped to stumble across a campsite or small hotel but we saw nothing and it was now 8pm. Thomas had informed us that there were no campsites in Slovenia at all. Finally when we were ready to give up and camp out at the side of the road we came across a guest house high up in the mountains and looking down the valley. I negotiated with the owner in my best Slovene and we got a nice room and evening meal for a reasonable price. Mine host served up a hearty meal of goulash type broth followed by chocolate pancakes washed down with some local ale.


Outside the guesthouse in Slovenia

We had been told that a woman would probably be arriving late and leaving early in the room next to us and to expect some minor disturbance. We retired to bed but the pulse laden broth had played havoc with Dandy’s alimentary canal and he relieved his wind problems loudly outside the bedroom doors in the early hours so as not to disturb me. He had thought that the woman had left and he was safe to do this but it transpired that she was still in her room with her door slightly ajar and had probably witnessed the full trumpet voluntary.

Week Two in Pirovac, Croatia 23/7 – 28/7/2010

We decided on an excursion to the nearby Krka National Park to see the waterfalls (or ‘slaps’ in Croatian), it was a stinking hot day but it wasn’t too far away and the AC in the Hiace was working wonderfully which kept the kids quiet.
We paid up our entrance fee, boarded a non air conditioned bus and headed to the drop off point. It was an oasis of tropical beauty in an otherwise barren, arid landscape. As we tramped around the walkways the only thing that impaired our enjoyment was the other people. A sign indicated a large number of reptiles indigenous to that area, a number of which were scary poisonous snakes. A young, overweight, spoilt German child was clearly upset by the thought of encountering these evil beasts and as she was particularly annoying we took great delight in regularly pointing up to trees in mock horror and shouting ‘schlang’ while making loud hissing noises.

We stopped at the main waterfall area which absolutely stunning, tiers of water cascaded down to a large pool over a span of hundreds of feet. People were swimming in the lower pool and it wasn’t long before Caroline and Dandy were in too. Michael seemed quite reticent to join them and spent some time fiddling with my video camera. When I quizzed him about this he admitted to secretly filming some young, bikini clad, nubile fillies that he referred to as ‘water fluffies’.



The Krka Park falls

Back up at the entrance area, we were hungry and ordered some overpriced, flabby, meat sandwiches, 3 beers and a soft drink for Caroline. Again, lost in translation,only 2 beers and 2 soft drinks arrived. Dandy and I claimed the beers and we persuaded Michael that he must look too young to be drinking alcohol. He wasn’t best pleased and ranted a lot while slyly consuming my beer.

We then drove round a circuitous mountain route to the higher ‘Roski Slap’ falls and although they were not quite as spectacular as the others we enjoyed the peace and tranquillity of the area and a lack of very annoying tourists, which we do not consider ourselves to be! Caroline was straight back into the water and perfected her dives off the pier which Dandy had been teaching her to do. We persuaded her to stand under a waterfall to have her photo taken and by the time Dandy had fumbled about with the exposure settings her shoulders were bruising with the weight of water. She admitted after to always having a desire to stand under a waterfall but now knows it’s not such a clever idea. Returned home tired but happy after a great day, further enthused about another aspect of Croatia.



Caroline under the waterfall

Another fantastic day out was spent in Trogir, a bustling walled town and port brimming with boats and yachts. One in particular caught our eye. It was completely over the top and we were curious to find out who it belonged to as it was so opulent that we thought it must be someone famous. It turned out to be a private charter and some old dude in a white sailors cap came out on deck at one point to exchange niceties with a rather effeminate deck hand who was busy fiddling with the yacht’s buoys! On the way home we stopped to get the windscreen cleaned at a service station and to give Michael a treat. Dandy had mentioned the Croation window washing fluffies in their tight t shirts, alas they had knocked off for the evening and Michael had to wash the windscreen himself.


Michael observing fluffies at Krka NP

Michael’s disappointment spilled over into the evening and after dinner in one of our favourite restaurants (sexy waiter one) Dandy and Michael squared up to one another and Michael ended up wearing a glass of water. They soon kissed and made up, and Caroline’s take on the event was that ‘no one drowned’.

Michael’s sunglasses were causing a problem, they didn’t fit his face too well and were uncomfortable. Dandy thought that he could adjust them using a little gentle heat such as a hairdryer on a low setting. However he spotted the toaster and thought that would do the trick, end result was one melted lens which he hoped Michael would not notice! Needless to say he did and Dandy took Michael shopping for a new pair of glasses.

An appealing feature of our little town of Pirovac was the inspiring and imaginative local entertainment. This ranged from blues bands, local folk music, dancers in national costume and rock bands, all of which took place on the seafront, 100 yards from our wee house. The folky evening also had stalls set up with local food and wine tastings, particularly handy as we hadn’t bothered to eat much that night. Dandy and Michael clambered up on an electricity box to use as a vantage point to watch the dancers. One particular beauty in a scarlet dress, split thigh high, attracted Michael’s attention and Dandy had to reprimand him for uttering ‘get your tits oot for the lads’.
Mozzies were a problem and we all suffered quite bad reactions from our various bites despite spraying ourselves liberally each evening. One morning Dandy found a bloater by the bed (it wasn’t me!). He squashed it and to his disgust it was full of blood, its contents could have come in useful by the blood transfusion service. That evening he found 8 or more bites on his Percy, and quite a lot of swelling in the region. I might have thought that this was a bonus but no, he was now out of bounds for any sort of nocturnal activity. As I document this he is still waiting for the bites to go away and most mornings he commands ‘get your glasses on’ and I have to scrutinise Percy and comment on any improvement from the previous day. He’s not obsessive at all of course.

Michael got to fulfil an ambition by getting to ride a jet bike after Dandy convinced the owner, Mrs Pneumatic Tits, that he was 21. He took his sister out for a short spin before blasting out across the bay on his own following Dandy’s tips on how to handle the machine. On the last day of the kid’s holiday he hired it again while Dandy and I cruised around on a pedalo like a couple of geriatrics.
We said goodbye to our neighbour, Mrs Doofang, and bought her pastries and a bottle of local hooch to express our thanks at her friendliness and humbling hospitality. We took photos and kissed and shook hands. We were showered with gifts of plums, ham and homemade lavender bags.



Caroline's first taste of watermelon


We took the kids to the airport on the Wednesday evening to catch the 20.05 Edinburgh flight. We arrived later than planned, as usual, to find the tiny airport awash with people queuing for four Ryanair flights all due out in the space of an hour. There was no way that the kids were going to get through security in time but after much queue jumping and negotiating we got them near the front and they got to the gate on time. It was really horrible watching them go from me through the gate. We watched the plane take off into the beautiful sunset and I have to admit to feeling really upset and emotional. Dandy wasn’t feeling good either but his way of dealing with this was to tinker with the automatic gearbox cable to enable a smoother change. Back at the apartment we couldn’t settle, we really missed them both. We went out for a drink but it didn’t feel right and we went to bed earlyish ready to start the next stage of the holiday.

We were sad to leave the lovely little town of Pirovac, we had a really relaxing two weeks after the trauma of the first week. The only aspect we were not going to miss was the nearby church bells at 6.00am each day summoning the masses to mass, Dandy found this to be hypocritical when they tend to spend three hours in bed each afternoon when we were likely to need bits for the van!

Week One in Pirovac, Croatia 15/7/2010 – 22/7/2010

We took our first trip to the nearby beach armed with all the usual paraphernalia, it was very busy, but not a single British voice to be heard. Caroline was straight in with her lilo and her new beach sandals, the beaches were pebbly rather than sandy. Then she managed to lose one of her new sandals somehow and while she was looking for it the lilo took off towards Albania. I ordered Michael into the water to rescue the situation as she was looking quite distressed by now and the water was quite deep. Michael waded in to save the day but by the time the water was nearing the top of his legs he started fannying about complaining about the temperature of the water lapping around his male bits that he affectionately refers to as his ‘cauliflower beanbag’. I eventually cajoled him in to sort out the situation and he saved the lilo and his sister, but unfortunately not the new sandal, which was now lying in 40’ of water.

We made friends with our nearest neighbour across the alleyway, who we affectionately called Mrs Doofang. She was 77 and lived in a really small, basic apartment and sewed all day and sang Croatian ditties each evening. We all conversed regularly with Mrs Doofang and if Dandy couldn’t be found in our apartment he would invariably be found across the way sharing fish and potatoes or wine and cheese with this delightful, generous lady and her many friends. Although she spoke no English we got by on a mixture of Italian, German, Spanish, French, Greek and some Croatian and multiple gesticulations.

We drove one day to a nearby island over some bridges and found a good place to park up for the day, the sea is so clear in the Adriatic and it looked really tempting here as we would have the place all to ourselves, Eastern and Central Europeans seem to never stop talking and we fancied some peace and tranquillity. It seemed to belong to a plot where a new house was being built and Dandy, keen not to offend, set off to find the builder to ask if it was ok. A radio was playing and a car was in the drive with its boot open but no one could be found so we made ourselves at home. A little later the car was driven down the drive and Dandy went to have words with the chap who didn’t understand much English and was pretty pished, much hand waving ensued then things settled down again. On this occasion Caroline managed to lose her new ball which was last seen floating off towards Montenegro, she wasn’t doing too well with her equipment!


Pirovac from our boat


A different man appeared and seemed to be asking us for money to park up where we had, so off Dandy went with him, towards the house, to sort it out. Sometime later he appeared with two glasses of local hooch in his hand somewhat worse for wear. Apparently he had been imbibing with the old chap whose house it was and couldn’t refuse the hospitality. Needless to say he was in no fit state to drive home and I had to do the honours.

We took a full day’s boat trip out to a chain of 89 islands, which formed the Kornati National Park, one day. We were due to leave at 9.00am but as usual we were still faffing about at 8.55am and even though the boat departed from a place less than 5 minutes from our apartment, we were the last on the boat. We had the worst seat on the boat, right next to the toilets and when they started cooking our lunch on the barbeque close by, that clearly hadn’t been cleaned for at least two decades; we were blinded by the thick, oily smoke. Dandy remonstrated with the chef chappie and advised him to clean his grill once in a while. It took three hours to sail to our destination and we had lunch on board before we disembarked with two and a half hours to spend snorkelling and swimming in the crystal clear water on the little island.


Dandy adding to the water mass (he was having a discrete pee!)

The ‘sheep’ on the boat all headed for a small rocky beach on the other side of the island but it looked far too crowded for us discerning types and we headed for a quiet spot on the other side with a bit of shade from a tree. The kids were absolutely shocked by two naturist Germans diving off their boat in the bay as naked as the day they were born, she had clearly been sponsored by Immac. Caroline was heard to say quietly ‘for god sake put your schlong back in your trunks please’. They seemed very amused by our amusement of them. We had great fun swimming and snorkelling and looking at the shoals of fish. Dandy scooped up a particularly ugly black sea cucumber in the fishing net and stuck it in front of Michael’s nose as he snorkelled along, it resembled a rather offensive looking turd and Michael inhaled about a litre of sea water and constructed a sea cucumber of his own, then was in fits of laughter for ages. When I was clambering out of the sea and negotiating my way around the particularly prickly prolific sea urchins, I felt something biting me on my front bottom, I looked down and saw a little fish at me, my family found this to be highly amusing.


Caroline and Dynamo on the boat, next to the bogs!

Back on the boat for our return trip we settled down for the 3 hour journey, I busied myself observing the range of quite ugly people on board. A young couple across from us were quite intriguing, she was very pretty with ‘piercing blue eyes’ – a Dandy quote, (I comforted myself by the fact that she had very chunky thighs) and he was extremely plug and had a face that I really wanted to slap! We all wondered why they were together as she spent the entire day looking utterly bored by him and ignoring his romantic advances. I reckoned she was using him. Another chap on the boat looked incredibly like Rab C. Nesbit’s mate – Jamsie Cotter and was looking dishevelled and wearing a vest but was clearly Eastern European. Dandy thought his wife looked quite dirty, I just thought she was hard faced! Oh how I love people watching.

We had a very good baker (Pekarna), next to the apartment, run by a Croatian family with little or no English. Every day Dandy and Caroline would fetch the bread supplies and as usual, the operation was never straight forward. Copious pointing and gesticulating to the products interspersed with babblings in Spanish, Greek and German but never the correct Croatian, would result in different samplings of dough produce each day. This caused much embarrassment to Caroline and delighted Mrs Pekarna who would hee haw and raise her eyes to heaven at every cringe worthy attempt.

We found a particularly good restaurant near the beach called Stara Rivo which offered superb service and an appetising menu. The tall, dark, chisel jawed and articulate waiter was particularly helpful whenever we stopped by to eat but Dandy couldn’t see the attraction – he just thought the food was good! Everything was going smoothly one evening, Mikos was paying attention to us admirably and I, swooning at every deep voiced syllable he emitted, enquired about desert. “For you, I have ice cream or pancakes with chocolate sauce”. He left us for a short while as we debated our desert course. Caroline quite fancied the pancakes but when he returned I asked for ‘crepes’ and somewhere in translation Mikos thought I was asking for crabs. He then went on to explain to Dandy that crabs are normally found in the sea and not an obvious choice for pudding in his country – Dandy, of course found this highly amusing and added to my embarrassment by suggesting that crabs are an after meal delicacy in the UK and asked what flavour of sauce could they be accompanied with. I dug an even deeper hole for myself by trying to explain what I had meant and cringed in embarrassment whilst twiddling with my hair furiously...................we eventually settled for chocolate covered pancakes.

The next one was full and the fourth was closed as well. In despair, and at the end of our tether with worry about the van, we asked Thomas for a campsite and he took us on a tortuous route around the houses, still dripping oil until we finally limped into a site at dusk. It looked awful, everyone was tightly packed together and it had a water park and looked terribly twee. We had no choice so we checked in and were allocated site number 9. We set up camp having left a trail of oil up the site road. It was fine we decided and our neighbours, a Maltese couple – Joe and Carmen, very quickly struck up a conversation. Of course Dandy was very soon explaining the whole sorry oil saga; Joe thought that he would be able to help us as he had contacts on the site that would know what to do. We had a chicken curry that has survived well in the freezer from home and watched a dramatic thunderstorm that lit up the mountains nearby.

By now I was thinking about other options to get at least one of us to Croatia in time for the kids arriving. I was thinking, - a flight to Zadar, hire a car, were there trains that would go to Zadar? Should I warn the kids that their holiday might not happen at all? I couldn’t have them getting on a plane if we couldn’t get there. Dan for me while he stayed with the van waiting for bits. It was a really tense evening as we didn’t know what had happened to the van this time and it seemed that it might not be fit for purpose. Dandy thought that this time the oil pipe might have failed altogether, this was a pipe that he had replaced when the turbo was repaired and he bought it and the clips in good faith from a motor factor that convinced him it would be up to the job! He was now thinking he should have trusted his instincts in the first place.

Day Five – Sunday 11th July 2010

We had an uneasy sleep and in the morning, after stripping the van down for the third time, Dandy found that the oil pipe was the cause of the third failure – it had an aneurism that was allowing the oil to escape, the good news was that the previous two repairs had held. Joe and his network of buddies then kicked in and various debates were held between his friends in the know on the site. Klaus, a local chap who chose to stay on the site during the warmer months made a few phone calls to a car club and thought that our problems could be solved that day. So off went Dandy and Klaus in Joe’s car to a local garage. Unfortunately, they could not help but it had been worth a try. Not much else could be done as it was a Sunday and not much was open. Getting the van mobile again depended upon sourcing a high pressure hose of the right size and getting it clamped properly at each end – a tall order. Further individual thoughts of what the f**k are we going to do now???

Plans with the helpful guys were made to leave at 8.00am the following morning and try to track the pipe down. By now it seemed that many of the camping community were either involved or knew about our plight and there was a real community spirit about. We felt bad about mocking this when we arrived. The camping office was closed from 11.00 to 2.00 so a little after 2pm we wandered over and asked to pay for an extra night only to be told that we would have to move as that particular pitch was booked from year to year for 20 days and the people were due to arrive imminently. The slight problem was the van was not going to drive anywhere and it had now no power steering or brakes. It was all too much, I was convinced it was a conspiracy, was nothing going to go right for us? Tears were the only answer and I gave into them. Meanwhile Dandy was explaining our predicament to the owner and he suggested that he would tow us to a new pitch with his van. Once more everyone rallied around to help us and rather than enjoy the theatre that we were causing we both felt that people were really supportive and sympathetic.

Franz Ferdinand hooked up his Transit van to the Hiace and towed us to our new pitch next to a fat man from a low lying country who literally cooked fried food all day for his famished brood – this then started a topical debate as to the dress size of Europeans and the seismic differences as we travelled west to east. That night was the final of the World Cup and judging by the amount of orange on display the favoured team was Holland. A large screen had been set up outside and people were getting prepared for the game. We resigned ourselves to a very noisy night. Dandy then deemed it essential that we play Spanish influenced Salsa music on the van stereo and hummed “Viva Espana” as he passed each orange bedecked caravan. I hadn’t been able to call my parents or the kids as I knew they would detect there was a problem by the tone of my voice so I just kept in touch by text and telling them that all was well with our trip.

Carmen and Joe had asked us to join them for a drink at their caravan that evening. Another thunderstorm had scuppered the football fans plans of those watching the game outside and they all moved indoors. Before we went out, not much was being said between us and we were both very on edge, we bickered over something trivial, can’t even remember what, then Dandy stormed out in the pouring rain to kick over some sandcastles in the children’s sandpit which he had previously raided to soak up the Louisianaesque oil spillage. He came back drenched but diffused, nothing more was said but we both knew things were better apart from Dandy moaning about the sand between his toes. We ran to their van wearing waterproofs and clutching beer and wine where we spent a pleasant evening in their company hearing about their travels. They spent around five months of each year on mainland Europe and had been coming to this site for many years. Dandy was highly amused by Joe’s misogynist tendencies as one of the benefits of this yearly arrangement was that it didn’t take ‘her long to clean all this’ gesticulating at the awning and their caravan. The storm had abated by the time we left them clutching some gifted cake. The site was quiet as Holland had lost the game and there was a palpable air of despondency around. Dandy was more selective with his singing as a matter of respect. We both knew that tomorrow was going to be ‘make or break’ for the rest of our holiday.....................

Day Six – Monday 12th July, 2010

At 8am Dandy was up and away again with Joe and Klaus to source a new pipe, first stop a large Toyota dealership in the nearby town. What I didn’t know was that he had been having serious doubts about being able to locate one that would do the job, he put it at about 60:40 (and this was what had caused the sandpit episode). I’m glad he hadn’t shared these doubts with me, I turned over and snuggled down for another snooze while it was still cool, it was going to be another very hot day. I was rudely awakened at 9am with a beaming Dandy waving a shiny new pipe in my sleepy face. The relief was incredible, he had almost wept in the engineering workshop when the technician produced the end result. He knew that the equipment used to make up the pipe was more than up to doing the job and the guy knew his stuff. Joe and Klaus told me later that Dandy’s facial expression had completely changed in an instant. We were going to get to Croatia after all! Another good omen was that I found my watch that morning – our luck was changing at last!

It took Dandy a couple of hours to carry out the job in the fierce sun with no shade, I busied myself with domestic chores (I know my place!) and we were ready to leave by 12.00. We drove up to say goodbye to our new friends and give them some beer as a thank you and got an emotional send off from them all. After all the debacle over moving pitch it transpired that neither of us had paid for the extra night, I felt bad about this but Dandy was convinced that there would be a bill waiting for us when we get home. The next 50 miles towards Innsbruck were a bit tense to say the least – every rattle, squeak, and extraneous rumble had us looking at each other with raised eyebrows. An 10km tunnel didn’t help lower the blood pressure either as there were ‘no stopping’ signs plastered all over the place! Hypertension was further affected when the fluffy (fit looking yoof) in the toll kiosk demanded €8 for the privilege of burrowing through her mountain, f’nar, f’nar. (Dandy wrote that bit!)

That 50 mile shakedown was good enough to give us confidence to negotiate the higher Alpine passes into Italy, although I was still reticent to take the wheel again. We compromised by not going via the Stelvio pass as planned and took a pass at 4,500 feet towards Leinz instead. We stopped at Kitzbuhel for a coffee and cake and struck up a conversation with some pissheads who managed to consume three glasses of wine each in the time it took for us to drink a small coffee and eat a bit of cake, not that we are judgmental or anything. The effeminate young barman was very friendly and talkative but couldn’t tell us if Slovenia used the Euro or not, a quick check on the internet on my phone revealed they did. Off we set again but not before Dandy insisted on driving up a small side road to show me the apartment block he had stayed in 8 years previously. I feigned mild interest.

After scaling the second and third gear only mountain passes, the stench of burning oil came back but Dandy put this down to the previous oil escapes being burned off on the glowing exhaust.
That night we rolled into an eco friendly campsite, not through choice I may add, and were talked through the whole process of recycling all our waste. The only problem with this was that none of the bins had pictures or English translations so we had to look through each one in turn to find the right receptacle. The site also offered alternative therapies and a rather suggestive picture of an attractive blonde clad in only a small towel pouring a jug of water and a chap bearing down on her with a letchy look and a suspicious crease in his small towel got Dandy going. The site was anally clean and organised as Austrians are. We enjoyed a really nice meal at the nearby restaurant served by a waitress with serious walker’s ankles. When we enquired how far it was to the border with Italy she replied ‘about 2 hours’, we knew this was shit but on reflection she must have assumed we were also walkers, although anyone who knows my ankles would have known this to be unlikely. Happier than we’d been for some days we slept well with plans for an early start into Italy the following morning.



The view from our campsite to the Dolomites and Italy



The pass from Ausrtia into Italy and the Dolomites

Day Seven – Tuesday 13th July 2010

I took the wheel that morning and had instructed Dandy never to mention again that he thought the van was running better than it ever had done as he had persisted in doing in between each breakdown. Now when he started to give his opinion about the finer functions of the van engine I would glower at him warningly and he would say something like ‘I think the van engine will probably blow up in less than 2 miles’. I was happy with this arrangement. We arrived at the border 10 minutes after we set off, two hours my arse.

The pass we took was spectacular and quite challenging; we were now making up for lost time and planned to make northern Croatia that evening. It was hot, hot, hot, but the fabulous air conditioning unit in the van was working so well. The route we took was via Udine in Italy, Slovenia and then down into Croatia. We tried to bypass Trieste but Thomas let us down badly and we ended up in a ferry queue to Venice at the docks, bang in the middle of Trieste! Much ranting ensued. We also sped through a toll booth without stopping in Slovenia, we had omitted to buy a vignette to use their motorway for 20km but we hadn’t intended to use this toll road anyway so we felt this justified our actions.

We made it to the fertile, mozzie riddled island of Krk and a campsite about half way down it. It was fine and we found a pitch that suited although there was again no shade. The fridge had been playing up and by now had packed in the 35 degrees heat. We visited the restaurant on the site and asked if we could have some ice to keep our remaining food cold and two beers to cool us down. The owner, a Bosnian, was a nice guy and very helpful, we couldn’t be bothered cooking so we ate at his restaurant, lovely salads and fresh fried fish. A couple from the low lying lands pitched up at the restaurant and announced to the restaurateur that they had brought their own wine and would be drinking it, he replied that they would not and if they wanted wine they would have to buy it from him, my how we chortled. Back at our vintage van, which was looking ever so slightly retro amongst the plethora of Dethleffs, Hymers and Burstarses (Burstners), Dandy had words with a recently arrived Dutch neighbour who had his TV on a tad too loud for midnight and persuaded him to turn it down and explained the 11.00pm curfew, I was just pissed off with him anyway as I felt he was watching unnecessary shite. A mozzie joined us in bed that night and I was bitten badly and developed bad reactions to the bites. It was a hot, sticky night and I was looking forward to our air conditioned apartment.

Day Eight - Wednesday 14th July, 2010

The Dutchman got his own back the following morning by continually hammering away with a brick to repair his bent pole to use to secure his awning. Presumable this was a precaution to the impending storm that was looming on the hot, cloudless blue sky day.

We were up and away by 9am, a record for us, next stop Pirovac. We were nearing our destination by 3pm when Dandy spotted a Lidl sign so off we went and did a fairly major shop in preparation for les enfants arriving. Dandy was well pissed off as he spotted a beach shelter that he had bought in the UK on offer at half price. All loaded up, we headed for the small town of Pirovac and parked up close to where the apartment was on the map. We spent the next 30 minutes touring the tiny back streets asking the natives where the address was, we knew we were close but it took a while to locate it, even with help. We let ourselves in and I checked it out while Dandy parked up the van closer to us so that we could unload it. It was great, on three floors, en suites in the bedrooms and air con and the bonus of a roof terrace with sun loungers. It was in the very oldest part of town, just minutes from the beach and restaurants, perfect for our needs. We thought that we were very clever getting there at this time and would have time for a shower, unpack and maybe even a snooze before we had to set out for the airport to meet the kids coming off the 19.40 flight. But no, we had lost an essential piece of information, some paperwork that the owners had sent us previous to our trip that Dandy deemed essential to find before anything else could happen. There was also a ‘to do’ about where the van should be parked and Dandy engaged many of the local restaurateurs in a debate over this. They all had different opinions of course and some even saw entrepreneurial opportunities.

Our maid, Ana, arrived with her Mum to get the apartment ready. She hadn’t been expecting us until later and got herself in a bit of a fluster and was really apologetic; she thought we were coming off the evening flight too. We persuaded her that all was well and she should just carry on and ignore our presence, Dandy, however, found it hard to ignore her presence as she was very attractive and was wearing a very tight T shirt with the words ‘DUREX PLAY’ emblazoned on the front. Even behind the sunglasses he had serious retina strain.

We set off for the airport a little later than we should have and Thomas took us on such a tortuous route that we thought we would never get there, and off course the directions that we could have used had gone missing. It was supposed to take 40 minutes but we met learner drivers, tractors and slow gits and seemed to go through every small village in the vicinity. Inevitable the text went on my phone; it was from Caroline ‘where are you?’ We were only minutes away by now, it was such a small airport and they had no checked in luggage so they were through in no time. We drove into the car park and I spotted them immediately, waiting in anticipation, I was so glad to see them both. We had all got there finally!

Day One – Wednesday 7th July 2010

Hiace loaded up, Dandy doing his usual fretting about what he might have forgotten or not done, we bid farewell to a warm and sunny Edinburgh, final destination Pirovac, Croatia in seven days time. We were due to meet the kids at Zadar airport on the 14th July where they would join us for two weeks holiday. I must admit to having a little anxiety as we travelled south. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, I just had a little unease about what lay ahead and some doubts about the fact that we were travelling 1,800 miles across Europe in a 16 year old campervan that had only been tested by us for a week in the Outer Hebrides at Easter.

The beautiful sunset behind us as we followed the A1, then the A1 (M) seemed to be a good omen. We had made up a bed in the back of the van and did two hour shifts, driving and resting, between us. All was going well until during one of my driving shifts, Dandy, who was supposed to be resting, but was actually yakking to one of his mates on his mobile, enquired ‘Carole, why is the sun on the wrong side of the van?’ He then hung up quickly with a parting comment to his friend, Donnie, that I must have taken the wrong road. All was well though, the sun was clearly in the wrong place and I was on the right road. I suggested he text Donnie in case he thought I was some kind of half-wit – Donnie texted back that he didn’t doubt my navigational skills – only my sanity! Mmmmmm............................

We had a 6.00am ferry to catch and we were making very good time until a little after midnight when Dandy decided that the green light on the dash, which indicated that the driving lights were on, was annoying him. He hauled the switch out and disconnected it. A couple of miles further down the motorway and we were driving with no side lights and no rear lights. We pulled onto the hard shoulder and off that onto a wide grass verge. Dandy spent some time investigating the fault and seemed to be getting nowhere, during the ensuing hour two police patrols pulled over to offer their assistance and advice which we thought was very helpful – maybe they thought we’d camped up for the night! Dandy finally located the blown fuse and we continued on our journey. If only we had known that this was to be the first of further strandings by the roadside to come.

Day Two – Thursday 8th July 2010

Despite the midnight debacle we made good time and reached the ferry post at Dover way ahead of schedule. As a result we got put onto the earlier 4.00am sailing, but not before we were directed into a security warehouse area as a result of a random security selection where a buxom, late middle aged women, elbows on the window, had a lovely chat with Dandy about her recent holiday in Aberdeenshire. I was getting a little agitated as it was creeping closer to the sailing time. She then enquired if we were carrying any weapons such as knifes, I didn’t dare mention my 15 inch Sabatier knife that I had in the cutlery drawer for fear of confiscation. She finally waved us through and we drove onto the ferry. It wasn’t busy but every available lying down space was occupied. We grabbed a spot and settled down for the two hour crossing to Dunkerque. We were sitting next to a blind lady travelling with her daughter, unfortunately every time the poor woman shifted position she let out an enormous noisy fart to which she seemed to be oblivious, maybe she was deaf too. Dandy thought it would be amusing to emulate the farting sounds much to the amusement of passers by. We enjoyed a couple of bacon sandwiches (no rolls, much to the annoyance of Dandy) and a tea before we rolled off the ferry into France and the start of our adventures.

We had roughly pre planned our stops and were hoping to make it to the Alsace region on the first night, but we both recognised that this might be optimistic considering neither of us had slept properly since Tuesday night. Dandy was determined to reach Luxembourg as he had discovered that this was the home of cheap diesel, so no matter what we had to make a fuel stop there. Andrew (Dandy’s brother) and Laura were also heading through France at the same time and we had made loose arrangements to try and meet up with them if we could. We stopped at a service station and got into a conversation with a Belgian truck driver who asked where we were headed, when we told him Croatia he asked, with some amazement ‘Why you not just get on a plane?’ I would reflect on these words in days to come. Off we horsed through Belgium, the land of chips, mussels and shit, in the blazing heat to our second breakdown of the holiday. As we were heading up a very long climb on a motorway section Dandy asked if I could see smoke coming from the back of the van, I couldn’t really tell. Next thing the oil pressure light comes on, Dandy kills the engine and eases onto the hard shoulder but it was a fast and busy motorway and we couldn’t risk staying there for our own safety. There was a coned off area a couple of hundred yards ahead and against Dandy’s better judgment he started the engine again and nursed the van to a place of safety beyond the cones (I’m going to f**k the engine, was his cry) . We jumped out and couldn’t believe our eyes – the entire contents of the sump (7 litres) had emptied all along the driver’s side of the van and the oncoming traffic! The back of the van was also covered in filthy, dripping, black diesel oil. It looked bad, I knew it was bad but I was too scared to ask what had happened as I wasn’t prepared for the answer. I couldn’t read Dandy either and eventually he said ‘this is serious’. I felt that this may be an understatement.

Andrew had texted us just before the catastrophic event to say where they were and could we meet up? We both knew that we had no choice but involve a third party to help us. Dandy was reluctant to call the breakdown service as he felt that that would signify the end of our holiday and he had a good idea as to what had happened by now. Unfortunately he could do very little as the engine was so hot, as was the day, and we had no shade. We decided to call Andrew and Laura as they were about 70 miles away from us to see if they could come to our aid. Both their mobiles were on voicemail so we texted them, eventually I got through to Laura and explained our predicament. They immediately offered to come to our assistance but their destination was a pre booked and paid hotel in Switzerland that night and this was going to take them well off their route and schedule so we said thanks but no, just press on and we’ll try and sort something out. We hung up and by now Dandy was stripping the van down and losing vast quantities of fluids from sweat. The mobile rang and it was Andrew, apparently they had had a conversation and they couldn’t leave us. We were really grateful, Dandy asked them to bring 5 litres of diesel oil and a really small O ring clip as by now his fears had been confirmed and the cause of the spill had been a high pressure oil pipe coming adrift. They arrived two hours later, by this time Dandy had lost half his body weight in sweat; I made myself busy mopping his face and feeding him water. We were so glad to see them but exchanged very little in the way of conversation as we were so worried. I asked them to head off but no, they wanted to stay and make sure we were ok. Finally, nearly five hours after we had broken down we pulled back on to the Autoroute gingerly with Andrew and Laura following. We decided enough was enough and Dandy was physically in no fit state to travel further so we asked Thomas (our SatNav) for a local campsite. Camping du le Lac sounded fine so we headed there. It was one of these strange continental sites with permanent pitches full of gnomes and plastic forest animals, not our thing, but it would do. We set up camp beside the river and made friends with our nearest neighbours. Across the way two topless middle aged men were well pissed and playing bad 80’s songs at full volume from their caravan, one was a dead ringer for Rod Stewart. We shared a portion of chips and mayonnaise from the campsite restaurant before turning in for a well needed sleep........... 38 hours since the last one..................







Poor, oily Hiace, disabled at the side of the Autoroute

Day Three - Friday 9th July 2010

Had a good sleep, Rod and his mate hadn’t bothered us at all and were tucking into their first Stella Artois at 9.30am, maybe we were just so tired that we’d have slept through anything. After our fruit and yoghurt breakfast we got packed up and headed for Luxembourg. I’ve forgotten to mention that the 5 litres of diesel oil that Andrew sourced for us cost 60 Euros! We also had the to buy another 4 litre can as the sump held 7l, this set us back another 25 Euros, Dandy was apoplectic! Bearing this in mind we had to get to Luxembourg to get our cheap diesel. So after some minor bickering and questioning of Thomas’ sanity we finally pulled into a fuel station in Luxembourg where we saved around £12 on a tankful, Dandy was happy again. We set a route for Barr where Dandy had stayed before and off we went. Dandy wanted us to have dinner in a hilltop monastery that he had visited previously at St Odine.



At St Odine

We reached there early evening and had a wonderful meal in an amazing setting, I was feeling quite content. The campsite wasn’t far away and we got there as darkness was falling. Things had gone well this day I thought, but Dandy had been having doubts about the other end of the oil pipe holding but decided to press on and attempt to replace it in the cool of the following morning.





Day Four – Saturday 10th July 2010

Couldn’t find my watch in the morning and I remembered taking it off the previous night to have my shower, I assumed I’d left it in the toilet block and, guess what, it wasn’t there when I went to look for it, I took this to be a bad omen and we really didn’t need any of them. Having lost half a day we were up and away by midday to try to claw back some lost time. A little after one pm the ominous sign of a car behind putting on its windscreen wipers on a clear, hot sunny day signified the oil pipe failing again. This time Dandy managed to coast into a good lay-by with lots of shade. The obvious damage wasn’t so bad as the side and back of the van were pretty much unscathed but Dandy’s fears had materialised – the other side of the pipe had failed – he was pretty peed off he’d not done the dirty deed that morning! I was dispatched to go and parlez with the truck drivers in the lay-by in the vain hope that I could buy some oil from them while Dandy set about dismantling the van again. Once more he had to wait until the engine had cooled down but there was quite a breeze that day so it didn’t take so long this time. I set off in the direction of a Czech truck waving my mostly empty oil can and established quite quickly that he couldn’t help us. I then headed for two Polish trucks and somehow managed to create enough concern to persuade one of the drivers to follow me back to the broken Hiace, Dandy thought the hint of cleavage might have helped the proceedings...... After some deliberation as to the quality of their oil a sniff test of the contents revealed that the amber nectar would be up to the job, a deal was struck for 20 Euros and the drivers headed off for a snooze. Dandy, meanwhile, continued with his second repair job in his quest for an oil tight engine. The whole incident was wrapped up in about 3 hours, a vast improvement on the previous one. A quick toot toot to the helpful Polish guys and we were off.

After a rapid descent down into Austria the oil level light came on, this not being so serious as the oil pressure light. We pulled into a school yard in a small town to check this out and a quick check under the van revealed a puddle of oil and a trail of oil all the way into the yard. Dandy seemed to be on the verge of tears; I didn’t know what to think and once more, was scared to ask. Dandy tried to check out under the van only to be nearly eaten alive by oversized, ferocious, biting ants. We had to move and thought that we would try to find a guesthouse for the night as we were both in despair by now. The first one that we tried was closed and the second wanted 90 Euros for a basic non air conditioned room.