Campervanning
in Europe. Part 9 Back in the UK 
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Route map Dover - Canterbury - Whitstable [163 Kb]Good SONPS
Arriving in Dover late at night we knew where there was a suitable parking bay beside the A2 a little south of Canterbury, and we headed for that and parked for the night. Even the A2 is relatively quiet at night although traffic picks up early in the morning from about 6.30AM, so we had a reasonably quiet night.29/08/2000 We drove in to CANTERBURY, although it had not lost a lot of coolant overnight I priced a new radiator at the Ford dealers, who wanted £130.00, which I thought was far too expensive, so I just bought a new temperature gauge sensor for £10.00 and went across the road to an auto parts store and they said they could get a Transit, not original but new, radiator for £65.00. Hoping to be able to fix it easily I bought a bottle of radiator leak stop instead. Back in the Ford dealers car park, I fitted the sensor in about five minutes and poured the leak stop into the radiator. After driving around Cannterbury there was no more sign of leaks, but now the gauge was reading a lot higher than it had been before. Still within the normal range but noticeably higher.
I was worried that perhaps the radiator sealant goo had done too good a job, and partly blocked some of the core, as part of the core was still feeling cold when the gauge showed the engine was hotter than normal. I wondered if the thermostat had been damaged by overheating, so we called in the Halfords shop and priced their replacement thermostat units, and decided to drive around a bit more and see what happened. The cold spot on the radiator still was present, so returning to Halfords for lunch in their car park I forked out for a new thermostat and fitted it while Sharon made lunch. After lunch another test drive, but nothing had changed, apparently the thermostat was not at fault. I had got to know Canterbury fairly well as we had spent a week here while waiting to get our clutch replaced before going to Europe and on asking at Halfords they told me of another place nearby that did radiator work.
They were most helpful and yes they had new radiators in stock for £50.00. Could they fit it for me, well no they didn’t do fitting. Did they know any one who could, no. But the helpful gentleman said I could fit it myself on their premises, and they even had a few tools they would loan me. Knowing how long it took to get the clutch fixed I jumped at it. He loaned me a set of socket spanners to compliment my own few tools I had bought in a "pound Shop" and even gave me a little assistance. Within about 45 minutes I had removed the old radiator and installed the new one, it was all filled up and tested, no leaks. What a friendly helpful guy. And it only cost me £50.00.
Confident that it all had to be OK now with a new temperature sensor, thermostat and radiator, we set off and had no more problems. The gauge however still read higher than it used to, but I concluded this was simply due to a difference in calibration between the old sensor, before it died, and the new one, which was more accurate I don’t know. Maybe I hadn’t really needed to replace the radiator, but never mind the problem was fixed, it hadn’t cost too much.
The European section of your holiday was over and I felt well pleased that we done all we wanted to and fulfilled a long standing ambition, that I have wanted to do for almost thirty years. We had decided, while we were still in Europe, not to keep the van feeling that another tour next year would be too much and we feel that the parts of Europe that we have not seen were not so high on our wish list.
We made our way to the seaside village of WHITSTABLE knowing there was a good SONPS there along the seafront. Our next task was to sell the van, and I had decided to advertise it in the LOOT. We drove through the village and eastward along the esplanade to the quiet seafront parkland where locals come to walk their dogs, and you can park with a pleasant sea view. We had a quiet restful night. We phoned several friends we had been intending to see, but were only able to make definite arrangements with one to visit them on the coming weekend. My One2One mobile phone still had all its credits, they don’t expire on the One2One system, and the little car charging device I had bought before leaving the UK had recharged it OK.
30/08/2000 After breakfast I composed the advertisement for the LOOT and phoned it in from my mobile. We decided to ask £3,750.00 for the van, as we wanted to be able to sell it quickly, We had paid £4,000 but we knew that the owner had been advertising it for some weeks for a higher price, as I had seen his LOOT adverts on the Internet before leaving Australia. After all our hunting for a van we thought we were lucky to have got it for £4,000 and that we had not paid too much, and it had proved to be so reliable and economical to run, but we wanted to offer it at an attractive price, so we wouldn’t have to wait too long for a sale.
You have to give LOOT an address and a fixed phone number, so we had arranged with friends near London to use theirs. You can list a mobile number in your LOOT advert, which we did, but they insist on having the other information too for some policy reason. They also then publish the suburb where the fixed line is as where your goods are located for inspection, but they don’t publish the fixed number unless you put it in the advert text.
WHITSTABLE is a really charming old English village, and the bakery makes about the best pasties we have ever come across. We bought three for lunch, ate them outside the shop and liked them so much we went back and bought another three to take back to the van to have for dinner. We seldom buy take away food, but these were good. After looking around the village, including browsing in the charity shops, where you can often find the most wonderful bargains in almost new "second hand" clothing, we decided to head towards London.
We headed for a CARAVAN AND CAMPING CLUB park near SEVEN OAKS at OLDBURY WOOD. It is a really nice secluded park set down a narrow country lane in the middle of forest.
31/08/2000 It was very pleasant at Oldbury and we stayed another day to catch up on washing, cleaning the van to have it look nice and be ready for sale. Sharon took the opportunity to do some work on her scrap book of souvenirs of our holiday that we had been progressively compiling in spare moments all along throughout our journey, never seeming to catch up. The park managers were New Zealanders who were due to leave in November heading for Brisbane in Australia to make that their home. Friendly people and we enjoyed chatting.
We needed to stay close to London as we had advertised the van and the following day the add would appear in LOOT, but we also had arranged to visit friends north of London near Bedford, so we decided to move to another C&C C park north of London the following day.
01/09/2000 We made our way toward London and received a call about the van and arranged to call in and show it on our way to the other camping park. Nothing eventuated, he’d let us know, had to check with his wife!
We made our way toward the city, crossing the Thames on the free Woolwich Ferry and headed to ‘THEOBALDS PARK" on the inner London ring road. Another pleasant park, as are all of the Caravan and Camping Club Sites we have stayed at on each of our campervan trips around England in previous years.
Not long had we arrived at the park when we had another call for the van and arranged to meet the next day. This time it was a young Australian couple who were working in the UK and were planning a tour of Europe. We were hopeful, we thought our van had to be suitable for them.
The park warden told me of a campervan show being held at York the following weekend, and he suggested that it would be an ideal place to sell the van. So we had decided that if it wasn’t sold within a few days we would head to York after visiting our friends at Felversham near Bedford.
02/09/2000 We met the young couple at a railway station in northern London that was convenient to us both. They had only just started to look for a van they said, so that was not a very helpful sign, they would want to look more, and if they hadn’t looked around like we had, would not know what a bargain they were looking at.
I offered them a test drive, although they hadn’t asked. After the young man had driven for a mile or two we turned into a narrow side road and he was driving too close to the kerb, and as I shouted a warning to him he manages hit the fortunately rather low kerb. I took this incompetence as a warning that I shouldn’t let him drive any more, and politely but firmly told him that we had gone far enough and I would drive them beck to the station.
As expected they were not ready to buy and it wasn’t until we got back to the station that I noticed one of the hub caps missing. Sharon and I quickly returned to the scene of the event and luckily found the hub cap with only minor damage. Clipped back on and you couldn’t notice. We returned to the station where they were still waiting and he had the decency to offer to pay for any damage, which was minor to the hub cap, although I think the steering alignment may have suffered a little.
I found it incredible that we could drive our van for 12,000 miles through Europe without a scratch, and yet this fool manages to almost crash it within five minutes. We resolved not to offer anyone else a test drive unless they appeared to be really serious buyers and clearly stated that they wanted the van and that buying depended on test driving it.
After all this excitement it was near lunch and we headed north out of London towards Bedford to visit our friends at the village of Felversham, stopping at Luton for lunch in the van.After a pleasant weekend in the English countryside with our friends whom we had known from our six years living in Brunei in the 80’s, we were in two minds as to where to go. The camper show in York started on the Thursday, but our van was in the LOOT and I would repeat the advert if it wasn’t sold today.
04/09/2000 We had decided to go to a nearby C&CC park to wait and see what happened, when we received another call about the van. I told the caller of our plans to go to York and took his number telling him I would call him the next week end if it was not sold. We needed to buy some groceries and went to the nearest Tesco and stopped for lunch in the car park.
Here we had a change of mind, as the earlier caller had seemed keen to see the van, and we decided to call him back and see if he still wanted to see it that afternoon. Yes he did, and we made an appointment to meet near the Woolwich ferry. We made our way back to London and across the ferry and arrived well ahead of time. Our prospective buyer duly arrived and we began to show him over the van. Within five minutes he had made up his mind and offered us £3,500.00 cash. Normally I’d have haggled for the full price, or a split, after years living in Asia both Sharon and I know how to haggle, but this time I didn’t, I was too pleased. Sold! The offer was close enough, and more than I would have settled for a quick sale. He didn’t even want to test drive the van, he could see that it was in excellent condition, and that he was getting a good bargain, that suited us both. We arranged to settle the transaction later in the week as we needed to book our flights home, as we wanted to hand over the van and immediately before we left for the airport.
The settlement was arranged for 1.30PM on the Thursday and the buyer would drive us to the train station in our, his, new van. Everything went as arranged. We both felt rather sad as we saw "our little blue house" drive away from outside Woolwich station with its happy new owner. We had had a wonderful time in it, and had learned to live quite comfortably in the small area.
(The van had now done 95,113 miles, we had covered just over 12,000 miles on our trip.)
We had booked a three night stopover in Singapore, a favourite place where we had been many times during my period working in Brunei and Thailand to top off a wonderful holiday.
Now as I write these notes to post on the Internet it is the 30th April 2001, and looking back on my notes I see that on this date last year we were in Versaiiles, and we rested in the camping park as Sharon had the flu, and I fixed the leaking window in our van. Yes we have had some second thoughts that maybe we should have put the van in storage at a camping park in the UK, and returned this year for more, but we are not really disappointed, now I am planning our next adventure.
A campervan tour of the USA in 2002.
I hope to get a new notebook computer to take with us and write up our notes while on the road, and post some reports as we go. I expect it to be around 6-9 months in 2002 and possibly another 6 months in 2003.
I wonder where we will be on April 30th 2002?
The End
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