Overland with Kids

Where do we start?

We left in a rush without being able to provide any pre-trip or prepared vehicle updates. We missed our 10am ferry but managed to get a later sailing at 1pm on Monday 13th July. Then only just 350 miles into our journey (including mileage from Cambridgeshire to Dover ferry port), our newly and expensively fully serviced vehicle broke down on the French motorway. We had not even made our first campsite destination. It appears that we have a 1 in 20 problem i.e. the cam/timing belt has broken. Our 4460kg combined load including caravan, bikes, equipment, luggage and ourselves had to be towed off the motorway by a capable flatbed lorry - the kids were knackered but delighted at the excitement of it all - taking us onto a garage. A terrific start and real inauguration into just the very first day of our 7.5 week journey. Luckily, two taxis courtesy of our insurance company came to our rescue and took us, our load PLUS caravan (using 2 x Renualt Espace vehicles) onward bound to our campsite, another 1.5 hours away. We have to say that these Renualts handled our caravan with no issues with 2T weight!

We finally fell dead into bed at the campsite after midnight. Proper thanks to all who saved the day as much as possible for us to follow later.

We are currently vehicle-less and look poorly with just our clapped out caravan on campsite, two pop-up tents which are holding all of our luggage and our bikes. But we remain unbeaten and positive. The latest news we have on day 4 of our travels is that surface damage has been caused to the engine and diagnostics checks are required which now cannot happen until next Monday. From here we may have another 10 days to wait for parts and fix so we are currently determing our options and where to go from here.

Unfortunately, cannot download photos or Jessica’s diary or the text previously prepared as only have a little time (8 euros per hour to use the internet - very expensive - and keyboard odd so making it difficult and slow to type) and will not accept USB stick where everything previously prepaared is currently stored.

We are currently in Compiegne, on the banks of the Berny Riviere and it is beautiful. It is between Vic-sur-Aisne and Fontenoy. Kids are having a ball and we have seen some very pretty sites, including our first grand chateau, done lots of cycling and swimming and we are off to Disneyland tomorrow as we promised the children at the outset of our trip (hugely expensive and we haven’t even got there yet!).

We are looking to see if we can hire a vehicle to take us onward for now until we can get our vehicle back on the road. We are going to ask the campsite nicely (even if we need to continue to pay for our pitch) if they can keep our caravan while we do this as likely unable to provide tow cover. We can then see if we can hot-foot it back through France to collect both Land Rover and caravan without ruining our planned trip too much.

That’s all for now as have a couple of other internet checks to make before our time is up for today but we’ll check in again soon with more detailed info and photos hopefully.

Au Revoir! for now…..and all the best,

A, A, J and A

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Diary (Blog)