On the road again: MOT, MOT, MOT,

Yes it passed yipeee….but not after a few scares, read on.

To get ourselves fit Kay and I set off on Tuesday morning on our cycles and completed ten miles of the Millennium Way. In the afternoon after washing, cleaning and lubricating the cycles till they shone, I then completed all the small jobs I had to do on the RV ready for the MOT and by Tuesday night (me thinking it was Wednesday) I was shattered.

Then it dawned on me tomorrow wasn’t the MOT it was the day after, what a plonker!!! So the following day I took it all a bit slower, well the ache in the back was telling me to slow down, you’re not twenty (and there was me thinking I was.)

Thursday morning organised and ready to go we left the site and headed off down towards the A41 when ding, ding the gas switch started to sound telling me it had switched over to petrol and it wouldn’t switch back. Oh no, not again, we thought we had that problem sorted out but alas no it was back. So on we trundled on petrol to Signature arriving an hour early for our appointment with the hope of caching up with some old friends who were having their RV serviced that day.

Thank god we were early firstly the MOT looked as if it would fail as the emissions test was reading only petrol emissions as the engine wouldn’t switch over to LPG, then luckily one of the mechanics noticed something to do with the ECU and wahlla it switched over and all the emissions fell to correct levels and the RV passed with flying colours.

OK now the young lad tried to reverse the unit out of the workshop and crunch he’d forgotten to shut the door and retract the steps. One step forward two back came to mind; this meant the mechanics feverously banging and hammering to get the steps back into shape and working.

Eventually the RV was backed out of the workshops now complete with a new Hitch-plate that allows me to drop the trailer height to the correct level, all the wheels torqued to the correct tightness and the front wheels valve extenders fitted.

You have a problem

Signature has a good reputation among the RV fraternity but to be honest I had the feeling that the boys were under a lot of pressure and they rushed the work. They had forgotten to sort out some spare locker keys I’d asked for and the lad who was going to show me how to change the headlights for Europe disappeared onto another job.

We met up with our old friends Pauline and Dave that afternoon and it looked as if they too were having a few nightmares with jobs on their RV and eventually they ended up staying the night there.

Still to be fair we drove all the way back on gas (YES) but to be safe Kay insisted that I fill up the RV with petrol to be on the safe side.

We arrived back starving hungry as we’d missed lunch just as our neighbours Zeta and Phil called over asking would we like to pop over for a drink. But we’d passed the Navigation Inn on the way back and had already decided we were heading straight back out for a meal. We asked if they wanted to join us and so within ten minutes we were all dressed and ready to go and off we headed to the Navigation Inn at Gnosal.

We all had a great time the meal was excellent and plentiful but I should have stopped and refused the sweet but no, I ended up making the same mistake eating a lot at a late hour which never does me any good but I don’t learn.

Food glorious food

Tell Em to shut up

There was live music on offer and we had intended to stay until a lad near us with a baby in a pram decided he was there for the night! Babies should be in bed before nine o’clock in the evening not sitting in a noisy pub, the poor mite was tired and started to create a noise.

Not only was it disconcerting for the musicians but it annoyed the hell out of us as well so we up and left.

That night I hardly slept at all, first it was too hot, then too cold, sleeping with a belly full of food is not comfortable so when I did eventually drop off to sleep I snored the roof off Kay was not a happy bunny with me, so much for all that cycling.

Today we moved the RV to get the trailer hooked up on the back of the RV to see how the bikes would fit and it was a good job we did. The first thing I noticed was that the bike rack would hang the bikes right over the raised Jockey wheel and this could be a potentially dangerous situation as the jockey wheel stem could hook itself on the cycles even with the wheels removed from the cycles. So tomorrow I will have to pop down to a caravan shop to see if a can get a removable jockey wheel clamp that will allow me to remove the jockey wheel altogether.

Then it was paint tin in hand to paint the step where the mechanics had been hammering the steps back into shape.