2017 Europe

Eurotrip 6, 2017 – Bernkastel…

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Another glorious day here in Oberweis – highs in the mid 20s. A late start after a very long day yesterday and the last camper to pick up their “early” morning bread order. Still, the Onion Baguette was a little different and very nice with marmalade for breakfast!

The new shower block is even plusher than at first sight. The walk-in showers have underfloor heating.

Visited Bernkastel and had a picnic along the banks of the Mosel.  This is a very pretty town – selection of photographs below.

St Michael’s Church

Panorama over Bernkastel…

Bernkastel…

 

Kohler Restaurant…

Evening we had booked a table at Kohler Restaurant which, whilst open to the public, also serves as the campsite restaurant.

Menu is extensive and the food absolutely first rate.

Eurotrip 6, 2017 – Blighty to Oberweis…

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An early departure for the proper start of Eurotrip 6, with a Tunnel reservation at 08:50. Despite a detailed tour of Folkestone, seeking out fuel, we still arrived at the Channel Tunnel at 07:15 and were promptly ushered onto the 07:49 train.

Ready to depart…

We do like the flexibility of Eurotunnel even if you do pay a bit more than the ferries.

By 9:45 (Central European Time) we were on our way to Camping Prumtal. Our route took us north of Calais and then east to Brussels and onward to Liege and finally over the border into Germany. As is the norm, traffic around Brussels was busy and chaotic but until reaching Germany we had made good progress.
Progress was hampered when the A60 south to Bitburg was closed for maintenance and we didn’t recognise any of the signposting of the myriad of diversion routes through small country lanes.
At one point we abandoned one of the diversions which included turning the caravan around in a farmers yard!

River View…

Arrived late afternoon at Camping Prumtal and secured a lovely plot next to the river. It’s nearly 3 years since our last visit here and the owners have been very busy adding a whole new area of fully serviced pitches and a very nice new toilet block. The facilities would be worthy of any 5-star hotel.

The weather has been good all day and in the evening we enjoyed a BBQ in shirt sleeves and then a post dinner walk along the River Prum.

Distance view of Campsite…

Camping Prumtal is THE place to visit in this region.

Eurotrip 6, 2017 – Initial Preparation Part II, Bishops Green Farm…

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The caravan has been parked at Bishops Green Farm since Sunday whilst we finish off the final preparations. We have just bought “front” panels for our Isabella sunshine awning and we wanted to make sure that everything fitted properly – and it did.

Bishops Green Farm…

Bishops Green Farm Camping and Fishing lake is located close to Newbury and near to Ecchinswell of Watership Down fame.

Main Camping field…

The site and facilities are immaculate and pristinely clean.

Bishops Green Farm facilities…

Bishops Green Farm toilet block

We  have however, been cheating and staying at home in the evenings and overnight as we have had so much to sort out.

Tomorrow we head to Folkestone and the tunnel to Calais and onwards to Germany.

Eurotrip 6, 2017 – Initial Preparation…

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It looks as though we may be heading off on Euro Trip 6 in around 10 days. Nothing is booked yet and the van hasn’t been used since September of 2016 but it was serviced as per the schedule in January.

In all her splendour…

First job is to motor-move the van from its storage location onto the drive for a thorough clean. It’s been a damp winter and the roof in particular has much algae on it – the van looks more than its 2 years of age and it takes all afternoon and the following morning to restore its pristine condition. I used various Hozelock brushes along with the soap sticks. Finally I sprayed the van with a solution containing “Bobby Dazzler” and all looks good.

Next item to investigate is the ATC (Alko Traction Control). Following a couple of threads on Caravan Talk, ours doesn’t appear to be working correctly, if at all. In particular, winding back a couple of years we were speaking with a couple at Bilbao discussing the ATC led and noted that their LED illuminated at connection whereas ours didn’t click into position until the engine had been started.

This was tracked down to a blown fuse on Pin 9 of the 13-pin electrics and a fantastic explanation from a CT (Caravan Talk) contributor about how in this situation, the ATC at engine-on would effectively gain it’s power from the leisure battery as the fridge signalling cable indicates engine-on.

Brown and Yellow were wrong way round

Further work revealed that two fuses on the Towbar electrics has been swapped around at install and the 20a fuse was on the fridge signalling cable and the 5a fuse which blew, on the Pin 9 permanent supply. All now rectified.