My kids (two, age 9 and 5) break up on Friday 17th of July and as most parents I am slightly dreading it....
Our plan is to take our old beloved VW camper and tour around the country (haven't quite decided if we are going to the Lakes, Wales or Somerset..) but I must say in reality 7 weeks is a long time for me and my other half to sleep in our small 1 1/2 man bed, squashed up against a cold window, while listening to his snoring and worrying about the rain coming in....BUT the kids love it.....
2 years ago (same year the dog had a bad tummy and decided to do his dirty in the middle of the camper while zooming up the motorway) we was driving round Wales and it was lovely until engine broke down and we had to get towed back to Yorkshire, kids still talking about it!..
Last year we nearly made it to Somerset when the fan belt went but we had to keep going as we were going up a hill with a massive lorry behind us.
When we pulled over the engine was knacked and totally dead!
We rang the AA and me and kids put the kettle on and did some drawing while hubby went off searching for some lunch...
We got towed to Somerset (closer than Yorkshire..) where we have some very good Friends we could stay with.
We now had to try and get the camper fixed and head back up to Yorkshire...(As far as I recall it was also a bank holiday week end so not much chance of finding a garage with a new engine..)
Our friend suggested we call the local garage to see if they could help and you never guess what!!!
One of the lads there had a VW beetle. He had bought a new engine for it but was not going to replace it yet but when he heard about our "problem" he offered to take the engine out of his beetle, sell it to us and fit it in our camper - on a bank holiday weekend! How lucky is that?
We left the old (broken) engine with our friend and posted it on Ebay, thinking that maybe some clever guy could strip it down and rebuild it....We sold it a week later....
We did make it back home but I must admit, while packing the camper today I do wonder how far we will make it this time.......
