Ecape from Swindon

I was beginning to think we would never get to leave; maybe I did something bad in a previous life! The last few days have been quite crazy and I am very glad to be sat in a field near Glastonbury this evening writing this.

As I mentioned in the last post we broke down on Mum and Dad’s drive last Saturday lunch time. A very helpful RAC man came and got us started again but we decided to leave the van in Down Ampney while we drove up to Sheffield in the car for a few days. We got back late on Monday evening and left Mum and Dads the next morning on route back to Marlborough for one night before heading into Swindon on Wednesday morning to get the fan fixed. A simple plan you would think…………..

"The best laid schemes o' mice an' men 
Gang aft agley, " Robert Burns - To a mouse

Nothing went according to plan, the van started fine on the drive at home and we headed into Swindon to get the windscreen checked (a few small chips) and to fill up with autogas. When I tried to turn on the engine to leave Autoglass it wouldn’t start. Yet again the RAC man was called, and we got started after spending a couple of hours sat on a very unappealing industrial estate. We then decided that the best thing to do was to drive straight to the garage in Swindon, where the van was booked the next day to sort the problem (almost certainly just the feed to the starter motor) and have an MOT. We left the van at the Mercedes garage, and with a courtesy vito van drove up to Bristol to spend the evening and get our last set of injections. The vito was the third vehicle I drove on Tuesday as I had also dropped my car back up to the yard, and by this point I didn’t really know what I was driving! The vito had a peddle for the hand break, took a bit of getting used to.

Anyway we had a nice afternoon in Bristol and it was good to have a calmer farewell wander around the city than the manic few days before we moved out. We stayed in the Travelodge on Anchor Road and then popped up to Clifton Wednesday morning for our final vaccinations before we go. Everything was going fine until we spoke to the Mercedes garage. I am going to restrain the urge to have a rant here as this post is getting rather long already but after quite a few trials and not getting half the work we had originally requested done we got our poor van back about 5:30pm.

With high hopes that we were now all set we drove into Swindon, to fill up with autogas. Within five minutes of leaving the garage I had all sorts of warning lights on the dash and the van was obviously not remotely repaired. We gingerly made it to the shell garage where I parked on the pumps and turned off the engine. You can guess what’s coming next. Yep; we BROKE DOWN AGAIN. The short story is that at 9pm we drove back into the garage we had left three hours earlier, very cross and unhappy with the way the garage had handled the whole affair (the long story would involve far too many rude words for public consumption!). So last night was back to Mum and Dads for a few strong G&T’s.

£750, a new alternator and lots of stress later, we finally got our van out of the garages clutches today and hope never to have to return. We had a nice drive across country to Glastonbury, a wander round the museum of rural life and are now parked up on a small site out on the Somerset levels where -fingers and toes crossed - everything is working. Lets hope the engine will start in the morning, watch this space……………