Explore europe in a campervan

We had expected to spend most of our time at Les Prodains car park by the gondola up to Avoriaz. We knew it was secluded enough there to use the generator and on our favourite ‘home’ run we can board right down to the car park within about 20 metres of the van. However, there’s no chance we could get internet there – even the phone signal is poor, and with the snowy state of the roads we haven’t even dared drive up there for a day’s boarding.

So we’re making the sports centre car park home for now – sounds glamorous doesn’t it! But here we’re far enough from any homes or chalets that using the generator won’t disturb anyone and we’ve got a legitimate, public internet connection. The ‘SuperMorzine’ gondola goes up to Avoriaz from directly above the car park here and we’re within a short walk from the town, the supermarket and, importantly, a public toilet! Can you imagine anywhere in the uk where you could have this kind of set-up and not incur the wrath of the locals and the police?!

We’re on another day off from boarding today – to give our legs a rest and avoiding another ‘whiteout’ on the mountain. The snow still keeps coming, but in smaller quantities now; the roads are starting to get slushy – much more preferable for driving so we may even move the van one day soon and take a trip to the bigger Chamion supermarket in St Jean d’Aulps a couple of miles away.

Yesterday we were shocked to see our neighbour’s large ‘A’ Class motorhome (an A class is one totally coachbuilt incorporating the driving area so you can’t see the original van’s cab) being hauled onto a recovery truck and driven away. We had assumed they were here by choice and having a lovely time like us, but maybe they were just stuck! It was quite impressive to see the truck haul the huge vehicle up, despite the snowy road surface. And made us think about running the engine regularly and taking the handbrake off to avoid any chance of getting stuck ourselves.

Last night, when we walked to the supermarket we were surprised to see a huge Skoda truck parked in the middle of the car park. Skoda seem to be all over the town this weekend and this demo was their rally drivers ‘drifting’ in a tight circuit around the truck. I’ve seen drifting on television but ever up close and the control they had while skidding sideways in a tight space was amazing.

Just as I finished writing this jolly little post our treasured Kipor generator stopped working – flashing ‘overload’ just like it did when it originally failed us in Tarifa last year. On starting it again the ‘overload’ indicator was still on so Simon packed it up to look at later, when he’d finished the work he was doing (or when his laptop ran out of power). A hour later and the heating stopped working – 3 flashes here indicating low voltage. This meant we had run the leisure battery down to 10 volts which is completely discharged and can affect the future performance of the battery!

How quickly things can change. So now we’re packing up to go for a cautious drive, which will give the leisure battery a reasonable charge, so we at least have some light. Then we’ll be able to look at the generator and probably take it to pieces again while seriously considering purchasing a Honda!

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 14th, 2009 at 8:19 pm and is filed under Diary, Campervan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.