VINCENT ON THE MOVE

A very exciting day began with an early start at Matt and Kelly’s getting ourselves packed up to travel to Leatherhead to meet Vincent, Dave and Lauren.  It was also an exciting day for the flat as new windows were to be fitted, another major job in the renovation.  The cats were on edge as the workmen began to make a lot of sawing and hammering noises that sounded like they were knocking out more than a couple of windows.  We left about 11.30 and managed a fairly smooth run on the trains to arrive at our destination just before 1.

Soon after Vincent came along to pick us up.  We had a final run down on him, hope we remember it all, and sorted out the business side of things and then went off to lunch. Dave had done a service on him and got him in tip top order for our first trip in him. We had another great couple of hours with Dave and Lauren over a delicious meal at The Plough. It was then time to drop them back to their accommodation and make our way back to Maggy and Grahams.  It was a perfect photo moment, our first and Dave and Laurens last time with Vincent.  I am sure our new friends were very sad to see him go but with darkness falling we had to venture out into the big wide world.  More hugs all round, I think Dave would have hugged Vincent if he had arms long enough.

So started a rather long journey across to the other side of London.  We managed to get easily to the first petrol station to give Vincent a little drink and then with only one little detour and one stalling of the engine across two lanes and an awful lot of beeping I presume was directed at me, sorry Vince, we  headed on to the M25. Within a few short moments it was down to a crawl, 1st gear most of the time for about an hour and then we managed to get a clear run giving Vincent his head to take us safely along the route home.  Georgia is an excellent navigator, thank goodness, so we arrived without further incident, very pleased to see the welcoming Christmas lights at The Bells.  Our journey had been made rather more interesting by constant rain, our first in our time here so can’t complain.  Maggy and Graham had a quick look in the dark and wet and were suitably impressed by out new addition to the family.  In the next week or so we will sort him all out and work out what we need to make him our new home.

It is with some pride that we can add that he is considered a “Classic Vehicle”.  Mikayla has always wanted to own a Classic and now we do.  It is really great to have a man in the family, hasn’t happened for quite a while now.  We will treat him well and hopefully he will look after us on our travels.

VINCENT VAN GO

Well, once we had settled in to the country life and caught our breath, we started trawling the internet in search of our new home.  For those of you not aware of our plans, we intend to buy a camper van to move into and become nomads of no fixed address, moving where the urge sends us around Europe and UK.  As you can imagine there are a million and one adds for possible vehicles so spent quite a few hours finding possibilities. We were a little tentative at first but finally came up with a few to make contact with.  We had replies for a couple and arranged to go to see them on Saturday.  Maggy was kind enough to lend us her car so we headed off to opposite ends of London.

The first van was a very cheap for its age Mercedes but sounded like it had possibilities over the phone.  Went up to a place called Chesham, and found the address in the dodgy side of town. The person selling the van was also rather dodgy but proceeded to give it the once over.  And to no great surprise, the van was a little dodgy too.  Bit of a home made conversion where nothing was quite right, ad said sleeps 4 – 2 would be squeezy, Driver door can only be opened from the outside and bits hanging off on the inside, no paper work and only in owners hands for a week.  Time to move on.  Found our way to a lovely little park in Epping Forrest to have our picnic and a good laugh about the whole dodgy start to the day.

Back to the M25 to head south to Stratford.  Georgia was given total responsibility for navigation and was doing a fantastic job guiding us through very busy towns and telling us we were not far away when she said turn here and stay hard left.  I turned stayed left as best I could and ended up flying onto the M25 again and heading in the totally wrong direction. BIG LEARNING CURVE.  If you get onto the wrong motorway you are absolutely stuck.  We proceeded to travel way back to a roundabout we had already made a few trips around earlier in the day.  You just can’t get off these major roads in parts, BIG PARTS, LONG PARTS.  After quite a lot of venting from Georgia and I about who’s fault this all was and Mikayla trying to defend us both from the back seat we all took a deep breathe and tried to focus on fixing the problem.  It became more and more obvious we just had to start again, lucky we had plenty of time.  On our second time around the said roundabout, this visit, the car next to us signaled to wind down our window.  We quickly did this thinking we may have a car problem or some such thing and the male driver quickly asked us for directions.  We just cracked into peals of laughter and told him we were totally lost ourselves, the lights turned green and he moved on in front of us and tried to get the attention of another car.  He too made a couple of trips around the round about before we headed off on our chosen exit, luckily the right one thanks to Georgia.  Still laughing and wondering what he thought of the crazy girls we started our journey again.  Georgia took us a different way but we still needed to navigate the hard left again.  With dread we indicated turned and managed to go even harder left and onto the right road.  We arrived on time at our intended address so just another experience we did not know we were going to have, and a valuable lesson learned, do not enter the M25 unless absolutely sure it is the right way to go.

Back to the van hunt.  A very jovial woman greeted us at her flat door and proceeded to take us for a walk down the side road to find the van.  This van looked very flash in its add and was obviously a very new conversion, was relatively young at 2005 model but was quite a lot over our budget.  The theory being that if we spend a bit more on a really nice van it might be easier to sell at the end. This probably would have been a good theory but the van was quite an experience.  The woman went on and on about being a bit of an interior designer and telling us all about her previous conversions and showing us photos and telling us about her life and we were completely exhausted within minutes.  The van itself was very nicely converted but it was not at all practical with space taken up that you could not use.  She could not provide any paper work or history, the front door listed to a very dodgy angle when you opened it, the tyres were very low, our test drive consisted of about 100 speed bumps and the electrics were a little dodgy too.  We advised her that we would have to think about it using the excuse of having to price some obvious work required and finally got away after going back to her flat to try to find some paperwork. Her parting words were “I love Home and Away” and “I am open to offers”.  We were exhausted with our ears ringing and very sad we had not found a good vehicle.  By this time it was quite dark so started the long trip back to the round about where we are now experts and turned straight onto the right road for Chelmsford.

We arrived home to be greeted by Maggy and Graham and a nice warm fire. We perched on the couch and filled them in on a successful day of finding out exactly what we DON’T want.  This sounds funny but it is actually really helpful to know exactly what you do want. We need a car that is simple with a large bed to sleep us all, storage that is practical and runs well without the obvious signs of major damage.  Graham was on the iPad within moments and said what about this one, a newly posted add saying ” Will be sold by Christmas”. As Maggy and Graham were heading out the door for a quiz night we made the call to Dave.  After about an hour of chat with a very pleasant young Australian I was very excited.  I had made arrangements to see the van on Monday, and Dave had promised to keep it till then even though he had a person coming on Sunday.  The van sounded perfect and I advised I would be doing the hard sell on the girls as I got off the phone.  They said to me it sounds like you have already bought it and were worried.  I just had a really good feeling about this one.  Dave was just lovely and really helpful an it did comfort me to be talking to an Aussie.  We decided to just forget it till Monday and sort it all out then.

Sunday was a really great day as Maggy and Graham had arranged for us to visit Chloe in London and took us to a couple of markets.  The first was Columbia Road, a street market of mainly flowers and Christmas trees with very interesting shops along the road.  The second was Spittlefield Markets, a permanent undercover market that is Huge.  We had lots of fun looking around and got a few bits and bobs and then headed back to Chloe’s flat where we had hot drinks and a lovely banana bread that Chloe had made, yum.  Then headed to Matt and Kelly’s for dinner and we moved back in.  How does it go?  “They’re Ba-ack”.

Monday saw us armed with a guide for the trains and also a list that Matt had compiled about what to look for when buying a VW T25.  Can you believe there is a site this specific?  The train sounded simple but Southern Rail like to make things interesting.  A delay with the first train saw us miss our connection by just seconds resulting in tense moments wondering how we would contact Dave so that he would not leave the station when we did not turn up.  A very nice stranger helped us by emailing on her phone causing her to miss her train, so sorry and thank you so much.  We finally arrived and had our first view of Vincent.  We approached to a very big welcome from Dave and his girlfriend Lauren.  We always say that half the fun of traveling is the people you meet.  Well we have just made brand new friends that I know we will stay in contact with forever and hope will visit us one day when we are back in Perth.  I just produced my list of requirements and Dave helped me to work through them whilst showing us everything he could think of about the van.  Lauren was helping by giving the girls the run down on how to go without a shower for a while and talking of all the amazing things they had seen and done.  We then went for a test drive.  He had a steering wheel the size of a bus and is manual so took a little getting used to but I think I mastered it quite well for the first effort.  We all stood in the car park and the girls and I had a quick discussion and decided this was the ONE.  A deal was done and we were all really hungry so decided to have a pub lunch together.  By the end of lunch think we might have managed to talk our way into an invite to the wedding ha ha.  Needless to say we were very happy to take their precious Vincent on to further travels. Dave had offered to give the van a last service so we are going to pick up of Friday, yay.  It sounds like everything we will need comes with Vincent including a couple of bikes so think it was all just meant to be.  We went back to the train and after waiting on a platform at Clapham Junction for about 3/4 hour for another train issue we headed for Matt and Kelly’s very happy with our day. I am sure there will be little issues along the way but feel Vincent will be kind to us.