Blog 4.1 - Le Tour d'Alsace (etc.)

Sunday 3rd September 2023

It's been a little while now since we gave the van a bit of a run out, so it's time we pointed Zigzag Wanderer* across the Channel again.

This time, like last Autumn's tour, we'll start from Newhaven, landing in Dieppe. However, unlike that time when we headed pretty much south in the general direction of Le Mans, this time we're proposing a more easterly route. The idea is to cut through Champagne country, Reims, Epernay maybe, and head into 'little Germany', west of the Rhine.

All this starts on Monday, although our sailing is not scheduled until the very early hours of Tuesday morning.

The premise is to perhaps spend a couple of weeks exploring the villages and towns of Alsace, followed by a few days cutting back across France, this time south of Paris, and then a few days around Confolens - one of our favourite places - followed by a drift back up country with no specific route in mind, eventually finishing back at Dieppe for our return on the ninth of October. So, it'll be a considerably shorter trip than previous continental tours, but hopefully no less enjoyable.

There's been a little bit of van-prep done. Friday saw us top up with liquid gold; well, diesel, and attempting unsuccessfully to also top up the LPG at Bramcote. No chance. Nobody there! Just a note on the door to say he'd been called away to judge a sheep competition...

Ah well, we still have plenty on board, and it's much easier to find in France.

I had cleaned the outside of the van a few days earlier, but rain and claggy country roads soon put paid to that. I'll try to rinse it down again before we leave.

Inside, I've made a better, more sturdy, cover for the inverter, painting it to match the blue of the ex-oven cupboard door, and it looks way better than the previous varnished thin ply one.

We've also had a piece of offcut bedroom carpet edge-bound and made into a fitted 'runner'. A big improvement over the fairly nasty off-the-shelf one we used before.

I've also cut another piece of that carpet to slip in above the blind of the MaxxAir fan, which should improve its blackout capabilities (poor as standard) while also improving insulation and maybe sound transmission. It's just an experiment, so we'll find out soon enough.

Finally, I managed to fix the broken channel in the fridge (that was supposed to collect condensation from the fins and divert it out the back of the fridge casing). It didn't though, merely depositing said condensate on the bottom of the fridge, where it pooled and became rather nasty quite quickly.

Pleased with that one!

Anyway, washer fluid and Adblue topped up, oil checked, and just tyre pressures to check, and we're ready for the off tomorrow afternoon.

*No, not the van's name as such. Just a tongue-in-cheek reference to how it tends to travel, directionally - or more directionless-ly. (With due credit to Captain Beefheart/Don van Vliet).