The Camping Holiday Of Despair (by alaric)
The plan was simple: borrow Sarah's parent's campervan, drive down on Friday evening to the village where our friends were being married the next day, sleep over, get up in the morning, have a nice breakfast, explore the area a bit, do the wedding, sleep over, then have Sunday to do touristy things with a few of the others who were staying over after the wedding, sleep over, and come back Monday morning.
However, it did not go to plan.
The problems began on Friday evening. I was shown over the campervan and introduced to its facilities. A sinking feeling began to set in when I saw the choke, and heard that the starting sequence involved turning on the power, listening to the clicking of the fuel pump, hitting it with the supplied hammer if it did not tick, waiting until the clicking slowed down, then turning it over with the choke out (which took many tries with a ten minute break to let the starter motor cool) until it started, then holding the accelerator down to keep it going since it wouldn't idle reliably.
Now, I'm used to driving a nice modern diesel engine; a paragon of reliability and simplicity. I've never driven a vehicle with a manual choke before in my life, and I've not driven a petrol vehicle in more than a year. My mind flooded with images of myself stalling while pulling away from traffic lights, and then being unable to start it again, surrounded by honking traffic.
But, I took it for a turn around the block to see how it went. It was a bit hair-raising doing the hill starts our area is dotted with, but I made it back, rather white knuckled.
I tried to plead out of making my first real journey in this thing a long one. Every other vehicle I've driven I've done lots of smaller runs before trying any long journey. I've only been driving two years, during which I've not driven a very wide range of vehicles; and this thing was well out of my range of experience, and particularly hair-raisingly dodgy-seeming. So I suggested we take my familiar van instead; but Sarah had her heart set on taking the campervan, with its cooker and refrigerator and more homely interior.
So, we set off.
The first bad omen came merely thirty seconds later, when we got to the end of our drive and spotted a piece of tattered hose lying on the ground. I stopped and picked it up; it looked distinctly like part of an engine. So I walked back and asked my father in law if it was a bit we needed. He frowned at it for a bit, then decided it was the hose that fed warm air to the back of the van, so we should check the heater still worked but not worry about it. So I left the bit of pipe behind and we continued.
The second bad omen came a few hours later, when we stopped at some services for a break and to check the maps so we'd know the last part of our journey. We'd been down (in the van!) to visit the people who were getting married the weekend beforehand, so I roughly knew the route. Sarah took out the invite to check exactly where the wedding was (since we knew it wasn't in the town they lived in)... and found that it was actually quite far north of their town. Not far from where we lived, in fact; Warminster, in Wiltshire just due south of Swindon a bit. While we'd been heading for Crewkerne in Somerset, haring down the M5, quite in the wrong direction. Whoops.
So we planned a route across country, off of the motorway and through Glastonbury. It was getting late by then so we decided we'd find somewhere to sleep and continue our journey in the morning.
So we found a layby just south of the village of Easton, between Wells and Cheddar, after a bit of exploring, and bedded down for the night.
Tue 6th May 2008 11:12 am 
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By Mike, Tue 6th May 2008 @ 11:34 am
Get some more keys cut for your van! Ever since I threw away the one key I had for a car accidently, I always have at least two sets of all the keys just in case.
By alaric, Tue 6th May 2008 @ 3:13 pm
Yeah... we looked into that, but since the van has a passive anti-theft system, copying the keys is complex since the keys have to contain an RFID challenge-response device that satisfies the special security computer thingy 🙁
I've considered having just dumb keys cut, though - ones that could then open the doors and turn the ignition key to release the steering lock, if not actually engage the starter motor and fuel pump!
By Mike, Tue 6th May 2008 @ 8:43 pm
Lot's of places can now copy ford keys of about that age, it doesn't need a ford dealer. New time you go into town ask a few of the bigger key cutting places.
By Becca, Tue 6th May 2008 @ 11:15 pm
(Van) need glue.... you know this has become Olly's answer to everything broken now!
By alaric, Tue 6th May 2008 @ 11:41 pm
Background: When Jean and Sarah's father turned up in the van, I told Jean that the campervan was broken, since she knows the concept of 'broken' all too well, to which she replied that it needed glue... as most things she breaks, I repair with glue 😉
Also, she started referring to it as the "smelly van", presumably due to the unburnt fuel vapours that kept coming out of the exhaust pipe when we were trying to start it.
By alaric, Wed 7th May 2008 @ 3:34 pm
Anyway, turns out the van's amazing security computers were TOO GOOD for them to break into, thankfully, so it remains unbroken!
They managed to roll it back a bit and bounce it across and my aunt got out, and I posted the keys which have now arrived.
So all is well.
By Lionel, Thu 15th May 2008 @ 9:23 am
I seem to remember another horror story - several months back – about a painful journey to a far-away wedding!
Tell your as yet unmarried friends to live in sin - it's cheaper all round...
(and I never go anywhere without jump leads)