Actually finding out what our Motorhome tyre pressure is supposed to be is difficult in itself and seems to be a closely guarded secret.  Our previous Motorhome was the same and I’m sure yours is no different.  The Peugeot handbook gives you the tyre pressures but of course these are for the Boxer van and the Autocruise Starseeker handbook doesn’t mention it.  I have discovered though from talking to my dealer that they should be 60psi; now that wasn’t difficult was it; well yes actually it was.

That actually turned out to be the easy part after all.  The hard part is keeping them inflated and we all know that over or under inflated tyres wear more and can cause handling problems so it’s in all our best interests to get it right.

Now the fun starts.

I started off with an electric automatic pump that you plug into the lighter socket and off you go.  Well actually no you don’t because at 60psi the gauge is not accurate, the thing kept stopping for no reason and in the end I decided it couldn’t hack it so I’d go for a foot pump.

OK, so for those of you that have used one of these foot pumps you’ll know that they are extremely unstable and the frame tends to twist if they’re not on very level ground and then the thing collapses from under your foot.  Rubbish.  I tried another and another but with the same result.  You can stop laughing now thanks.

What can I do?  Oh I know, you’re not using the Motorhome every day so the tyres will stay at the right pressure for longer so no need to worry.  Good one that but not quite right.  It’s utterly amazing that in the face of adversity we can convince ourselves of anything.  By the way, waiting for the habitation check once a year is no good either although I did try to convince myself of that one as well.  Insane logic abounds when you’re desperate.

You’ll be pleased to know that I have finally cracked it, I’ve bought a beast.  The king of all foot pumps. The foot pump manna from heaven.  The real McCoy.  A double barrelled shotgun of a foot pump.

Its a Michelin Twin Barrel Footpump that has some great qualities:

• The gauge is accurate up to 100psi; it certainly is up to 60psi at any rate

• The hose is longer than normal so gives a better reach

• The twin barrel pumps would pump up an air balloon

• The stability because of it’s wide spread and bigger feet is amazing

• Your foot rests assuredly on the plate and you feel like you can pump forever

I love it.

If any of you need one of these beasts then get into Halfords as quickly as you can because they are reduced from £34.99 to £19.76 and worth every penny.

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The first SatNav I had was a Navman that worked really well for around 3 years but because it was not supported by Vista I couldn’t synchronize it with my laptop plus Navman stopped issuing map and software updates for it.  The lack of map updates was the biggest issue and the one that caused me to search for another SatNav; one that I would be able to update, connect to Vista and one that had a great deal of support from the manufacturer.

I’m a bit anal about these things and treat buying something like this as a huge project so I read everything I can about them, produce my SatNav facility wish list, narrow down to my top 3, think again and then decide.  It’s a real big deal for me but it usually means that I get what I want.

So it was that in June 2008 I bought a TomTom GO730 SatNav together with a remote control and I’ve been very happy ever since.

With the season just about to kick off in earnest I thought it would be a good idea to write a post about these mysterious devices that we all call SatNavs in order to help anyone who’s thinking of buying one.

What is a SatNav : It’s a device that will get you from A to B in either the quickest time possible or the shortest distance which isn’t usually the shortest time.

What isn’t a SatNav : It’s not a mind reader nor a visionary nor has it any sense of what a Motorhome is.

Whilst a SatNav can be a real boon it can be a real nightmare as well and I’m sure you’ve all heard of the tales of woe caused by SatNavs directing motorists down dead ends, the wrong way up a one way road, the wrong town with the same name and in the extreme over a cliff – not sure if this last one’s true but I certainly read it somewhere.  My own personal experience of the wrongdoings and rightdoings of a SatNav are plenty and I’ll share a few with you now:

• We were staying at Norcenni Girasole Club in Italy just outside of Florence and had been on a day visit to Sam Gimignano when on the return journey the SatNav directed us down a road through Chianti country that looked fine and I thought would be very pleasant with lots of good views of country life.  It was just that for a while and then the tarmac stopped and the road became a black cindery slippery dusty thing that I thought would change back just as rapidly.  But no, it didn’t, and to make matters infinitely worse suddenly there was a hill and a bend and I didn’t make it to the top.  The front wheels were spinning and the more I tried to get going the more we slipped towards the edge of the road which had a drop of around 4 feet, enough to frighten the life out of me.  I kept having visions of toppling over the edge.  Some very friendly Swiss people stopped to help and rang a farmer to see if he would tow us off with his tractor but he was out in his field – how unfair – but did say that hat he would come along later.  The friendly Swiss family had to go but also said they would be back later.  Hey I thought, I’ve seen this stuff in the movies, just put a carpet under your tyres and you’ll be off in no time; well no, that doesn’t work.  In the end I reversed back down the hill with my wheels teetering on the edge and just hoping that everything held, which it did.  We managed to turn around at the bottom of the hill and went back the way we came.  I then reprogrammed the SatNav to use the motorways and we went the long way back.  We got back just in time to get a table in the site restaurant thank goodness, I needed a drink!

• Another cracker, but not as scary, was on the way to Florence we were driving on the ring road around Milan and whilst going around a roundabout the SatNav told me to take the right hand lane.  Sounds easy but there were three lanes to choose from and for some mysterious reason I took the centre exit and drove down into the centre of Milan and onto a road that looked just like a car park.  The SatNav recalculated a route and directed me along a couple of roads that took an eternity to travel down due to the excess of traffic, not to mention scooters, cars and lorries joining the road from what seemed like everywhere and then back up onto the ring road.  Well done SatNav.  The one piece of advice I would give to anyone driving a Motorhome down one of these Italian nightmare roads is to just move gradually along as traffic allows and not to worry about what anyone else is doing, they will avoid you.

• Another thing to be very wary of is if you miss a turning for some reason.  The SatNav will then want to reroute you back on track but in order to do this it will then send you down the first available road and this may not be suitable for a Motorhome.  Generally the roads we get directed down are fine but when this happens the SatNav seems to lose all reason and becomes obsessed with getting us back on track regardless, so it might be prudent to wait until you know you are being directed down a decent road before you turn off.   This is of course much easier in the UK than in Europe and as I’ve said on a previous post the last 5 miles of any journey is the scary part.  Always follow the site directions when you get to this point.

The SatNav I use is a TomTom GO730 and it’s quite brilliant.  It’s a touch screen device but I use the remote control mostly because I hate fingerprints on screens of any kind.  You have a choice of computer generated voices, male & female UK and US, but I use the UK female, it just seems to sound kinder.  You can also download recorded voices of all kinds, some for free and some you have to pay for and there are thousands of POI’s (points of interest) that are available.  Some of the best ones that I use are location directions of the Camping and Caravanning Club sites, the Caravan Club sites, Camping Car Aires positions and Motorway Services and low bridge locations that give you advance warnings as you approach them.

It’s extremely important to keep your SatNav updated both with the operating software and with maps and TomTom are excellent at providing these.  You do have to purchase the map updates but these are essential if you want to feel secure whilst on route especially as the TomTom GO730 has full mapping for the UK and Europe.  There are also free updates (Map Share) that you can download and these are supplied by other users who might spot a map change whilst driving on a particular route, these come thick and fast and are very useful.  There are also speed camera locations for the UK and Europe but have a look at my Guide to Driving in France for information regarding this.

The beauty of the TomTom GO730 is that you can plan a route say from Leeds to Nice in France and it will calculate one continuous route whereas other SatNavs load maps on a country by country basis.

The TomTom GO730 also gives you the option of connecting an ipod if you use one and playing this through your Motorhome radio speakers.  The actual road directions come through an internal speaker that is very good and you can control the volume of this very easily.  If you’re playing your music at the time when the SatNav wants to give you directions then it cuts this sound off, speaks the direction through the internal speaker and then switches the ipod sound back on; neat.

The choices of SatNav are many as with anything you buy nowadays and it is of course a personal choice.

In January 2009 MMM ran an article on SatNavs and recommended the TomTom or Garmin as the best 2 to choose from with the particular model as a personal choice although the writer of the article recommended the TomTom as the number one choice because of ease of use.

In February 2009 the Caravan Club did a comparison of SatNavs and again recommended the TomTom.

My recommendation would be the TomTom GO730 for ease of use, excellent mapping, great facilities and the fact that it has never got me into trouble whilst driving my Motorhome.

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If you’ve never used Vicarious Books before then you should give them a try.  They have a fantastic selection of books for Motorhome users and the one they are probably best known for is ” All the Aires France “. This is now in it’s second edition and is an excellent book that every Motorhome owner should have and one that we have found invaluable when travelling through France.  We have a copy of the first edition so this one will be even better I’m sure.

Some of the key points of this book are;

• It features 1300 inspected and photographed Aires and a further 300 text only listings. This is the biggest and best French Aires guide in any language.

• All the Aires France has been researched and published by Vicarious Books, it is not a translation of someone else’s work.

• All the inspected French Aires have colour photos, clear directions with road names, numbers and postcodes. GPS co-ordinates were taken onsite. Service points and parking areas are described. To assist your choice there are comments about desirability and local amenities; how far from town, shops and restaurants, green spaces for exercising dogs and children, opportunities for fishing, walking, cycling, and local places of interest.

The new Sea View Camping book is a unique guide that describes 300 sea view campsites around Great Britain and some of the key points of this book are;.

• The book describes campsites perched on the edge of fantastic Jurassic cliff tops, some right on deserted sandy beaches surrounded by hundreds of acres of dunes and others with every convenience a family could desire. If you love being by the sea then this is the campsite guide for you.

• Because everybody has different requirements all the sea view campsites and parks around mainland Great Britain have been listed in this guide. Whether they are small five pitch sites, 28 day camping fields or large holiday parks and everything in between they’re in the campsite guide. That way you can choose the right campsite for you.

• To help you make informed choices, a photo of the sea view from each inspected campsite is included. Descriptions are given about the sites, their facilities and amenities, especially if beach access is possible. In addition the location of the nearest pub, shop, beach and slipway is provided to further enhance your choice.

I would very much recommend you have a look at Vicarious Books and see for yourselves just what a good selection for Motorhomes they do have, prices are very reasonable, often are discounted and postage is free.  You can buy either online, by phone or in person if you visit their stand at any of the shows.  If you would like to have a look online then click any of the links in this post and they’ll take you there.

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Born in Blackburn in 1907, Alfred Wainwright left school at the age of 13. A holiday at the age of 23 kindled a life-long love affair with the Lake District. Following a move to Kendal in 1941 he began to devote every spare moment he had to researching and compiling the original seven Pictorial Guides. He described these as his ‘love letters’ to the Lakeland Fells and at the end of the first, The Eastern Fells, he wrote about what the mountains had come to mean to him:

“I suppose it might be said, to add impressiveness to the whole thing, that this book has been twenty years in the making, for it is so long, and more, since I first came from a smoky mill-town (forgive me, Blackburn!) and beheld, from Orrest Head, a scene of great beauty, a fascinating paradise, Lakeland’s mountains and trees and water. That was the first time I had looked upon beauty, or imagined it, even. Afterwards I went often, whenever I could, and always my eyes were lifted to the hills. I was to find then, and it has been so ever since, a spiritual and physical satisfaction in climbing mountains — and a tranquil mind upon reaching their summits, as though I had escaped from the disappointments and unkindnesses of life and emerged above them into a new world, a better world. In due course I came to live within sight of the hills, and I was well content. If I could not be climbing, I was happy to sit idly and dream of them, serenely. Then came a restlessness and the feeling that it was not enough to take their gifts and do nothing in return. I must dedicate something of myself, the best part of me, to them. I started to write about them, and to draw pictures of them. Doing these things, I found they were still giving and I still receiving, for a great pleasure filled me when I was so engaged — I had found a new way of escape to them and from all else less worth while. Thus it comes about that I have written this book. Not for material gain, welcome though that would be (you see I have not escaped entirely!); not for the benefit of my contemporaries, though if it brings them also to the hills I shall be well pleased; certainly not for posterity, about which I can work up no enthusiasm at all. No, this book has been written, carefully and with infinite patience, for my own pleasure and because it has seemed to bring the hills to my own fireside. If it has merit, it is because the hills have merit.” (Quote courtesy of Amazon.)

Between 1952 and 1966, Alfred Wainwright combed 214 Lake District summits to devise seven unique Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells with all the instructions carefully printed in long-hand and the topography superbly hand-drawn.

I watched the BBC program called “Wainwright Walks” last  summer with Julia Bradbury doing the walking.  Usually I don’t find these programs very interesting, even though I do a lot of walking, but the views were astonishing and Julia Bradbury’s enthusiasm combined with the voice of Alfred Wainwright, provided by Nik Wood-Jones, bowled me over.

Now we can all explore some of the Lakeland’s finest fells in the company of the one and only Alfred Wainwright with a handy volume of eight walks in a spiral bound book containing original Wainwright text and maps, plus lots of practical information and including introductions to each walk by Eric Robson.  The best bit though is a free CD with a commentary narrated by Nik Wood-Jones that you can download onto your iPod.  The fells included in this volume are Catbells, Coniston Old Man, Haystacks, Helm Crag, Latrigg, Nab Scar, Orrest Head and Place Fell.

Each fell walk has a file size of about 5Meg and as an example of how it works this is how the Helm Crag walk comes across;

• The route has been broken down into 10 short instructions of no more than a paragraph in length. You listen to these and then follow them. They include reference points you will see on the actual walk although you should take the spiral bound book with you as a reference and a map if you are unfamiliar with the area. You must make all the necessary precautions given at the start of the podcast.
• After some of the formal instructions, there will follow a reading of an actual Wainwright observation as it appears in the book.
• When you hear the sound footsteps this is the cue to pause your iPod and walk to the next landmark that “Wainwright” has instructed.

The instructions contained in the podcast last about 15 mins but the actual walk is around 1.5 miles and has an ascent of 1100ft and will probably take a good 2 hours.  The podcast follows this format:

• From the beginning: Some safety advice
• Instruction 1: START OF THE WALK
• Instruction 2: AT THE SIGN FOR BUTHARLYP HOWE
• Instruction 3: AT THE BRIDGE OPPOSITE OAK LODGE B&B
• Instruction 4: AT LITTLE PARROCK HOUSE
• Instruction 5: AT THE YELLOW SIGN FOR HELM CRAG
• Instruction 6: AT THE WOODEN, FENCED PLATFORM
• Instruction 7: AT THE UNSPECIFIED VIEWPOINT
• Instruction 8: FROM THE FIRST BIG CAIRN
• Instruction 9: FROM THE VIEWPOINT
• Instruction 10: FROM THE LION

You can buy Wainwright The Podcasts from all good bookshops and I suggest that it’s something that needs to sit dormant in the Motorhome, ready for when you decide to visit the Lake District.  Better to have it sat in the cupboard for a while rather that get there and realise you’ve forgotten to buy it, or worse still that you’ve bought it but left it at home; one of my tricks that one.

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