| ******************** | |
| Route | Gorran – Southampton, UK |
| Route Details |  |
| Overnight stop | Friends house |
| Overnight Costs | £0 |
| Diesel / litre | £1.239 (Morrisons) |
| Exchange rate | – |
| ******************** |
Day 17
Grey and cloudy with patches of blue, interspersed with very swift glimpses of the sun quickly engulfed again by scudding clouds, is the scene that greeted us on Sunday morning.
After a fabulous 8 days together, the time to say goodbye to Beth & Lee had arrived. They had packed up the trailer so all that was left for the gorgeous Mr T and Lee to do, was to hitch it up to their car and wave them a fond farewell with promises from Beth to be collecting a boxful of tent tat, bunting and fairy lights for us to hang on the awning. Noooooooooooooo! 
And then it was time for us to batten down Kaya’s hatches and make our way to Southampton for our next stopover to see our friends Rob & Clare.
A quick stop in Teignmouth because I STILL HAVEN’T HAD MY CRAB SANDWICH (yes, I know that caps are considered shouting, but I’m miffed!)!!! Sadly, it was to remain elusive *expletive* as we couldn’t get close enough to the shop to buy one even after a 20 minute drive around impossibly narrow streets and double park cars. We opted instead for the Morrisons car park and a spot of shopping.
*sulking*
Time to head off to Southampton and with a clear run and moderate Sunday traffic we made good time. Pop into Morrisons in Southampton for a quick fuel up and that’s when it happened!!! Duh, duh duuuuuuuuh (dramatic piano playing)
As we were slowly making our way down a very steep hill back to Rob’s house, the brake light signifying a possible brake failure ominously glowed in the bottom right corner of the dashboard.
“Doll, I think we may have a problem…”, calmly from the gorgeous Mr T aka “The King of Understatements”.
And in the inimitable fashion of true adventurers, we parked Kaya up, left the brakes to cool overnight and went out for some glorious English Tapas and a couple of glasses of wine at Four London Road pub.
Well, what else could we do on a Sunday night?
Day 18
It was time to address the elephant in the room, Kaya’s brakes, as the gorgeous Mr T crawled underneath for a quick squizz. Yup, rear pads perfectly fine, front pads down to almost nothing. That’s a surprise because he’d checked them in May before we went to France for 2 weeks. On reflection, we realised that we have driven a lot of mountains and hills in the interim. Problem #2
Problem #1 that happened before we left was a leaking fresh water tank that the gorgeous Mr T fixed with the help of the folks from The Bailey Motorhome Owners Group on Facebook – a fantastic source of help and advice. Just waiting for Problem #3 to arrive and then we can just get on with things without the thought hanging over our heads…….
A bit of frantic phoning around as we assessed options of postponing tomorrow’s ferry crossing with no-one able to either lift a 4t vehicle or didn’t have any available time. Finally after phoning a local motorhome workshop, we were directed to Adams Morey, a DAF truck workshop that also happened to service motorhomes. After a heartfelt plea to help us to carry on with our trip, they took pity on us and promised to squeeze us in around lunchtime. So off we zoomed (at a careful 30mph!) after swift goodbyes and made our way down to Portsmouth. Fabulous people, caring customer service and a comfortable 45 minutes after they started the job, Kaya had new shoes at a very reasonable price ….although it bit deeply into our Belgian Beer Fund.
This little incident, although very stressful trying to resolve it, left us feeling grateful. The timing could not have been better: at least it happened at home, at least it happened before we set off, at least someone was able to help us with such good grace at such short notice, at least they didn’t rip us off (as captive audience), at least there was no damage to Kaya and at the very least we were all safe to continue our adventure.
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