Keith Gooden 0:00
In today’s episode of the Motorhome Matt Podcast…
Matt Sims 0:02
We hear horror stories of motorhome mishaps and how you can avoid them.
Keith Gooden 0:07
We’re back with another Alan Rogers campsite of the month.
Matt Sims 0:10
And we answer your questions on moving to the UK to travel in a motorhome, using a submersible water pump and motorhome finance.
Keith Gooden 0:24
Welcome to the Motorhome Matt Podcast. I’m Keith Gooden.
Matt Sims 0:27
And I’m Motorhome Matt.
Keith Gooden 0:28
Industry insights and expert advice for the world of motorhomes, caravans and campervans. And it’s brought to you by www.thatleisureshop.com and sponsored by Ripe.
Matt Sims 0:38
Remember to follow on your favourite podcast app, or if you’re watching on YouTube, click Subscribe and the little bell.It’s time for the Alan Rogers campsite of the month feature here on the Motorhome Matt Podcast. And as always, I’m joined by Rob from Alan Rogers. Rob, this month is a little bit different. We’re off to Germany. Tell us more.
Rob Fearn 1:02
So we’re going to talk about a few campsites this month. We’re going to talk about the Azur camping group, which is a group that’s been around since the 1960s but was recently acquired by the same camping organisation that own a number of campsites in Switzerland. So they own Jungfrau and Alpenblick in Switzerland. Really famous campsites. This group has acquired Azur as part of their growth strategy. But they’re also wanting to bring in a lot of sustainability initiatives. It takes their portfolio up to 12 sites, so there’s an economy of scale to this as well.
Matt Sims 1:35
They’ve now got over 1600 pitches across their sites and 72 rental units, I understand.
Rob Fearn 1:41
And since their acquisition, we’ve already seen that they’ve implemented a lot of those eco friendly strategies. So they’ve brought along regional sustainable products, waste separation, reusable bottles. Obviously, the Swiss are really hot on those environmental practices, and so they’re transferring that to the German market.
Matt Sims 2:00
And of course, Azur were your overall winner at your awards in 2024 which gives them a special place this month on this feature. So tell us a little bit about their sites in Germany.
Rob Fearn 2:12
So they’ve got five sites, camping Altmühltal, which is on the Altmühltal River, perfect for canoeing, cycling, nature walks. Friendly site with modern amenities, lots to do. And obviously this is a Bavarian site. So Bavarian food, Bavarian beer.
Matt Sims 2:27
Yeah, I’ve never really done Germany. It’s on the list, I have to say. And certainly these sites sound intriguing.
Rob Fearn 2:34
There are other sites. You’ve got Camping Regensburg. That’s more of a city type site. 15 minutes to the historic city center by bus or by bike. It’s on the Danube so it gives you that balance of, you know, countryside or city life. They’ve got one called camping Auwaldsee which is next to the Auwaldsee lake, sandy beaches for swimming, sunbathing and relaxation. But again, you’ve got that option to get to Ingolstadt, which is another historic Southern Germany city. So you’ve got the peaceful side, or the more urban activities. There’s Camping Wertheim, which is on the river Main, surrounded by rolling hills, forests, an outdoor pool, again, a beer garden, perfect for winding down after you’ve had a busy day sightseeing. And their final one is Sonnenbühl, which is in Swabian Alb. Ggorgeous caves, waterfalls, castles, traditional southern German castle on the hill and the forests, that sort of thing. Great for nature lovers and outdoor enthusiasts.
Matt Sims 3:39
Amazing. So the future looks really good for Azur camping group.as they start to take over more and more in Germany, I’m sure.
Rob Fearn 3:46
And lots to look out for in the future. I think they’ll carry on with those improvements over the coming years.
Matt Sims 3:52
Okay, so to find out more about all of these sites, in fact, all of Alan Rogers sites across Europe, head to mhmp.info/alanrogers.
Keith Gooden 4:02
Matt, you’ve got some insurance news this week.
Matt Sims 4:04
Yeah, hot off the press from Ripe, they’ve just increased their maximum cover value to £120,000.
Keith Gooden 4:11
That’s a decent jump up, isn’t it? Wasn’t it £100,000 before?
Matt Sims 4:15
Yeah, it was. We’ve had a few listeners get in touch saying they couldn’t get cover because their motorhome was worth more than that. So it’s brilliant to see Ripe listening to their customers and responding.
Keith Gooden 4:26
It makes a real difference, doesn’t it, when an insurer actually acts on feedback?
Matt Sims 4:31
I always say it, Ripe are open to feedback, and they act on it when it’s the right thing for their customers. This is spot on timing, too, with summer trips coming up and people sorting their insurance.
Keith Gooden 4:44
And there’s still that discount as well.
Matt Sims 4:47
Absolutely. Don’t forget, you can get an exclusive 15% off your premium, which will apply automatically if you click the link in the episode description. Definitely worth checking if you’ve been holding off because of the previous £100,000 limit.
Keith Gooden 5:03
It’s the Motorhome Matt Podcast. I’m Keith Gooden.
Matt Sims 5:06
And I’m Motorhome Matt.
Keith Gooden 5:07
It’s brought to you with www.thatleisureshop.com and sponsored by Ripe.
Matt Sims 5:13
So this week, we are heading back to the National Motorhome and Campervan Show, where I was on stage and invited to share some motorhome mishaps from my own experience. Now, I’ve been motorhoming for quite a long time. I’ve had an embarrassing number of them. I was joined by two other prolific YouTubers, Darran the Urban Motorhome. He’s been living in his motorhome for nine years, and Tash, half of Life Beyond Bricks, who has also been living and using a motorhome for many years, living in it with John, her husband and their cats. And we hear how it doesn’t always go to plan. So Darran, you had a bit of a mishap with some eggs. Let’s start there.
Darran 5:52
Ah, yeah. So you’ve got motorhomes that’ve got the open storage cupboards, so they’ve got doors on them. They’re above the kitchen, so just on the end, so you can probably have tea bags in there, I suppose. I put eggs. I don’t know why, but I’ve got eggs in there. Just stacked them all in there. That’ll be good. Went around the corner, and they all just hit the bathroom. They all just hit the shower, the toilet, bathroom floor, and I couldn’t stop for about 10 minutes. So then they soaked into the carpet. And that was just awful.
Matt Sims 6:31
Omelette motorhome.
Darran 6:32
It wasn’t egg-cellent.
Matt Sims 6:37
A great eggs-ample. And then Tash, you’ve got a similar story with your plate of food, I understand.
Tash 6:44
Yes, so I’d stored my food in an open locker. That seems like quite a sensible thing to do, but no, it wasn’t. And I think the worst part is it wasn’t actually our motorhome. So in our first year of full timing, we were part of the Erwin Hymer Blogger Program, so we were loaned a motorhome for a year to go and travel around and blog about it. And obviously feeling quite bougie with our new found freedom, we were like, gosh, we’ll have dinner up in bed tonight and do that. And it was one with an island bed. So of course, it had a partition between the bathroom and the bed, which means lots of little runners and grooves and things. And it was actually me that did it. I couldn’t blame John. And I was like, yeah, I’ll bring it over. And as I went like that, I tripped a whole freshly cooked plate of, like, pasta tomato sauce. It had all these lovely ingredients – absolutely everywhere. Up the bed, in the grooves, on the doors. And when we were cleaning it before we had to give it back, we were still finding, like, bits of food. And I was like, I’m never having pasta and tomato again. It was horrendous. That was not fun.
Matt Sims 7:44
I had a similar experience. I was about to sell a motorhome, and we were still working events at the time, and I thought, I’ll take the motorhome before I sell it, and sleep in that while I was going to the show. So I’d save money on the accommodation, because I’m a skinflint. And it was an Indian food show, and I made friends with this Indian chef. And she said, would you like some cooking oil? Because they had this amazing cooking oil. So they gave me big bags of it. I don’t know why it was in bags. Catering packs, basically. And so I thought, yeah, great. Thank you very much. And then she gave me big tubs of rice, literally, huge tubs of rice, like this, boiled rice. And so I put them all in the cupboard and I was packing the cupboards above the sink, you know, all the way around the head cupboards. Anyway, I didn’t think about this. It’s way too heavy. So I’m going home, and I’m driving out of the NEC and I went over a speed bump. And guess what happened? The entire cupboard fell off the wall! Rice everywhere. There was a lot of oil. And I’ve sold this motorhome. I’m giving it to the new owner the following day. Needless to say, that didn’t happen. I just thought, oh, the cupboard’s come off the wall. Let me fix it. It had to have new wall board. Had to have a new floor. It was a nightmare. I remembered that story listening to yours. So of course, all this food is great, but then it all ends up in the cassette, and it’s not long before we get there. So let’s go there now. So toilet disasters, we’ve all had them. Anyone here had a toilet disaster of some sort? Darran, let’s start with you. What happened to you?
Darran 9:35
The cassette’s not a nice place. And you know, it can smell a little bit every now and again. So I had one of the bottles, the blue liquid, and I bought five litre bottles. I opened it up, ready to pour some more in to stop that smell. And I dropped the lid. It went in the cassette. And this was a fresh five litre bottle of this blue stuff, and that blue stuff stains everything. And I thought, I’ve got, like, 30 seconds before I’ve dropped this or I kick it all out. So I was like, right, I’m going to go put that in a sink, and I still got stuff on me. It went everywhere. But then I didn’t have another bottle to hold five litres. I couldn’t just put it on the street. I had to find something. So yeah, the kitchen tongs got it. So there I am. I’m lucky it was in the COVID era, because I had a bottle of the anti bac gel. I just let it sit in that. Just awful. But I had to get that in. I had to put it back on, otherwise it would’ve just been like a Smurf explosion.
Tash 11:08
I think it’s fair to say that’s why we all use Solbio now.
Matt Sims 11:11
I still wouldn’t want to be drinking his toilet. I’d drink Solbio. I’ve done that. It’s disgusting. I had a funny story with a hire. I was doing a handover with a father of two little girls, and he said to the girls, you get in the motorhome and wait in there. So I go around the outside the motorhome with this dad, showing him what’s what, because there’s a lot to learn, isn’t there? And I take the cassette out, and I’m explaining about the swan neck and how to screw the top and how to empty it. And as I do, this little girl decides to sit on the toilet and curls one out. And this beautiful little perfectly formed curly poo forms in the base of the cassette chamber while I’m holding the cassette. “No! Not now!” He goes to run in to grab her. No, don’t do that! It went everywhere. I said, you’re cleaning that up. So I’m never going to allow children in a motorhome while I’m taking the cassette out ever again!
Tash 12:25
Thankfully, we’ve never had a toilet cassette situation, but I do remember it happened to someone else when we were at a pop up campsite once. I think I’ve told you this story before, Darran. It was on a school grounds, and the Elsan point was basically like a big septic tank. So you had to sort of take the big lid off. And there was a gentleman that actually dropped his entire toilet cassette into the septic tank. What do you do in that situation? Tongs?! Just walk away?! That was horrendous. I was pretty scarred by it.
Matt Sims 12:59
Go shopping for a new cassette.
Darran 13:03
I have got one, just quickly. There was a couple and they were YouTubers, and they had a van. They didn’t have toilets in them, and they were going to take a motorhome out for the weekend just to do a video with it. And she went to use the toilet. She didn’t open it at all, so she went in the bowl, and then didn’t know how to use this toilet. So they’re pressing the button, and it’s filling with water. The motorhome was ready for them to go out. I was on site with them, and they called me over and said, how’d you get this…? They were sending me voice notes. How’d you do this? And as I come over, I heard, “Ahhhhh!” because they’d be filling it up so much. And then they figured out to twist, and the back pressure just went…! And they were both looking over, “How do we do this, how do we do this?” They both got a faceful…
Matt Sims 14:06
It’s not funny. I had someone come back from a festival, and they returned the motorhome. They’d hired it from us, and the cassette was full, and I mean full, and they’d obviously not been very well. They’d gone to the loo a lot in it and been sick in it, and you could smell it. Anyway, they disappeared after they returned the motorhome. So I get the cassette out, and I made that stupid schoolboy error where I opened the slider, and then I twisted the little lever, and it was… And it was hot like it was here yesterday, and I was looking over it… oh my goodness. I literally felt like I was having a bath in their poo and sick. I was actually ill with salmonellla. I was ill with salmonella for three weeks, and I lost three and a half stone. It’s not a recommended way to lose weight at all. It was highly effective. We were back on a family holidaythat afternoon. We had to go three days late because I spent 23 hours a day in the bed asleep. I was seriously unwell. So yeah, when you open your cassette, twist that little lever and then slide the slide back, especially on a hot day, because, as you say, the pressure in the cassette really builds up. So we know there’s a lot to learn before you go off in a motorhome. And if you’re new to motorhoming, it’s easy to forget stuff. Tash, when you first got your VW pop top, it didn’t quite go to plan, did it?
Tash 15:27
No, it didn’t. I was so excited. Because when I talk about when we went full time into the motorhome, there was a lot of planning that went into that. But a bit like you, when I got my first campervan, I was so excited. I literally just took it away straight away that weekend. Didn’t really think about it. I’d never had a pop top before, and whoever had had it before me had actually cut… so you know that you have the straps that hold the roof down, and they’re normally really long? Whoever had it before me had cut them really short. So I needed a little step to actually reach them. But it didn’t occur to me then that they weren’t like they were meant to be. So anyway, after my first parkup – I think I went to a Warners show, actually. And I was like, “Yeah, I’ve done everything. The roof’s down, everything’s down.” And as I’m driving along on the country road, about 60 miles an hour, I hear this rumbling above my head. And I’m like, “What on Earth is that?” Next thing you know, the roof comes up, and I obviously, politely, needed a change of underwear after that. And I had nowhere to pull over either. So of course, I’m like, is the roof attached? You know, have I now got a convertible van? I don’t know what’s going on! And I literally had to pull over on the side of this road, whack the hazards on. And it was a van as well where you couldn’t get from the cab to the hab without getting out of the van. So I’m running around in the middle of this country road panicking. I had to pull the roof down. I mean, I never, ever forgot, ever again, to strap that roof down.
Matt Sims 16:52
Did you lose the roof?
Tash 16:54
Thankfully, touch wood, I did not lose the roof. I didn’t damage it. So it’s obviously built well. And from that point on – a good tip is I would actually, because the straps were shorter than they were meant to be so they’d come off completely, I used to leave them over the steering wheel so that I would never, ever forget again.
Matt Sims 17:08
Top tips from this session!
Tash 17:11
We did the stupid stuff, so you don’t have to.
Matt Sims 17:15
Darran, it went wrong for you on the motorway, and that wasn’t really your fault.
Tash 17:19
For a change.
Darran 17:20
I pulled over and stopped at a services, and I think I grabbed a cheeseburger, and I was back on the road again, driving along on my merry way in the middle lane. And all of a sudden, an explosion happened, boom. And then the back end was just fishtailing everywhere. And I panicked. I didn’t know what was going on, but it was a rear tyre blowout at about 65 miles an hour. I managed to just quickly react and get over but, yeah, that was scary.
Matt Sims 17:54
You’re an experienced driver as well.
Darran 17:57
I mean, I’d never experienced that. I mean, I’ve got a lot of miles under my belt driving, but never experienced a blowout. I was lucky. I was filming at the time, so I pulled it all on camera, like the actual bang, and then me getting over. I think it was about four seconds before I got over, so quite quick.
Matt Sims 18:18
Was there much damage to the motorhome?
Darran 18:21
The tyre did slap. It starts whipping the wood underneath. And it did smash a lot of the wood underneath. It could have been a lot worse, obviously, but that was a bit scary.
Matt Sims 18:36
I had a similar thing with a wheel. I didn’t have a blowout, but Jude and I went away for a weekend down to Cornwall in a tiny little motorhome, something called an Adria Compact. It’s only six meters long, a very narrow coachbuilt motorhome, and we’re on this site where it’s quite sloped. So I thought I’d get the levelling ramps out and level up. And normally she stands outside, directing me onto the ramps, but she went off to check us in at the campsite reception. So I thought, I’ll just get on with it. I’ll do it. So I get the ramps out and place them in front of the van. I’m driving on. And you can’t really see where the tyre is on the ramp, can you? And I’m trying to look down and think, oh gosh, still not in the middle. Keep going, and then bang! Off the front of the ramp. And there’s these three guys stood there outside their own caravans and motorhomes. So they all laughed. And then one of them came over. He said, “All right, buddy?” Of course, this motorhome’s got “Hire” written on it, Motorhome Holiday Company Hire. He said, “Oh, have you hired it then?” Because he’s assuming I’m a numpty. Now, I should have said yes, I didn’t. I said, “No, I own the company, and I’ve been doing this quite a long time.” They call me ramp boy all weekend, Evel Knievel. They took the mickey out of me all weekend. That was quite embarrassing. But how many of you did have a disaster this weekend? Because it was really windy yesterday, wasn’t it? Did anyone actually lose an awning or anything yesterday? Because I know there are a few people here. They’ve probably gone home to get it fixed now! But who last night went to the entertainment, quick show of hands? Yeah. How many of you when you got home last night realised you’d left the roof light open and it was raining heavily for about half an hour last night? I did, yeah. I thought something else was going on in the bed. It was a really heavy rainstorm anyway. So Tash, I want you to tell us about your hab door disaster when it got very windy.
Tash 18:59
Yes, so we learned a lesson, and again, it was in a vehicle that we didn’t own, so it was a little bit awkward. We were up in the Lake District. We had been out for a lovely walk, you know, because we were quite new into our full timing. And we were like, oh, this is really nice. And didn’t realise how windy it was. And obviously Jon went to open the door, it just got out of his hand and just snapped straight back on itself and was laying against the van. Thankfully, he’s pretty handy and he had to do a little fix job on the hinges to get it to actually close again! So that’s why, in this sort of weather, all weekend we’re parked next to each other, me and Darran, and I’m like, I’m not being unsociable. I just don’t leave my door open.
Darran 21:35
I don’t believe that for one second.
Tash 21:37
Just had enough of your face. So yeah, that was pretty awkward, and that was a pretty steep learning curve.
Matt Sims 21:41
Then there was another time when the hab door wasn’t shut and Jon drove off. What happened then?
Tash 21:50
Okay, so just a little bit of context. It doesn’t help that I have a habit of breaking doors. I don’t know why.
Matt Sims 21:58
Well, I’m not hiring you a motorhome. That’s a given.
Tash 22:01
Hulk Smash. Thank you very much.
Darran 22:02
If she knocks on your door, open it quick. Because if she opens it…
Tash 22:08
It’s never my fault. But yeah, what happened is, in our old motorhome, we were pulling away, and I noticed the hab door wasn’t shut properly. And I thought, oh, it’s okay. Don’t you stop, Jon. I’ll just dip over and shut it quickly. And of course, as I opened it and as I shut it, the handle came off in my hands, and we’re moving. And I’m like, oh… thankfully, the door did shut itself, but I’m just literally stood there. He’s like, what’s happened? Are you okay? And then, of course, the part was back ordered, naturally. So for about six to eight months, we had a cable tie just to shut the door. I mean, we owned that one, so that was a bit different. So, yeah, I just don’t have much luck with doors or handles.
Matt Sims 22:54
Yeah, always walk out of a motorhome before Tash. Darran, tell us about your electrical install that went wrong.
Darran 23:03
I had an install done while I was abroad. They’re a bad company to have it done. Now I know that. I got the taxi there, picked it up, I had driven two hours away, and then I parked up, and I was doing something, and then I could smell something. I’m doing a few bits and bobs in there with my new system. I’m like, yeah, I’ve got electric now. I can do whatever I want, and I wasn’t actually doing anything. So it wasn’t my stupid fault, me doing something. I could smell an electrical smell. And then I looked in the cupboard and the fuses were melting. And I went, Oh, my God, what do I do? I started to try to pull fuses, but they were just melting. It was awful. And actually, I remember, I called Jon, and I was… I thought it was going to burn down. I honestly thought it was going to burn down. So in the end, I managed to disconnect the battery and everything. But I called you, and I was in tears. Then I had to drive all the way back down to the place, because I rang them and said, what have you done? This is all going wrong. And basically, where they put the panels on the roof, they just drilled straight through the roof, and they basically drilled into a loom of about 20 wires, and it just all fused and melted and was smoldering within the foam, the polystyrene in the roof. Yeah, it was awful, awful. It didn’t catch fire, but I had to sleep that night outside their gates. Freezing cold, no electric, no nothing. I didn’t turn anything on because I was petrified of burning alive. And that would have been a really good smelling fire. Roast pig! Pork belly. But I didn’t want to die.
Matt Sims 25:08
Stick around a bit longer. Sometimes it’s difficult when you get back to a campsite and you’ve had a bottle of wine, maybe a couple of beers, and you arrive back on the campsite, and we are just white boxes in a green field, aren’t we? And I wandered back into a campsite on my own, the right campsite, and found what I thought was our motorhome. It was an Adria. Ours was an Adria. So I opened the hab door and got in and sat down, and it was dark. I started taking the shoes off, and this guy got up and he said, “Are you all right, mate?” I went, “What are you doing in my motorhome?” I was in his motorhome, and it took me a while to realise, because I wasn’t quite with it. I’d been drinking a few drinks with some friends, and he looked at me for ages, and I looked at him for ages. “What are you doing?” And then eventually I realised, because he had a picture of somebody else’s children. I thought, “That’s not my kids.”
Darran 26:20
This guy’s really moved in!
Matt Sims 26:22
And so it dawned on me, so I got up and left in a hurry and ran away. We left the campsite that morning, and he’s still got my shoes, actually.I never saw them again. I’ll finish up and then if you want to share some of yours, we’d love to hear them. We have to finish on a toilet story. So I said earlier that I loved American motorhomes, and we had one of our first motorhomes, an old motorhome from 1983 and we called it Phoebe. And we had her for years, and the kids all grew up in Phoebe, and they still remember Phoebe. And Phoebe had a black waste tank, so American motorhomes have very different toilets to our cassettes. A big tank, and you press a lever to flush the toilet, which opens the blade and it flushes into this huge tank. Well, we’re in a campsite. We would go away, whatever the weather. And this campsite was so wet that the rear axle, and this motorhome had four tyres across the back and two pairs – it sunk down to its rear prop shaft, literally sunk into the grass. And we thought, “Well, what are we going to do?” The toilet was full. This tank was full. And we thought, “We’ll sit at this weather, it’s going to brighten up, and then we’ll figure out how we’re going to get towed out. We’re not going anywhere.” But the toilet was full. So I thought, well, it’ll be okay. I’ll fit the pipe and get a bucket and I’ll just drain a bit off. What could go wrong? So I thought, yeah, it’s just a bit of water, really. So I get this bucket. And the pipes on an American RV, if you don’t know, they are big. So to release it, you pull the lever. So I’ve run the pipe, and they’re about six feet long, these pipes, and I’ve run it a long way from the motorhome. I go to the lever. I thought, hang on a minute. How am I going to do this? Okay, I’ll balance it in the bucket. I pull the lever and I just close it quickly. Yeah, it’ll be fine. Pull the lever – anyway, the weight of what was in this tank took over, and I could not close it. The bucket about 40 feet away – there was this horrendous just chain of our mess on this really wet and muddy campsite. I eventually managed to close the lever. The good news was the toilet wasn’t full anymore. So I did fess up and go to the campsite and said, look, we’ve got a little bit of a problem. He said, “Yeah, everyone’s stuck.” I went, no, it’s worse. So he came over and went, “Oh my goodness.” By this point, I’d packed up the pipe, and the wasteis six, seven feet away from the motorhome. “How did you do that?” Anyway, I explained. And so we got a bale of hay, and I’m there, filling the hay everywhere. And I did shovel it into the bucket, which ended up in the cesspit, but there is a really lovely pat of grass on this one campsite now. And we did get towed out, and we said, thank you very much, and we’ve not been back. And Phoebe is probably now a rotten, damp mess in the sky.
Darran 29:41
Are you banned from any campsites?
Matt Sims 29:44
Not to my knowledge.
Darran 29:47
Wandering into people’s motorhomes…?
Matt Sims 29:49
It’s easily done, though.
Darran 29:49
Fertilising the grass…
Tash 29:49
His photo is probably in reception.
Matt Sims 29:50
Have you seen this man? Anyway, I’m doing my bit. That’s all. I just did my bit. So as you can see, it doesn’t always go to plan. Even the experts get it wrong. And I’m sure you’ve got some funny stories too. Is anyone prepared to share one? Because we’d love to hear it. We’ve got brave soul.
Audience member 30:19
This is brave because I did it here. I’m new to motorhoming, so that’s my excuse. I’d never used the box that’s got the holes in, the big blue one. I emptied it out yesterday, and then I called the guy and said, this is leaking. And he said, you’re supposed to put it in that hole. You’re not supposed to put it in that hole.
Matt Sims 30:53
I left the hob on as I closed the glass top. Don’t do that. It takes quite a while for them to explode with the hob on, but when it did, oh my goodness, what a bang. And the same story – six months later, we’re still finding pieces of glass.
Audience member 31:08
Yeah, you just reminded me. I did the same thing with my husband. I put the lid down, and he came in and didn’t know I put the lid down with the gas still on. Why it didn’t cut out, I don’t know, but put the dryer for washing up on top of it, started to do the washing up, and then it just it exploded and cracked. The story I was going to tell you, though, was about getting in the wrong van. Except this was our cat. It was 16 years old, and it had got dementia. We used to let it go out, because it would only walk under the van and then come back in. And then I said, Where’s the cat? We were out looking for it, and a French lady from the next van came and said, “Your cat, I think it is…” in French. When I went it was sitting at the dining room table opposite the fellow looking around!
Matt Sims 32:09
Happens the best of us, you see. Does anyone else have a story they’d like to share?
Tash 32:14
I have a funny cat one. The other day, we were at SMC, before we came here doing a few bits. And I tell people that my cats don’t escape much, but Tinkerbell, she did actually manage to slip out the door. So of course, she’s running around the forecourt under the vans, and we’re trying to get her. But then, of course, as we went towards her, she ran into the showroom. So I’m going and using words that I can’t say in a family friendly environment. And then I sort of burst into the show, and there were customers sat there doing their handovers. My cat’s running around, and they were really chill about it. They were like, is your cat in here? And I was like, yeah, I’m really sorry. And this woman’s horrified. And I was like, you just get a free cat with your motorhome. It’s fine. And this was like an hour before we were due to leave to come here. So yeah, I think they do that a lot, don’t they?
Audience member 33:03
Have you got a story?
Do caravans count? Usual thing, Friday afternoon. I work from home, prep the car. I wait for Mandy to come home from work. She literally parks the car in front of the house. We’re off. We got from Manchester to the Lake District before we realised that when Mandy had gone in, she’d taken the caravan keys back in the house and put with her ones, and the caravan’s locked.
Matt Sims 33:30
It’s not too easy to break in…
Darran 33:35
Talking about the hobs, I was parked up at once for a few days, and I lifted the hob top, the glass, and I was using the rings. But then my old motorhome had an electric ring, and for some reason, I was moving loads of stuff around, and I stacked a lot of paperwork on it. I thought it was fine, because I wasn’t on hookup, right? Well, I had my system changed, and then when I turned the inverter on, because I needed to do something – I turned the inverter on, and then I’m doing something. I can smell something. I’d accidentally knocked the electric ring to come on so I can smell something, smell something… and then all of a sudden, this stack of paper just caught fire! Don’t stack paperwork on hob tops. I mean, not that you would anyway!
Matt Sims 34:29
You love a good fire in your motorhome. I’ll quickly share. I was towing a caravan onto a campsite, and my ex-wife got in it, and I unhitched it from the car, and she went to the back of the caravan, and it just flipped straight up in the air. And I went to grab the handle, the brake, missed, and so it started rolling down the hill. Yeah, we’re not married anymore.
Keith Gooden 35:06
Just some of the mistakes, the mishaps that have been happening in the world of the motorhomes to the so called experts. Now, if you’ve got a motorhoming or caravanning or camping horror story, it would be nice, wouldn’t it,if people shared them with us.
Matt Sims 35:22
Let’s do it. We could put them together for a future episode.
Keith Gooden 35:25
Halloween, perhaps.
Matt Sims 35:27
Halloween horror stories. Let’s do that. You can share your story at mhmp.info/askmatt. We’d love it if you’d tell us it by recording it and clicking the orange button. Tell us where you are in the world. Or fill in the form, and we’ll read them into the podcast. I think it’ll be fun.
Keith Gooden 35:45
It’s the Motorhome Matt Podcast. I’m Keith Gooden.
Matt Sims 35:47
And I’m Motorhome Matt.
Keith Gooden 35:49
It’s brought to you with www.thatleisureshop.com and sponsored by Ripe. It’s time for the questions and answers section, the Q and A, where you ask the questions, and Matt, for he is the expert, will answer them. And if he doesn’t know, as I say every week, he’ll ask somebody that jolly well does. First of all, Alex is in Florida.
Alex 36:08
Hello, Matt and Keith. My name is Alex, and I live in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in the United States. I watch on YouTube, and I enjoy your program very much. I find it quite informative and just a little bit entertaining. I have several questions, but first, a quick bit of background for context. My wife and I have decided to move to Europe. Our plan is to purchase a motorhome towards the end of the summer and slow travel across all of Europe. Our time frame is open ended from three months to 12 months to possibly settling down somewhere in Europe. My first stumbling block was where and how, as a US citizen, I can purchase, register and insure a motorhome. After extensive research, I found a handful of programmes that claim to facilitate this. The one I’m most comfortable with is that CarTurf in Germany. Can you offer me any advice on this subject? Okay, regarding the vehicle type and year, our research, which included renting, hiring, as you say, a campervan in Las Vegas and visiting the Grand Canyon, we’ve decided that something along the lines of a Hymer B-Class Masterline T will suit our needs. We especially like the unique bathroom layout of this model, as well as the garage area where we intend to store bicycles, golf clubs and other…
Keith Gooden 37:35
Hang on. What’s happened to him? Alex, in Florida.
Matt Sims 37:37
He’s run out of time. Hang on. He’s back.
Alex 37:38
This is Alex continuing my recording! Store bicycles, golf clubs and other outdoor activity gear. I’m concerned about the extended rear overhang dimension of this campervan. Although we don’t intend to do any intense off road driving, I’m concerned about dragging the rear end if we encounter dips on driveways or roadways. Is this something I should be concerned about? Regarding the vehicle selection, ideally, I would like to find a slightly used model to avoid the VAT and the steep initial depreciation. I’ve been monitoring sites like mobile.de and Caravan 24. Please let me know if there are other sources I should consider. A few other considerations are that we would like to do some snow skiing, so I need to make sure that the vehicle is winterised. What is the terminology I need to look for in advertisements to ensure this?What other options and accessories would you recommend we consider including or adding to the motorhome? My wife will be retired, but I will be working a few hours on two or three days a week for which I will need a robust internet connection. Can you please advise me on options to achieve this? I’m sure there are many questions that I should be asking that I haven’t yet thought about. Please educate me on any other important items I should be considering. I look forward to hearing your expert advice and Keith’s quips.
Matt Sims 39:03
There you go.
Keith Gooden 39:04
Well, I’m concerned about his excess overhang and the length of his question!
Matt Sims 39:10
It wasn’t a question, it’s a podcast standalone.
Keith Gooden 39:14
So can you help Alex?
Matt Sims 39:16
Yeah, we can. Thanks for listening, Alex, all the way in Florida. So moving to the UK or travelling in Europe, you’re going to need to remember the Schengen zone rules. So you only get 90 days, and you said you might do it for 12 months. So be mindful of that. In terms of registering a motorhome in the UK or in Europe, then you really need to be a resident here, or have an address that you can become resident at. So if you can’t get UK residency, then maybe give it to the person that is the resident here. So name somebody, a friend or family member in that country where you can register your insurance with the DVLA. So the V5, the driving vehicle licensing authority. They’re the two organisations that are fussy about a fixed address. There are lots of care of addresses and post office addresses that you can use, but in my experience, the DVLA and insurance companies don’t like them. So that’s one thing, and the first thing to consider, working down the list – rear overhang, I would consider fitting Airide suspension. There’s a company here in the UK called Airide with one R. You can save £200 when you use the code MOTORHOMEMATT with them. You can also fit casters to the rear overhang, so two little wheels. So if it does hit the ground, then they roll on the ground, protecting the bumper. Or consider fitting a tow bar, and you can bang that on the floor and it will just scratch. It won’t do any damage. That’s worth looking at, too. If you’re buying in the UK, great websites like www.autotrader.co.uk – hundreds of thousands of motorhomes for sale on there. That’s a great website. Winterising – in my experience, European made motorhomes are better insulated and winterised than UK spec ones, simply because they sell into markets like Scandinavia. So they’re used to being under a lot of snow and in very cold weather. So the key difference is the waste tank is probably going to be under slung, but it’s going to be heated or insulated or both, and the freshwater tank is going to be inside where you are warm with the heating on. You can add to the insulation by insulating the waste tank or adding a tank heater, or something called a tank blanket, which you stick on the bottom of the waste water tank, and it warms up and just keeps that waste water warm and stops it from freezing. Internet – I’m biased, but our own product, the Pathway 4G, is going to work across Europe and the UK, and works further afield than that. It’s a simple lick and stick solution. You haven’t got to drill anything. It’s low cost. If you need faster internet than 4G, consider a 5G unit or maybe even Starlink and Starlink mobile you have in the US. You’ll be familiar with it. I think that was everything. And then go and check out the other 196 episodes of this podcast in terms of educating you further.We’ll keep your attention for longer than your question did ours.
Keith Gooden 42:17
Thanks, Alex in Florida. Deborah Roberts is in Towyn. “Hi Matt. I’ve just purchased my first motorhome. It’s a 2000 Ford Transit Herald Squire. Can I put a submersible water pump in for when I’m off the grid?”
Matt Sims 42:31
Classic. Yes, sure. You will need a pressure sensor, a switch that determines when you open the tap, you change the pressure in the pipes, that activates the pump. Or you need to change your taps to ones with switches in that will activate the pump, or fit a switch that turns the pump on. You open the tap, it works, and then you just turn the pump off.
Keith Gooden 42:51
Plump for a pump?
Matt Sims 42:52
Plump for a pump.
Keith Gooden 42:53
Karen’s in Guildford. “Can you recommend motorhome finance?”
Matt Sims 42:58
Oh yeah, the guys at motorhome.finance, I highly recommend them. They’re Motorhome Matt Approved. We have had Steve from them on podcasts in the past. The business behind them are called Creative Funding Solutions. Their website is motorhome.finance, simple as that. I’ve used them and worked with them for years, and I commend them to you.
Keith Gooden 43:19
So how do people get in touch, Matt?
Matt Sims 43:21
We’d love it if you did. Just head to mhmp.info/askmatt.
Keith Gooden 43:26
And if you’re looking for trusted brands and services, then make sure you visit the Motorhome Matt Approved directory. It’s at mhmp.info/approved.
Matt Sims 43:36
And if you’re listening to the podcast, make sure you click follow on your podcast app, or if you’re watching on YouTube, please click the subscribe button and the little bell.
Keith Gooden 43:48
Thanks for listening to the Motorhome Matt podcast. Remember to check back here for more episodes full of hints and tips and helpful advice. We’ll see you soon for another Motorhome Matt podcast brought to you with www.thatleisureshop.com.
