It's back....

We flew Ryanair to Girona, which Ryanair call Gerona (Barcelona) presumably on the same basis as Stansted is called London, i.e. it's only an hour away on the bus! We stayed overnight in the Novotel near the airport. Next day we got a taxi to the place where it was supposed to be. On the way there we explained our little mishap to the driver who was almost preedictable in his blaming of the eastern european "immigrants" who now frequent Barcelona. Given that the guy we spoke to on the phone who claimed to have van gave me an eastern european name, he could have been correct, but he did seem a bit of a Daily Mail kind of guy. Still he got us there.

After parting with some few hundred Euros (for storage) we were taken to an outlying storage yard where recovered vehicles lay around in abundance many of them having been recovered from accidents, clearly. There she was, in pretty much the same condition as when we lost her - except for the fridge. They hadn't cleaned it out and the stuff inside it had more or less liquidised in the warm weather. We cleaned it out with disinfectant (and much gagging), then tidied up inside. They had pulled everything out of the lockers and left everything that they didn't want lying around on the floor. We gleaned some information from what they took:

• the guy must have been about my size (all my clothes were gone) but with different sized feet (socks and shoes were left on the floor).
• his woman must have been bigger than Carol (almost all her stuff was left behind except for some stuff which was loose fitting or which would stretch, like track suits).
• he was obviously inclined to athleticism (my bike was gone) whilst she clearly wasn't (Carol's bike, the better of the two by far, was still there).
• they were a bit choosy about wine (the open bottle was untouched whilst an unoped one had been consumed).

I was surprised by the lack of damage to any point of entry. All the doors were fine and also the windows. I commented on this to the guy in charge at the depot. "Ah", he said, "professionals would not need to damage it, they would use an electronic device." I asked how they would do that and he told me "they wait round the corner whilst you are leaving, then train a device on you whilst you press the "bleeper". The device picks up the frequency and the coding from the bleeper so they can reproduce them after you have gone." He said they would probably have used a low loader to take it away after they had opened it, and indeed the mileage on the clock did seem to be pretty much what I remembered it to be before we left it. I probably helped them by making sure the door was locked by closing it, then opening it and closing it again. You learn a little more each day....

After we had cleaned up we left, in the early afternoon, and went back to Cadaqués which was the last place we had stayed at before we went to Barcelona (a nice fenced, monitored public parking area).  The weather was once again fine and the little town was still very attractive. Next day we headed north again to France, stopping only at a supermarket to pick up a case of Cava, which was a few pence cheaper than it would have been here!

In France we went through (or actually round) Toulouse and on to the west coast where we headed north. We kept moving up the coast and in a couple of days or so we had made it into Brittany, which was where we wanted to look around. We spent the next few days moving slowly eastwards throuh Brittany and into Nomandy (getting lost only a few times and then mainly because the roads were suddenly closed in the middle of nowhere). We spent a pleasant morning at Mont St Michel.

We caught our sailing from Dunkirk and then we were back. The van went to Webbs so they could quote us for getting it back up to scratch (there wasn't much damage that wouldn't be covered by a good valeting, but we needed a price to replace all the electronic stuff and also the fridge, which still remains unusable in spite of several attempts to render it odourless). We have that estimate and now we need to discuss it with the insurance company, who have so far not budged on the "spare keys in the van" issue and the Omsbudsman hasn't come back on it. All will come out in the wash, eventually, I feel sure. I took the van down to Brockenhurst where I was looking after the hotel for a long weekend whilst Robin was gallivanting off the the USA to see the Indianapolis 500. More about that later.

And suddenly it's all happening....

Our agent (Bob) asked for a ridiculous amount of money and then suddenly the van was ready for us to collect! Actually, it had been released by the Police on April 13 but somehow he didn't know about it for a week then had to "organise things" (God alone knows quite what, but mainly, I suspect, our money) then he told us about it. So we can go and pick it up, which we are doing next week.

We fly to Girona (which is where it is) by the dreaded Ryanair on Monday night, stay overnight at the Novotel (well, it's handily close to the airport and by that time we will be pretty well knackered), pick it up and, hopefully, clean it up a bit then drive it away from that part of the world, never to return! At least, that's how I feel about it at the moment.

I must remember to phone the storage place tomorrow to let them know we are coming. They apparently need 24 hours notice (again, not sure quite why they should but I suppose it lets them check the batteries, etc) before we turn up!

At last some information on the van....

After going on a bit to the agent guy and finally letting my dear wife have a go at him, we got the promised report on the condition of the motorhome. Or actually, we got a bunch of pictures starting from the outside and going inside.

These show that there is a surprising amount left of it. Outside looks absolutely fine, no huge scratches or dents or anything, our LPG system is still intact and there are still some things in the lockers like our comfortable folding chairs (the not-so comfy ones seem to have gone, though!). Inside is a bit messy, a bit messier even than it was when they nicked it. However, there are large amounts of stuff left inside, though it looks like all the "boys toys" stuff has all gone (satellite TV stuff, computers stuff, men's clothes, men's bike). A lot of Carol's clothes still seem to be there, as is all her coursework which she has been rigorously replacing! Some pictures from the collection:

Outside front

My LPG system wot I installed

Carol's clothes, well some of them

Ah, yes, they don't seem to have emptied the fridge...

So it's not as bad as it might have been (I have spared you some of the more messy clutter) and now we need to get over there, hopefully to pick it up or at least to clear it out. Let you know more when we do.

Further developments (or actually, not....)

It's difficult to believe how long it has been since I last posted, things have been hectic on a number of fronts, although unfortunately not much has happened on the motorhome one. Our complaint to the Insurance Omsbudsman has been sent but no response so far. My solicitor says that's a positive sign - if they are going to reject the complaint they usually do it quite quickly.

We did manage to recover our keys and documents from Allianz (who had passed them on to their recovery people even though they had declined to pay out!) and got them sent to the recovery agents who have duly passed them on to their people in Spain. And that's about it so far, unfortunately. Still no word from Spain, they can't look at it until they have established in Court that they are allowed to do so. With the Spanish legal system, that could take months....

Netty has decided to get married in September in Villefranche, so we will be there then and maybe we will be able to go on down to Spain after the wedding and recover the darn thing! The agents say it will have to be driven back because it's too big to come on a transporter, at least any that they know of. Which is fine if it's drivable; we would actually be able to finish the holiday which never was! We may have to stay in hotels on the way back if it's not usable of course.

Curioser & curioser

Well, it's been awhile since the last posting. At that time, I fully expected it to be the last significant one but things don't go the way you expect so much, these days. Anyway there have been further developments.

The first one was that the insurance company, Allianz, decided that as we had left some keys in the van we had negated our insurance so they declined to pay out. We are of course taking legal advice and will keep you posted. So that is one development which will run for a bit - actually for a long time if my experience of the legal system is anything to go by....

The second, and probably more positive, development is that early this week Allianz passed on to us the information that the van had been recovered. They obviously weren't too interested since they have declined our claim so they passed on to us to deal with ourselves. We know little more than that at the moment. We aren't even sure yet that what has been recovered is actually our van- I suppose it could be something else that they have put our plates onto, but we are hoping that it is ours and that it isn't going to be in a terrible state. If it's drivable we will probably go to Spain and pick it up and drive it back again. If it is in bad shape we'll get it shipped back on a recovery truck!

More when I know it myself....

The rather odd STOP wi-fi system - and other tales

I said I'd tell you about this strange wifi system, so I will. We came across it in the first place we stopped at in France. This was somewhere on what used to be the N15 between Boulogne and Paris, past Abbeville. We went that way to avoid paying the huge tolls which they charge if you use the major motorways like the A14. As I recall it, it was called something like Sinfontaine. Serifontaine, that's the one. (Just found it using Goole Maps.)

It's a secluded motorhome site, up a hill outside the village. You can see it from quite a long way away but finding the entrance is quite tricky. There were a few people already there, though most of the vans seemed to be empty. The owner turned up shortly before it got dark, collected his €7 fee (which included potable water, hot showers, tanks emptying facilities and electricity hook-up - maybe the best value for a private site in France) and said did we want to use the free wifi? I confidently said yes, of course. He said use the one called STOP, it's the one installed at the site and it's free.

It really is, too. However, when you connect to it you have to complete an online form and submit that. Then, in order to actually use STOP to connect up to the internet, you have to open the email which they send you and click on the link. Sounds easy and quite security-conscious, but you may have already spotted the big issue. That's right, you can't access your emails until you are connected to the internet and you can't connect to the internet until you have accessed your emails and found this flaming link.

You can, then, either

• go to an Internet cafe which could be several miles away and buy some time there, then open your emails and click on the link, or
• do what I did and phone and get someone at the shop in the UK to go online and open my email and click on the link for me ( I was pretty sure there was nothing else incriminating in there for them to see).

It worked - and I was then able to connect up and deal with the rest of my emails and pay a few bills online. Seems to me they hadn't really thought that one through. Or maybe they don't actually care. Anyway, I can now apparently use this STOP wifi (which they claim is operating throughout France though I never came across another one) until the end of this year, should I want to.

Talking about good value, here is a real corker. Going down the N7 from Lyon towards Avignon and Orange (no not the phone, the town, though they are probably associated) and after you have been past interesting places like Rousillon, where they do that nice red wine, you go through Valence, or more accurately you go round it. Heading on down, you go through Saulce and on towards Les Reys de Saulce (which is a place which you could easily miss if you blink, Carol described it as a one donkey town which may have been a bit perjorative to donkeys, but again we digress...). Anyway between the two, on the left as you go south, is a transport caff the name of which now escapes me but it has an absolutely huge lorry park which, amazingly, manages to fill right up at night and a big Routiers sign (not a nice twee circular "Les Routiers" sign but a big thing in neon tubes). If you are ever going that way stop there for dinner or, as we did, dinner and an overnight stop in the lorry park. It has to be the best value anywhere in France. Choice of umpteen starters from a buffet, choice between four or more main courses and also a dessert. Plus all the wine you can drink up to one bottle, though nobody does, of course, they are drivers. I think the night cost us about €30 altogether, including coffees and a really brilliant shower each next morning after the truckers had all gone their separate ways.

You heard about it here, first.

Home thoughts of Abroad...

So it all ended in tears, really. Since we have got back, we find that nearly everybody has a disaster tale about Barcelona - pity we didn't know about them before we went there, really! We might not have been so keen to leave the van unattended whilst we did our guided tour of the Old City.

I did say I would include a few pictures taken on the (rather forshortened) trip and now that I have managed to get back to the original Blogger posting screen, I will do that! (If you go straight to Blogger from the right hand click in IE, you go to a posting screen which doesn't give you the option of doing this.) So here are  a couple of pictures from when we stopped (unofficially) in Villefranche, near Nice. As you can see, we were right inside the Citadel and with those walls around us, we felt very safe even though we were parked in a bus park. As there were no buses arriving during mid-December, we didn't think anyone would mind much and so it transpired. The Gendarmerie drove past a few times and you could see them thinking about whether they should say anything, but in the end they decided we weren't doing any harm and left us to it.

Villefranche, with the sun shining and everything

As I mentioned in the lost blog, we wandered around picking up various offspring then became marooned in a Shopping Centre car park whilst wating for the appalling weather to relent enough to get us up to Meribel.

Nord-something Commercial Centre, Chambery

These are pictures show how cold it got, even down in Chambery. We had managed to find a cover for inside the windscreen and the cab windows, thank God, or I'm sure we would have frozen to death inside. This in spite of the super efficient gas fired hot air heating which was brilliant. Although we survived OK, we knew it was time to move on when the security men at the doors to the shopping centre started addressing us by name!

So, we made it to Meribel, which was just like a picture postcard. It had been -20 degrees the previous night, so the snow was well and truly set in place. Here are a couple of photos of the place. Pretty, isn't it? My eldest son Stuart and his partner Louise are working a season there, running a chalet.

More next time, especially the wonderful tale of the free wi-fi which unfortunately needs you to be connected before it will connect you. Can this only be a French thing?