The list of stuff yet to do seems to be getting longer. Maybe it's just imagination, but the less time we have the more work there seems to be. Daphne got her "blood transfusion" yesterday even though the engine oil still had plenty of life in it. I reckoned it would be better to suffer the cost and do the oil change earlier rather than later. I did a check of the diffs and gearbox oils as well which was a bit easier since I invested in a rather natty oil pump. The previous method relied on the plastic tube that the oil bottles come fitted with to get the juice into the right place. This inevitably meant another anointing with viscous, carcinogenic gloop as you only know the boxes are full when they overflow, generally quickly, down your arm or into your face. Given that I have to lie underneath with the fill holes just inches away, I generally ended up with an unplanned facial. With my newly-grown face fur, that'd definitely be a Bad Thing.
The demented mouse that had apparently taken up residence under the bonnet has been tracked down. The manic squeaking that we noticed a week or so ago was coming from the spring-loaded wheel that keeps the "fanbelt" from flying off.
We experienced the result of this part failing a while ago. The bearing - the squeaky bit- stopped doing it's job halfway up a mountain road in France. First we knew of the problem was the smoke filling the cab from the fanbelt as it destroyed itself. We had a spare fanbelt, but the bearing was a problem. The whole country was shut down for the best part of a week because of the Bastille "Day" celebrations and we couldn't get the bit we needed in time to get home for work. After a bit of an argument with the insurance company Sue and I flew home and Daphne followed 2 weeks later in an ambulance. The bearing cost £3 to replace. Our insurer (Axa) initially refused to honour the Get-You-and-Your-Vehicle-Home part of the deal and instead offered us the princely sum of £600 to write Daphne off....We had a loud and acrimonious re-negotiation of the position and they miraculously changed their minds. Grrr!
The weather was dry enough this week to get the mattress into the roof tent, unfold it and check that everything still worked...
This type of tent comes in basically two standards - luxury/heavy or cheap/light. We chose the latter option which will be no surprise to those of you who know of my skip-diving habit. However...we have applied some thought to the process which went a bit beyond the financial. The "best" rooftents come in at over £2600 for basically the same thing that we have for well under half that price. What you don't see in the picture is the skirt or vallance that zips to the underside of the sleeping platform to provide another room on the ground floor, so to speak. We hardly needed it last year but we'll take it folded away, just in case of long stops in crap weather. So, ours cost quite a bit less than the best and the difference in quality is, to be fair, quite noticeable. But...we only use it for a couple of months a year, so it's good enough. It's also about 25kg lighter than the expensive models, which was the main reason - not cost - we bought this one. The dearer tents put about 75kg on the roof which is a serious consideration when Daphne's got 30 degrees of bank on and no roll cage. Ours came from a company in Derbyshire who have been a bit difficult to deal with when we had zips break, groundsheets that didn't fit etc but they honoured their commercial obligations. Eventually.
One annoying problem we have is condensation inside the tent when its cold outside. The air we breathe out creates a film of moisture on the inside of the tent roof which then runs down to the metal supports - arranged a bit like an old fashioned pram hood - and then drips on us,or rather, the bedding. This happens despite having the windows fully open, which isn't always ideal if it's snowing or blowing a hooligan...
The manufacturers of these tents make a bit of a "big deal" about being able to fold the whole thing up with the bedding inside and hence save a lot of time and faffing about when you set up or decamp. Well, try that in our climate and you'll have pretty soggy duvets damn quickly as they do a great job of blotting up the water inside the tent when it's all folded up. We reckon we've solved that problem by making a removeable inner roof from a bedsheet that will catch the drips and can be quickly dried out in the morning, having been used to mop the inside dry - quicker than a damp duvet, anyway. Yet to be troop-trialled, but we have great hopes!
I've been told that this "isn't a problem" if you buy a more expensive tent with better fabric, ie heavy canvas, not our lightweight alternative. Well, we also have an OzTent. These are seriously heavyweight/expensive but the best "ground tent" I reckon you can buy. It's great in almost every way...and it suffers from exactly the same condensation problem as our cheapie rooftent.
Lastly, we've refitted the Washing Machine. Despite what my mum thinks, camping has moved on a bit since her memories of Girl Guides, bell tents and latrine pits, and it isn't necessary to smell like a polecat in a farm drain all the time. OK, some of the time... Rather than taking the smalls down to the river and bashing them on a rock, we came up with this:
A combination of old bits of drainpipe and some bits of aluminium salvaged from the junk pile at work and we have a washing machine. The water doesn't even have to be hot as the black pipe sucks enough heat out of the sun to get everything steaming.
This time next week and everything should be packed in, lashed down and ready to go. Insh'allah!
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