The time our Campervan Holiday went terribly wrong.
The three of us sit in the back of the van, the area smaller than a family dining table. Rain pummels the roof, aided by the wind whipping in from the Celtic Sea to the right of the van.
We look at each other, still confident we have done the right thing.
This was the trough in our campervan holiday of many peaks.
In 2 hours time the trough would get a little deeper, as I find myself on all fours scraping toddler vomit from the seat of the hired 65k campervan.
But I am getting slightly ahead off myself.
If anyone has ever thought of hiring a campervan, no doubt you have done a bit of research, read a few books and stumbled across photos similar to the below.
Parking up at a golden beach, just an hour after waking up and enjoying a tasty breakfast cooked outdoors, or perhaps in the back of the van. The 30 minute (or less) drive to this point only beaten by the amount of time it took you to pack away and be on the road in the first place.
However, let me give you a real world example. Everything you are about to read happened to us, within the space of a long weekend.
Challenges of a Campervan Holiday Number 1
Currently 3pm in the afternoon, the day before we are scheduled to collect the hired campervan. We are ambling around the lake in the park we are in, and I receive a phone call, which was explained in this post, but I will repeat myself.
“Hi Richard, this is Julian from Southwest Camper hire. I just wanted to call to say there is a problem with the camper van. It may not be available tomorrow”
He then went onto say what the problem was. How he is confident they will fix it. How they’ll give us the money back if they couldn’t. (duh, yeah!)
But for some reason the rest of the conversation seemed to drift away over the lake in the park we were spending time in.
This meant I didn’t hear what he said or remember what I said. All I know is I was already thinking “Where can we get another camper from? What about the campsites? They are all booked and paid for. What about Max, we know he’s looking forward to ‘sleeping up there’ (he says as he points skyward indicating the pop top roof).
Credit (for now) to the hire company, they resolved the issue. You can read bit more about this in the other post, but by the time we had gone to bed, all was well.
Challenges of a Campervan Holiday Number 1 averted
Challenges of a Campervan Holiday Number 2
As a result yesterday’s Challenge had been overcome. We woke up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, excited about collecting our campervan. We set off for the 2-hour drive to pick it up.
An hour and 30 minutes later we were parked up in a lay-by waiting for the AA/breakdown service to rescue us.
I won’t bore you with how this happened, but needless to say, we were at this point wondering if Lady Luck’s evil sister was looking down on us.
Fortunately (for them and us) this happened not far from a garage that could replace the tyre, and 90 minutes later we were back on track. Slicing through the Devon countryside to collect the camper.
Challenges of a Campervan Holiday Number 2 averted
Challenges of a Campervan Holiday Number 3
Apart from the weather, the next 19 hours or so were pretty uneventful, as far as challenges go. Unless you call hammering in 4 tent pegs for our pop up tent into the sodden English ground without a hammer, a challenge. Which it wasn’t really.
But that wasn’t to say our challenges for the trip were over. Oh no, far from it.
We were driving around, enjoying the freedom, the views and the roads that campervaning in Devon gave us.
This is when the Challenges of a Campervan Holiday scored a hat-trick! The problem that almost prevented us picking up the van in the first place re-visited. Up hill our max speed was 12mph. Glancing in the mirror to see the long line of vehicles behind us wasn’t the vista we were looking for.
To cut a long story short, (the long version is here) we limped to the next campsite, and managed to park up on our pitch, before sitting down with a much needed drink to work out what to do next.
This meant of course, we couldn’t stop to pick up tea for the night. A quick visit to the not very well stocked holiday campsite shop and the best we could muster was frozen chicken that had to be cooked under the grill, mixed with pasta and a Mascarpone sauce. It was surprisingly tasty.
Challenges of a Campervan Holiday Number 3 averted
Challenges of a Campervan Holiday Number 4
So here we were. Stuck at a campsite with a campervan that refuses to go over 30 mph on the flat, and 12 mph up hill. If we wanted to cruise around at this speed, we would have hired a 30 year old retro one.
I suppose there are worse places to be stuck. But we didn’t want to be stuck anywhere. That’s why we hired a camper. We didn’t say “I know, let’s hire a campervan so we can park it in a field all day and see nothing of the world”
We had agreed with the campervan company they would bring us our car. At least then we can get around, see the town, and not be stuck on the campsite. This was a temporary solution while they/we sourced another van. Although this being a Sunday, that would have to wait until tomorrow.
Monday came, and we managed to find another van with another company.
The challenge? It was located 60 mins to the East of where we were. Our campsite was 60 minutes to the West.
Off we went, piling everything into the car from the campervan, so the campervan could be collected by the breakdown company.
A 2 hour drive with the only intention of getting from A, to B, then ultimately to C doesn’t really warrant much writing about. Other than the fact we traded our 7 year old VW conversion in for a brand new 65k VW California.
Challenges of a Campervan Holiday Number 4 averted
Challenges of a Campervan Holiday Number 5
So here we are. Back where this story started from at the very first line of this post. Huddled into the back of the van while the rain pounds down.
On the north coast of Cornwall, a stones throw from the sea is where we are camped for tonight.
Little did we know in 2 hours time we would be scraping toddler vomit from the seat of our £65k hired campervan.
It is at this point that we are wondering what the hell we are doing. So far we had enjoyed a mixture of us wondering if we were ever going to get started. To wondering how we are going to be able to carry on, to now us wondering if that phone call we received before we had even picked up the van was a sign.
But then the clouds broke the sun came out and we thought right. This is it. A brand new camper, blue skies, and still a couple of nights of our trip left. Let’s have some fun!!
Little did we know in 2 hours time we would be scraping toddler vomit from the seat of our £65k hired campervan. The vomit was gone, the seat was clear but the smell. Oh my god the smell.
The Smell, my god the smell!
It was now dark, so not the best time (if there is one) for a 3 year old to part company with the contents of his stomach. We covered the seat with something to try and mask the smell.
The windows and doors were open as well to try and help, which it did a bit, but bed time was approaching for our now empty Max.
Unfortunately, just after the windows first victory in dispersing the initial smell, we closed them. Odour de Vomit came back with a vengeance. Finally, after more rubbing than a team of Massage Therapists, we managed to end up with a smell we could live with for a night.
Of course at this point, Max was as bright as a button asking for cookies and milk before bedtime. Errrr, no I don’t think so.
We all tried to settle down for a nights sleep, hoping the lingering aroma’s didn’t influence our dreams in any way. Tomorrow it would turn out, would be a day of hunting for a spray to finish the cleaning job, which we managed.
Eventually.
Challenges of a Campervan Holiday Number 5 averted.
Summary
- Before we had even started, our holiday was almost cancelled
- We broke down on the way to pick up the van
- The van broke down after we had picked it up
- We had a 2-hour unwanted drive
- We spent the penultimate night / day cleaning toddler vomit
Would we do this again?
You bet we would!!