Saturday November 3, Le Quesnoy

Travelling in a motor home does have its ups and downs, and this morning we had a bit of a hiccup. With a frost overnight, I snuck out of bed this morning, put the gas heater on and climbed back into bed to wait until it warmed up. A bit later on we heard some very weird noises and soon realised that we had an issue. Turns out that one of the hoses distributing the heat to the vents had come adrift and some of the heat was going directly into the cupboard and not out the vents, end result was that it burst a water hose.

Ian set to with his tool box and firstly had to remove one of the cupboards to get into the boiler. Motorhomes are very compact and there is not that much room to do these sort of jobs….and not the best things for backs!!!  Finally, he found the burst hose and was able to repair it with a new hose clip….his tool box contains so many bits and pieces that he tells me might come in handy one day….and today I was very happy that he had them! Sat back for a very late breakfast feeling quite relieved that we were over the drama …. Until we discovered that the water heater wouldn’t work, which means no hot water for showers. Spent ages googling for solutions without any luck. A very nice French “neighbour” tried to help and called a friend who knew about these things. End result, it is Kaput!!!

Opening the back garage door a bit later, we discovered that the water that was being pumped out of the boiler ended up in there, so everything had to get pulled out, put the van up on wedges, opened up the drain hole and let it all empty out.

So, all the plans of spending time back in Le Quesnoy today went out the window. We did meet a couple from Taranaki who are in a rental camper and staying in this campground. Jim’s grandfather was at Le Quesnoy and survived and returned for the 50^th anniversary, so he is representing him and following in his footsteps.

Tomorrow we will go into town for the memorial service but have decided to leave in the afternoon and drive to the motor home repair garage near Conny and Hitten’s in Dusseldorf (about three hours away), to overnight there and be ready there when they open at 8am, and hopefully they will be able to fit us in to repair it.

On a positive note, we are staying in a campground and were able to use their facilities to have a shower tonight. And no photographs today…surprise, surprise, but a photo taken in a shop window in Ypres.