Community. What does it mean? Where can we find good examples? These are questions that we thought we would try to answer with this trip; finding community in different countries and learning from it. On reflection though, even in the planning stages of our adventure we’ve found some great examples:

Village life – we’ve loved being immersed in the life of a little East Sussex village; enjoying a summer fete, a barn dance, several quiz nights and a couple of harvest celebrations. A far cry from our experience of London, most people know their neighbours and actively want to spend time with them. A visit (of which there have been many!) to our mechanic isn’t just a case of being processed; it’s been great to stop and have a chat each time. Similarly, the re-welding of the front bumper was done by someone known through the village pantomime group and even the gas safety engineer enjoyed having a good chat about our plans.

Motorhome owners – we’d read online prior to purchasing Bertha that motorhome owners waved to each other when they passed on a road, but we got really excited when it actually happened for the first time! There’s a general camaraderie, mutual understanding and respect for other motorhomers, without the feeling that it’s some kind of elite club. We’ve also been bowled over by the responses to this blog from other motorhomers who we haven’t even met, yet who are wishing us all the best.

TalbotOC – we realise that the Talbot Express Owners’ Club is a subset of the motorhome owners, but they deserve a particular mention. Often online fora descend into bickering over misunderstandings, or active “trolls“, but TalbotOC is full of people who are all passionate about motorhome versions of a van which was produced between 1981 and 1993. Everyone is willing to pass on advice to those of us who aren’t particularly knowledgeable, as well as offering support and encouragement when our van springs another leak!

So what do these groupings have in common? Firstly I think each one unites people around a common focal point, whether it be a locality or ownership of an item. This then appears to breed an active interest in the lives of other people within that community. Secondly there’s a respect for differences; in any group of people you will have different personalities which lead to complicated politics, but that’s what adds richness. The acceptance of me, even though I’m different helps to forge a strong bond. Thirdly, we’ve witnessed a general benevolence; the willingness (and in some cases eagerness) to give freely of time, advice and skills, sometimes with little promise of reward.

I’ll be honest, it’s this last one that I struggle with the most. I’m very happy to be in the position of giving something for nothing. Me man. Me provider. I’m a bit rubbish though at being at the receiving end of something that I haven’t done anything to earn; why do I deserve it? Am I taking advantage? Yet at the centre of my faith is the belief that Jesus was killed so that I won’t be punished for the wrong things that I have done and continue to do. Can I really get my head around that and accept that I don’t have to do anything to earn that sacrifice? Something I continue to ponder!

The title of this blog post is, I guess, a little flippant. We’ve found some good examples of community, which we can learn from, but we’re not at an end state. As we set off around Europe in Bertha I’m sure we’ll learn a whole lot more about community!

P.S. Brownie points for spotting the mistake…

The first of our films about the trip is now available on YouTube

After 711 miles in Bertha, we’ve finally completed our UK tour. It was great to see all of our families within a week, as well as road-test Bertha on a long journey and test our various ways of documenting the travels. By the very nature of saying we’ve completed the tour, you’ll have worked out that nothing went badly wrong, which is great news!

Bertha’s main test was water; we had several days of heavy rain and a lot of driving in spray. Leaks-wise, the condensation from the solar panel leak cleared up after a couple of days, however it wasn’t such good news for our coolant. Remember we mentioned previously about the coolant warning light coming on at Bristol? A couple of days later, as we were driving in motorway spray, the warning light came on again. This time the coolant level was fine, the temperature gauge was still below 90 and there were no visible signs of overheating (the fan wasn’t even on, and there was no steam). Rain and spray dried up, and the light went off. This happened again a couple of days later; again after driving in spray. Again, no visible signs of overheating. So we think we have a dodgy sensor, which we’re trying to troubleshoot with the help of the lovely people over at the Talbot Owner’s Club.

As you’ll note from the map above, our GPS tracker did its job well, allowing us to see exactly where we’ve been (in case we forget!). We also had a test run of keeping a daily log to fit in between blog posts; these can be found on our KIST 2EU timeline. We’ll be aggregating the data within each daily log onto a statistics page, which hasn’t had any styling applied to it yet, but here’s a sneak preview summarising our UK trip. Finally, the tea-fuelled nature of the travelling inspired us to start a gallery so we can remember the cups of tea that we’ve shared in Bertha, which we’ll add to as we venture further afield!

Other than the warning light and a couple of suspect smells, Bertha held up well, plus the Great British Bake Off has now finished, so we have no reason to procrastinate further; the ferry tickets to France are booked for next Tuesday! This announcement on Facebook (which happened to include the word “conquer”) has elicited such a positive response, that I think we may have enough support for a minor invasion! In the meantime though, work continues on “bitty” jobs, the main one of which was the re-shodding of Bertha, with winter tyres (5 new Continental VancoWinter 2 tyres delivered from Germany).

We’ve then spent today doing a bit of pro-active sealing with Sikaflex around some of Bertha’s joints that looked a bit dodgy, as well as testing our LPG alarm, sticking back a few things that had come unstuck and fixing the windscreen washer. We might get a bit of rest before we depart… but there are still plenty of things on the “to do” list

You know we said we wanted to test everything before we set off around mainland Europe? Well someone upstairs must have been listening, because we had absolutely torrential rain the night after our last blog post (last Friday). We were sleeping soundly in Bertha, when at 2:15am, we were woken by an ear-piercing siren. Blearily, we worked out it was our smoke detector; taking out the batteries to shut it up, before we turned on the lights and saw the damage. There was a heavy mist of water vapour clinging to the ceiling and water was pouring onto the floor through holes we’d drilled for the solar panel on the roof. Just what we needed 2 days before setting off on our UK tour.

The next 48 hours saw us re-sealing every screw hole on the roof and the seams (just to be on the safe side) and running a dehumidifier and heater inside at full blast to dry Bertha out. This was alongside trying to pack her with all our worldly belongings that are going with us, whilst trying to keep them dry. Quite a challenge, but we got there eventually and on Monday morning we set off on our UK tour to say goodbye to family. Bertha hit the road!

Now when your friendly mechanic tells you that you should check the water level every day, even if you check nothing else, you would probably not forget to do that. What did we not check before we set out? Yes, the water level in the radiator expansion tank. It was hardly surprising then that when we got to Bristol the warning light came on. A quick top up sorted us out and reminded us to listen to people who know what they’re talking about!

Over the last few days, we’ve spent some really good quality time with family; being fed incredibly well (we suspect our families may think we might not eat when we’re on the road). We had a lovely day out in glorious weather on Tuesday, visiting some old childhood haunts of Burrow Mump, Glastonbury Tor and Wells. Sadly, the rain came down once more that night; again leaving us with lots of water vapour, but this time no evidence of leaks. We hoped it was just residual water coming out from behind the ceiling… only more rain would confirm or refute expectations.

We then had a lovely visit to Cardiff to see Kiri’s Nan, checking the engine water level before we set off this time! Bertha behaved though and we were rather relieved to find out that the Severn Bridge toll for Bertha was the same as a normal car. We then stayed overnight at a very basic campsite with just fresh water and waste disposal, getting a flavour of what our life will be in the coming months, before we travelled on up to Stourport to visit Kiri’s other grandparents.

Even though we’ve had the fridge running on gas almost permanently since we filled up with LPG in Taunton, the gauge is showing almost full still, which is encouraging, as our gas should last longer than first though. If only the same would happen with our petrol… we’ve moved to 20mpg with the longer journeys – Bertha’s a thirsty beast!

And then on to Birmingham to visit my brother and sister-in-law. We were just giving them the tour of Bertha when the heavens opened. We’re talking monsoon here. And hail. The rear window of Bertha turned into a beautiful water feature (outside!) and my finger nails ended up being bitten almost down to the quick! Amazingly, she remained watertight and even after very heavy rain last night, there was no sign of a leak or water vapour.

We’ve got one more stop on our UK mini tour before we return to East Sussex to get our winter tyres fitted… then we’re off.

This week’s seen us clearing up a lot of loose odds and ends; inching ever closer to leaving. We sold our old water heater for parts (below left) and our new water heater arrived (below right), so we got to work installing that, adding in an extra flue (the old one didn’t have a flue!) and spending an hour or so in B+Q to try to get the right connectors. Once fitted, it seemed to hold its pressure well and it didn’t seem like there were any leaks (gas or water), but we had to wait until yesterday to know for sure.

I was going to wait until the end of the blog post to give the outcome of the gas safety check today, but the title kind of gives it away! After some pressure testing and fixing of a minor leak, there was the smoke test (literal smoke, not like software smoke tests!) and other tests (I think something to do with emissions) and Bertha passed! We’re self-sufficient now – just need to sterilise the water system today.

As for the other bits and pieces, we had a speaker floating around in the cab and a gear knob that was disintegrating, so we had to do something about that. A bit of bodging later, and the speaker now has a little carpeted surround… I didn’t have a plan with it… I just played around, adding bits to it until it looked vaguely complete (if a little odd). And then the gear knob. We didn’t really want to have to buy a new one, as that would mean creating a thread on the gear lever (the current knob is just pushed on and glued), but couldn’t let the current one keep disintegrating on us. The solution? Papier mâché! I’m sure no-one else in the world is odd enough to have a gear knob like this:

Aside from that, we had a further water leak – this time in the bathroom behind the basin. It turned out to be just another loose jubilee clip – I guess the 23 year old water system isn’t used to being used so much! However, in the course of fixing that, the plastic of the plug split (due to having perished with age), so we had to mend that too with glue, sealant and some plumber’s putty. I’m sure this won’t be the last leak, so we’ll take some tools with us!

So, it looks like we will be leaving… and within days, rather than weeks. It’s strange, as up until now the idea of leaving was just a concept – now it’s reality. Bit scary that! Better get packing!

We’re currently waiting to have our new boiler tested by the lovely gas safety man, which should be the final modification to Bertha before we set off. In fact, we intend to start packing the van tomorrow! In the meantime, Kiri’s been editing chapter 1 of our KIST 2EU video and I’ve been frantically researching road rules, foreign phrases and the like for our country profiles as well as sorting out travel insurance. We were pleased to find out that we’ve got kidnap and hijack cover. Less pleased to find out that it only pays out £25 per day. If any would-be kidnappers or hijackers are reading this, it’s not worth bothering – monetarily we’re worth very little, although we’ve been told that we hold a lot of sentimental value…

Anyway, back to the country guides. It’s been worth us doing all of this research, I mean who would have guessed that:

You’re not allowed to use your horn near a hospital in Austria

Speed limits depend on the time of year in Lithuania

It’s illegal for a drunk person to sit in the front of a moving vehicle in Macedonia

It’s against the law to have a dirty car in Romania

Your GPS device must not be attached to the middle of the windscreen in Slovakia

You must not indicate when entering a roundabout in Slovenia… only when exiting

If you hit a moose and it runs back into the woods, you must mark the position it went back into the woods with a plastic bag in Sweden

Now some of those would make great questions in a pub quiz round! We got rather scared when researching driving in Albania, and have concluded that Bertha would probably struggle on the roads there, so we’ll give it a wide… ummm… berth.

It wasn’t all fun and games though – as part of researching, we realised that we would probably need an International Driving Permit for some countries, so we’ve ordered those. We also possibly need an “Umwelt-Plakette” for Germany – basically a sticker to say what your emissions are (by this we mean Bertha’s emissions), which will then dictate where you can and can’t drive… a bit like the low emissions zone in London. That’s been ordered too… they might turn around and say that our emissions are too high for a sticker… we’ll see!

The main impact that the research had though, has turned out to be another big hit on the wallet, but hopefully not too much more of a delay. Due to all of the setbacks we’ve faced, our departure date has been slipping further and further towards winter. Now we’ve got snow chains – they’re all good – but it turns out that winter tyres are mandatory in a lot of places between November and March. I don’t want to scare anyone, but November is only just over 3 weeks away. Without winter tyres, we’d basically be restricting ourselves to France and Spain in our first loop of the trip, which isn’t ideal. We’ve therefore decided to order a full set of winter tyres (including spare wheel), get them fitted before we go, then change them back to our current tyres when we come back to the country in March. To be honest, we’d probably have to change a few tyres on the trip anyway so it will be a worthwhile expenditure that will give us a bit more flexibility, even if we’re still planning to avoid driving in snow (where possible).

Hopefully tomorrow we’ll report back that we have a gas safety certificate… at which point we should be in full control of our timescales again and we’ll be able to buy ferry tickets! Hmmm, we’ll see!

I wonder how many of you read that and immediately sung “dahdah dah daaah, dahdah dah dah daaah“? You’ve got to love the 80s… kind of appropriate that the song is by “Europe”! Anyway, back to the trip – the end of preparations are in sight, and we’ve got the vinyl floor laid!

The rest of the van is looking pretty shipshape as well to be honest. We got a new replacement flue for the gas heater (after the old one was too small)… and this one was too big. After some communication with a very lovely and honest eBay seller, we’ve now got a flue that is the right size and once that was fitted, we could move on to a couple of other jobs; putting full-width shelves across the wardrobe that the flue goes through (we’d prefer shelves to hanging space) and building an extra wall to separate the back of the gas heater from the gas locker. I’m not sure that this is going to do much in the event of something going badly wrong with the heater, but it should isolate some of the heat from the gas locker.

We’d been putting off laying a new floor until we’d done most of the work inside Bertha, as we didn’t want to ruin it with tools and this week we decided to bite the bullet. We’d kept the old carpet that we pulled up and used that as a template to cut the vinyl, but there were still a few edges where we were glad we’d allowed for a bit of excess. Once cut to shape it was pretty easy to stick down – just the equivalent of double sided tape around the edges and spray adhesive for the rest of the floor. It didn’t seem to want to create bubbles either, which was very helpful for us! Once laid, a bead of brown sealant around the outside finished it off and we added a rag rug to soften the floor a bit.

View from the rear seat

View from the driver’s seat

Once the vinyl was laid, we could then think about straightening the rear table. When we replaced the floor in the back corner, we had to work out the placement of the fixed table base, allowing enough space from the wall so that it wouldn’t tilt. We left a bit too much though, meaning a gap between the table and the wall, which the table chose to tilt into. With the vinyl down, we had a final resting place for the table, so could build a little desk tidy between the wall and the table to fill the gap.

So to all intents and purposes, we’re done with the modifications to Bertha. We’re waiting for a new water heater to arrive (should turn up today) which we’ll fit as soon as possible. Once that’s done we can organise a final gas safety check and sterilise the fresh water system. We’ve come a long way – this is what Bertha looked like when we bought her:

Once the water heater’s in, it’s onto the packing, buying ferry tickets and travel insurance, then setting off on our mini UK tour. Hopefully by this time next week we’ll be on the road!