Wednesday 25th September: We stopped in a campsite called Camping Seeblick Toni and my husband and little lady was just setting up whilst I went to use the facilities. I came back only to be told not to enter because their was shit everywhere; my first thought was that our little boy had squirmed his way off the changing mat whilst having his nappy changed and had managed to get his faeces everywhere. Nope, it turns out that whilst they were hooking up the electric they both happened to have trod in a pile of shit and it was all over their shoes and neither was any the wiser until our daughter entered the van and my husband smelt it and looked at the carpets and saw that she had left a muddy footprint behind. He ushered her back and checked her shoes only to find out that it wasn’t mud at all- brilliant!
Our lovely carpets were now all covered in crap- so now I had two wash loads to do instead of one but first I had to try and roll up the bloody thing so I could take it to the washing machine- if it would even go in one that is; it splits in two parts but one is a lot bigger than the other. I went out to try and find the poo so that it didn’t happen again and found a huge pile of it right next to our cable! Great! I wasn’t happy at all because it was massive and you could not miss it! I was even more pissed off at the fact that someone had let their animal shit on the ground and then didn’t even have the decency to clean up after it! I was fuming as I went to reception to tell them and to buy some tokens for the washing machine. It was made even worse when I got there and told the man behind the desk because he didn’t seem to give a damn and still charged me for the wash which I would never have had to do if it wasn’t for this campsite!
I was so angry I could feel it’s rage consuming me as I walked back to the van and grabbed the huge bundle of carpets to go and get washed. However, the bigger of the two carpets wouldn’t go into the washing machine as I had assumed so I had to hand wash it instead, luckily this one wasn’t affected as much as the other. Thankfully I had had time to calm down whilst doing it so I returned back to the van to apologise for my angry outburst. I felt really guilty though because I had obviously really upset our little girl with my reaction who apparently told my husband that she was “really really sorry Daddy and didn’t mean too” whilst I was gone and said the same to me when I got in. It made me realise just how much my anger gets at times and how it has a negative impact on others and that I shouldn’t really sweat the small things and just let them go.
We discovered that the animal whose poop it must have belonged to wasn’t a dog like I first thought it was but must of been a cat as the van behind us had a few of them in a little bed outside it’s door. Who brings their cats camping with them?! I’m sorry but we’re not a big fan of cats because most people who have them as pets just let them wander off wherever they want. They then go eating food from other peoples houses that have cats of their own and then shit in whoever’s garden or driveway they like! And they don’t even run away half the time when you try to scare them away because they have so much attitude that they just sit and stare at you as though to say “yeah? What you gonna do?”
On the plus side- the campsite itself was very nice and the facilities were great. They even had baths in the ladies!! Unfortunately there wasn’t any in the men’s which my husband complained about as he rightly should of because men take baths too. There was a really cool kids bathroom though that was decorated in an ocean theme with a bath shaped like a fish that sprayed water from 4 different taps, shell shaped sinks, glass sections within the floor that contained sand and bits of shells, and a cool shower that had lots of different jets spraying into it as well as the usual changing room facilities and toilets but miniature sized for kids. They even had an indoor play area which we went and played in with for a while so the little ones could have some fun. They also had a curly tube slide outside which you climbed to the top of via some wooden steps that was in a sort of tower. It was quite high to be honest and even though the slide was wet I had to give it a go. My husband gave it a go too with our son and then myself and my little girl gave it a go- by this point it had pretty much dried out, with most of it being mopped up by my bottom.
We struck some luck though when we went to go and put the other wash load on and take the carpets out because the washing machine still seemed to think it was still on a programme and so we got our next load of washing free!! We went back to reception and got our money back for the token we still had- we felt karma had done it’s job but did it? Or had we just played into karmas hands and done a bad deed by not owning up to the free wash and a bad deed was coming our way?
The laundry room was brilliant as it had a separate room with clothes horses in and a dehumidifier so you had a very good chance of drying your clothes. The washing machine room also had one of those dryer spinner machines where it spins your clothes really fast to try and wring out any water they may be holding- it worked really well for our carpets- especially the hand washed one which was dry by morning.
We then went and gathered our swim stuff so we could check out the kids bathroom and have some fun in the water but it turned out to be pretty pants. Our little boy did a poo on the floor whilst we were getting everyone into costumes so my husband ran back and got a swim nappy and they turned out rubbish too as they leaked! It was literally turning out to be a shit day! The water was absolutely cold and the kids were not enjoying themselves one bit and both started crying so we quickly left and went to go bath the little ones before taking them back to the van. They hadn’t had a bath in a very long time and sadly our little boy who used to love them so much, was terrified. Our little girl on the other hand was loving it and didn’t want to get out!
That evening when the kids went to bed, I went and had a bath!! It was heaven…no kids and time to relax by myself for a bit- I even had time to paint my toenails !! That is a task I would love to do more often but never really get the chance to so it felt amazing.
That night, Karma came in through our window. It was about 1am and I had just been to use the bathroom and was on my way back to bed when I could hear dripping coming from my daughters bed. My first thought was that she had wet the bed or something and it was dripping through (I was tired, give me a break) I climbed the ladder to her bunk to see where it was coming through and felt that indeed her mattress was wet but our little girl was dry and then that’s when I saw the drip; it was coming from her window! Her window was leaking and there was quite a lot of water on her bed already. Luckily she has a waterproof sheet on the mattress, not that she ever wets the bed but just in case you know, so I knew the mattress would be okay. I quickly went and woke up my husband and then I inspected the bunk below. That window was fine but some of the water from above had leaked down the wall. Fortunately it hadn’t gotten onto our son’s mattress and instead had trickled down the gap into the garage- not great but still.
We woke our little girl up so we could move her into our own bed whilst we tried to figure out what to do. I donned my coat and shoes and went outside to see if I could see anything but it was too high for me to see and it was still chucking it down with rain. Eventually my husband went out and took one of the ladders with him so he could take a look and did his best to duct tape along the top of the window which is where the water seemed to be coming from. We then decided the best thing to do was to take the internal window frame off to see if we could see where it was coming from. This required a bit of unscrewing but once it was off it was clear to see where it was coming from indeed. It appeared to be a bit of damaged seal from the outside and water was coming in very slowly forming a droplet of water in the top centre of the window but obviously over time that drop got bigger and bigger until it spread along the top of the window and dropped down the sides. It also dripped over the top into the air gap; this bit is where I heard the dripping noise from. The duct tape seemed to be doing the job at the moment though as no more water formed once we had wiped it away but I decided to sleep there with some tea towels just in case.
The next morning all seemed to be fine and so we made the decision to carry on with our travels and find somewhere or something to fix our window at some point soon. We stopped in a campsite in Germany as our route to Salzburg took us that way. The campsite was awful as was the receptionist – apparently there were no more ACSI pitches left so we had to pay full price which was extortionate for saying you had to pay for a hot shower too! We didn’t bother with a shower in the end. The lady was miserable and didn’t seem like she wanted to give us the time of day and we would have gladly left and carried on our way but we were tired after last night and just wanted to stop and have an uneventful day where we could relax. We pitched up but things soon started to spiral out of control as soon as we hooked up.
Our electrics started going mad!! The lights kept blinking on and off, there was a ticking noise coming from my husbands chair or fuse box and a noise like a grasshopper coming from our control panel. Well we didn’t have a clue what was happening and felt like our van was giving up on us! We thought we only had one problem to fix and now it seemed like we had two! We tried unhooking the electric but it made no difference. We looked up a garage on google maps and found one just up the road so my husband gave them a call and they told him to come on down and they would take a look. Well it turned out to be a wasteful trip as the man told us that he couldn’t touch anything electrical and that we’d have to go to an electrician. It was a bit annoying as my husband told him the problem when calling and he didn’t mention it being a problem then. So we drove back to the campsite feeling frustrated. I then had the idea of calling the Fiat customer services number that we had on a label in our cab. My husband gave them a call and all they did was reel off our nearest Fiat service centres of which we had no idea of where they were so my husband looked up our nearest one himself when he ended the call. He managed to get an appointment for 8am for the day after tomorrow. A great start but we still decided to try and figure it out ourselves before then. Our control panel used to play up every now and again and say “FUSE” but now it was just stuck on the on/off sign so we just assumed that maybe there was something wrong with the fuse. We looked at the fuse box which we had done previously on our trip and tried yet again to figure out how on earth to remove them without breaking them. After much research we managed to pull them out with tweezers doing them one at a time to see if any of them proved to have a fault. Nope, the only saving grace was that we found that one of them stopped the outside light from blinking. I was convinced the noise we could hear from near the fuse box area was actually coming from underneath his seat and the lack of results from removing the fuses only enhanced this theory. Again, I did some more research and discovered that it might be something to do with the charger converter or something like that. Anyway, the charger was located underneath the drivers seat so I decided to take a look and see if there was a switch so I could turn it off and restart it. However, there didn’t seem to be one at all so I was puzzled as to how to disconnect it. There was a lever type switch that you could turn 45 degrees so I turned that but nothing happened. I saw that there were some cables attached to one end only but we decided not to mess with them just in case it caused any more problems . And so we had to go to sleep that night with the sound of a clock ticking, which I absolutely can’t stand and a noise like a grasshopper chirping away all night!! We couldn’t have any lights on either but we were lucky enough to have bought a battery operated light with us. That night my husband slept in our daughters bed and unfortunately it started to rain quite heavily. We should have re-taped the window beforehand but with everything else going on we never got around to it and so my poor husband was in for a sleepless night as the dreaded drip started dripping again.
K.E.E.N Explorers 