Monday, August 4, 2003 (M3 motorway - England)
Still got three tires left. Showing of the
brick.
Visiting various family members across the land. Fun on the beach with the kids.
Now was not the best time to join a road recovery service.
Day 145. A blown tire on the campervan has left
me with a little time on my hands to catch up on some of the events of the past
few days.
Our first priority once
arriving in England was to show off our new campervan to the family. We
nicknamed the van the ‘brick’ after its aerodynamic characteristics.
We spent the past few days organising ourselves and visiting as many family
members as we could. Jacqueline is on the Isle of White with her two youngest.
Accordingly, we spent a night with John & Lisa this time around as well as a
night in our usual cupboard under the stairs at Jacqueline’s house in the
company of Jenny-Lee. We also visited Mum & Dad. Mum is still doing
relatively well although she is still very quickly out of breath. We’ve
been exploring the possibility of taking them both to Ireland in the campervan.
This would fulfil a lifelong dream for Mum but will probably be something for
next year.
We left Essex and headed
down to Hampshire to visit Paul, Hazel and their kids as well as Annie, Lee
& their kids. After enjoying a couple of hours with Hazel and the girls, we
saw Paul’s new apartment for the first time and spent a night there. I
always enjoy spending time with Paul and this time was no exception. As a treat
for Annie’s kids, he took them to the local supermarket for a
‘chocolate run’. The kids were each given a shopping trolley and
fifteen seconds to run up and down the chocolate isle to collect as much as they
could. Everything they put into their shopping trolleys within the fifteen
seconds, he bought for them. It was an absolute thrill for the kids and a whole
load of good fun. Annie’s fridge is now so full that opening its door
triggers an immediate avalanche of chocolate. They’ll all have zits and
pimples within a week.
We spent last
night at Annie’s house and today we all went down to the beach for a
couple of hours. The whole day was a lot of fun and everybody enjoyed themselves
immensely. We made it to within a few miles of Basingstoke on the way back
before the tire blew and sent everyone’s adrenaline levels through the
roof. Luckily we made it safely to the side of the road to inspect the damage.
Fortunately it was only a blown tire but, unfortunately, the jack that is in the
van doesn’t seem up to the task of lifting the van hire enough off the
road to get the demolished tire
off.
Shortly after we stopped to
repair the blown tire, a friendly police office stopped to assess the situation
and was good enough to provide us with the number for the AA to call for
assistance. As it turned out, however, the AA were little help to us and seemed
to keep throwing all kinds of obstacles in the way such as the van being too
heavy for me to become a member for their roadside assistance program. Luckily,
Louise’s future father-in-law would pass by our location on his way home
from work and stopped to pick up everyone (except me) to take home. I’m
now sitting here on the side of the road waiting for him to return with a bigger
jack. The AA was going to charge £50 for the membership as well as a
whopping £85 surcharge for already having broken down. I’ll not
reveal what I think of the AA just right now.
Posted: Mon - August 4, 2003 at 01:08 PM