Back in Britain; a Fidose of Reality – Part 2

If you have been walking with us for some time, you will know that our returns to the UK are never straightforward – and this one had reached an unprecedented zenith of complexity.

We had only arrived on British soil in November; however, by Christmas we had fitted in an assault, a boundary dispute, wild weather and Mark had been lost at sea.

But the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune were not done with us yet. Our Fidose of Reality continued into the New Year with car trouble, being forced to tow a caravan through a storm, tenant trouble and a robbery!

Wild Weather #2 – Warwick Racecourse

New Year’s Day; we were camped by the finish line! The pups and I sloshed around the expanse of marshland that now formed the perimeter of Warwick Racecourse and I wished a lady whom I met “Happy New Year!”

“It’s my day, isn’t it?!” she replied. I hesitated at the peculiar reply, wondering if it was her birthday or she had just won the lottery or something. Then it dawned on me that what she had actually said was “It’s muddy, isn’t it?!” in a local Midlands accent!

And then, the white knuckle ride! Driving from Warwick to the New Forest in Storm Eleanor. The caravan shook us like peas in a maraca as she was buffetted by 100mph winds. This prepared us both for the ordeal ahead by providing a night completely devoid of sleep. My heart was in my mouth all the way, but Mark kept his cool in a way that contrasted markedly with his wife’s approach to sang froid!

As windsurfers, we’re good at spotting whether we’re in a head wind (safer) or cross wind (less safe). Mark also has an LGV1 lorry licence, so he calmly explained his road positioning to me. He kept to the centre line as lorries came up behind, so that they were pushed over as they went to overtake. He then moved back to the inside of our lane as they passed to give us plenty of space and minimise the shock wave as they went by. It’s a relief to know that a turnover is unlikely – although I did witness a caravan rolling on the M27 in the storms in the 1990s, so it’s always in my mind.

Of course, we would have preferred not to tow in weather like this. It is entirely contrary to my own advice but we had no choice but to vacate the site at Warwick because it closed for the season! (See ‘To Tow or Not to Tow – is it safe to tow in high winds?’ for the good advice, which I was forced to ignore!)

Weather aside, we were also a little perturbed by the fact that Big Blue started to lose power without warning. If we coasted on to the hard shoulder and switched off the engine for ten minutes or so, she was all fine and dandy. Until it happened again.

We did arrive safely after a very slow and cautious progress. Well done to Mr L and his epic towing skills! I took the pups for a proper ‘my day walk’ – it was knee deep – and managed to get lost! Thankfully, I found my way back just as it was going dark…

We began to ready Caravan Kismet for winter storage, although even that was not without some drama. I got my arm stuck behind the water heater when I was draining down the water tank. “I’m not joking, Mark. It’s really stuck!”

I genuinely thought that I was going to have to call out the emergency services to extricate me. Mark was just as genuine in his contempt for yet another example of his wife’s ridiculous antics!

I felt like that bloke who got his arm trapped by a rock when he was climbing solo in America. I loved the title of his book; “Between a Rock and a Hard Place’ but I wasn’t about to pay him homage by drinking my own urine and sawing off my arm! I did manage to work my way free, with some wriggling and a look of disdain from Mark that was so withering that it allowed my arm simply to shrink itself free!

Car Trouble

We had booked Big Blue into Halfords first thing to check out the power-loss problem, forgetting, of course, that it was the day we were putting Caravan Kismet into storage.

Mark had originally told me that I had until 2pm to clean and close down the caravan for the winter. Then he rang and said that Halfords couldn’t fix the problem, so he’d be back in half an hour and could we leave at 12pm to save paying for a late departure from site! This threw my calm and composed cleansing schedule into ablution apoplexy; half an hour to achieve the remaining 2.5 hours of augmented antisepsis!

Then, once he came back, in a show of efficiency, Mark packed everything away. This included all my tidying tools, which somewhat hampered my efforts in the accelerated ablutions department. The curt, curtailed-cleaning conversations went along the lines of; “Where’s the nozzle for the hoover? Where’s the window cloth? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH THE ANTIBAC.?”

When Big Blue was returned to them, the good news from Halfords was that they could find nothing major wrong with her. They said that the diesel filter looked old, so the problem might simply have been a blockage, which fitted in with the sporadic loss of power. The new filter would take only about an hour to fit.

An unexpected bonus of our trip to Halfords was that we hadn’t realised that winter tyres have a direction of rotation. Halfords fitted them for us last year but we had put them on ourselves this year – the wrong way round! It was not a problem for the short time that we had been using them, but had we not spotted our mishtayke, they would have shredded!

Tenant Trouble – and a Robbery!

Early January. We were s’posed to be in Italy, skiing. But besides car trouble, we had tenant trouble – and a robbery!

We were not too overwhelmed with distress about the delay to our departure. There was so much snow in the Alps that holiday makers were having to be helicoptered out of Zermatt! Most of the slopes in Monte Rosa had only just opened because the avalanche risk was so far off the scale that it had taken until now to secure the pistes.

While Big Blue was being fixed, we had gone for a walk on the beach. At some point, playing with the pups, Mark’s wallet had fallen out of his pocket.

Thankfully, someone found the wallet. Since it was still the season of goodwill to all men, our Good Samaritan kindly removed all £300 of our Christmas gift money and threw the wallet into the sea, along with all of Mark’s bank and credit cards, his driving licence and his EHIC card. (European Health Insurance Card.)

We retraced our steps and fortunately found a rather soggy, sandy wallet near two metal detectorists. There was no-one else around. Just moments before, I had asked one of the detectorists if he’d found a wallet. “I haven’t found anything.” he told me sympathetically, before adding rather strangely “And neither has my mate!” I am only guessing, but today may have been his telepathic payday.

If the telepathy was working well, he would also know that I hoped beyond hope that he and his mate would choke on their ill-gotten gains and that Karma would reward their utter disregard for somebody’s valuables.

The irony was that we don’t normally carry much cash. When you are on a budget and try to save a pound here and a pound there, it was crushing to lose so much money, especially since it had been given with love to help us on our way. It might even have covered some of our fines! However, it was at least a blessing to have all the cards back. It would have been a fandangle of epic proportions to sort out replacing those just a couple of days prior to our already delayed departure for the Alps!

Well. That was the robbery. This was the tenant trouble. Our departure was delayed because our tenants had given notice and moved out. It had taken us weeks to sort out all the damage to the flat. I know that my own advice on renting property as a business is that you can’t be precious about it, even when it was once your treasured abode, but I am still flabbergasted as to how people manage to be so destructive! (Click here to hear the second piece of my own advice that I was forced to ignore!)

We had lived in the apartment for 10 years without scraping a huge patch of varnish off the dining table, shattering five floor tiles and two wall tiles in the bathroom (tiles from a range now thankfully discontinued!); pulling off and losing a knob from the boiler that they never needed to touch; getting candle wax all over the carpet and furniture; pulling off and wrecking all of the blinds and smashing a glass shelf and two glass table tops. It took me a full day to clean the bathroom and the oven, but the pièce de résistance was the tenant asking us what paint colours were on the walls, reassuring us that they had a parent who was a painter and decorator. We regained possession to find the walls daubed with random splodges of many shades to make good scratches, holes and marks; a dappled coat of many colours from several completely unrelated paint ranges.

Then they argued about the deposit!

How Our Run of Bad Luck Ended.

We did finally get to Italy. Eventually. Our journey of 1000 miles passed without incident – until the final 1.5 feet! Thwarted by a 2″ snow mound, it took us 1.5 hours to get Big Blue up a slight but icy incline into the garage that belonged to our rental apartment!!!!

In the process, we broke our snow chains and discovered that gripper tracks shoot forward at alarming speeds when turned upon by the drive wheel of a van on ice. We also discovered that tent pegs and a ski pole are not sufficient to secure gripper tracks on ice. The tent pegs merely added the hazard of shrapnel to the gripper track ballistics and the ski pole bent itself irrecoverably into the sort of shape that you could achieve by trying to twist balloons into the likeness of a dachshund.

Once we did finally manage to get there, we had a wonderful season in the snow, thank you very much for asking. Apart from being a legendary year for powder, it was very similar to the previous year, so we won’t bore you with more glorious ski descents, a little more adventure off piste and lots of woofy winter walks in golden sunshine. (If you would like to know more about our previous adventures in beautiful Monte Rosa, see the Ski section of my blog.)

Besides the obvious joys of being in a wintry wonderland, it was a delight to be back in our bubble; living our dreams remote from the real world of worry and conflict.

Well almost.

Communications from the Police about the assault and The Planning Office about the boundary were a constant companion via email, although both assured us at every stage that everything was in hand. Then in mid-February, we got a phone call from the caravan storage company. They are lovely people, but I knew that it wasn’t a social call. My heart sank. “Hi! How are you?” they asked. “Fine! How are you?” I replied. “Fine.” they concurred cheerily before dropping the bombshell. “Did you have a TV in your caravan?” “Er, no – we’ve brought it with us to Italy. But if we had, am I right in thinking that we wouldn’t have one now…?”

My powers of deduction really do rival those of Inspector Clouseau. “We have had a few break-ins, but your van seems to be OK. One man had his TV and £300 in cash taken from his van! Who leaves cash in their van?!”

Who indeed?! We weren’t quick enough to think of that scam. Or the TV. Really, the Inland Revenue’s confidence in our Master Criminal tendencies is utterly misplaced!

“The thieves disabled the CCTV, but it’s fixed and improved. They forced your door lock, but it’s all locked up again now.”

So there was nothing further to worry about.

Was there?!

With our apartment now vacant, we decided to move back in to enjoy the summer at home the following year.

However, join us next time for the aftermath of the Fidose – and discover how long we managed to stay ‘in the brick’ before we got itchy feet as We Pack Up Our Troubles & Climb Back Into The Bubble!