After Aberystwyth we decided to cross back into England and the county of Shropshire.
We headed to a town called Church Stretton. It had some great write ups, a car park that allowed Motorhome parking overnight and a swim spot about a 20 minute walk away, it sounded perfect.
On the way to Church Stretton Dee noticed a warning light that came on! Then suddenly there was a burning smell and Jovanna had smoke coming from the engine!
We quickly pulled over and Dee said that the Alternator Belt had broken. He managed to stop the smoke and said we should carry on to Church Stretton to a safe parking place.
On arrival Dee called the local car parts place and ordered the new belt for the next day. He’d had this problem before with his work van and fixed it himself. Problem was he had no tools with him!!
The next day we cycled a 24 mile round trip on the A49 to Halfords to get a socket set! It was not a nice bike ride!
After lunch Dee got to work with the alternator belt. A couple of hours later it wasn’t going according to plan so it was now time to call for help. It was Weds afternoon 27th July. We have breakdown cover attached to our Motorhome insurance.
It took approx 2 hours for help to arrive. The guy said it needed a new tensioner belt. Because of the time, he had to order one for the following day. He said we would hear from his colleague in the morning.
The following morning the part had to be picked up from Wolverhampton so it was lunch time before the 2nd guy reached us. It did need a new tensioner but after just a few minutes he also realised that it was the water pump that was the actual problem and caused the belt and the tensioner to break! He was surprised his colleague had missed it! This was now a big job!
We were always planning to get back to Brighton around the 2nd/3rd Aug as we were going to a wedding on 4th August. It was now the 28th July, a week before the wedding, the local garage could not do any work until after that date. We had the option of recovery to anywhere in the country. We opted for our usual garage in Brighton as they know the van and confirmed they would start work as soon as the van arrived. Great, we would be back for the wedding just a little earlier than planned. Here’s what happened ……
Initially we waited about 2-3 hours for a breakdown truck to arrive . Recovery of vehicles the size of Jovanna is outsourced and we understand that it is something specialist. Our driver was coming from Stoke he updated us regularly, it took a while due to traffic on the M6. He also told us that due to driving restrictions on the number of hours HGV drivers are allowed to drive that we would be heading back to Stoke to change drivers. This all sounded fine. He arrived at around 18.30
An hour into our journey the driver spoke to his company and discovered that there was no other driver to take over! Apparently they knew nothing about it!
This then started to become very stressful. We arrived at a service station at the outskirts of Birmingham where the driver wanted to leave us. There was no space in the HGV park so he wanted to leave us and Jovanna on a slip road in a yellow box clearly marked “No Parking”
I was not happy at all! I refused to be left somewhere like this, unsafe and illegal! This caused more stress and more phone calls between us and the breakdown company and between the driver and his company.
Eventually we were moved into a proper car park and told that another truck from a different company would come and rescue us after 2 hours!
After about 3 hours the 2nd breakdown truck arrived. I had been talking to the controller of the company who knew Jovanna is a motorhome and knew how big she is.
The driver that came was surprised to see a motorhome! He didn’t know and more annoyingly he was not big enough to take us. It was now close to 11pm!
Although we could sleep in the motorhome we had run out of water and had no power! The breakdown company did attempt to book us into the Travel Lodge on site but it was completely booked up!
Around 1am after more calls we decided to at least try to get some sleep then another call alerted us that truck number 3 was on the way and would be with us at 2am! He could only take us as far as Oxford. We set the alarm for 2am and waited until 2.30am for driver number 3 who told us he had come from Newport, South Wales!
This time he was big enough just about! It took half an hour to load Jovanna onto it tho!
We arrived at a service station just outside Oxford at around 5.15am. Just half an hour after a call informing us that there were no other drivers or trucks and nothing they could do now until 8am!
Sleep…….Finally but we woke at 7.15am, to a text informing us that a driver would be with us at 8.15am! If only that had been true! We also had to call our garage in Hickstead near Brighton to explain why we still hadn’t got the van too them! They were ready for us and had the water pump waiting! So frustrating.
After sending photo’s and Jovanna’s vital statistics to the company who were going to be coming we then ended up waiting til 1.30pm!
Our garage, Van Tech closes at 4pm on the dot on Fridays. It was now beginning to look dubious if we’d even make it there for 4pm .
Breakdown truck number 4 arrives at 1.30pm. This time he was big enough but only had 1 passenger seat!! Why hadn’t anyone told us!🤦♀️
After establishing that we couldn’t drive due to lack of sleep they sent a taxi! Jovanna went on ahead. We were 40 mins behind as we had to wait for the taxi! We did get a hire car once back as we’d managed to get some sleep in the taxi!
Jovanna did make it just as the garage was closing! We made it about an hour later and luckily we were able to get clothes and toiletries out.
Thankfully a good friend had allowed us to stay on his boat in Brighton Marina until we got Jovanna back from ‘The Motorhome Hospital’
It took from Weds around 3pm when we first called for help until Friday evening to get back to Brighton! We were tired, hungry and dirty! So happy to be back tho! 🤣
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Our Life on the Road 