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Picked up our motorhome and we are on the road!

Our motorhome adventure started this week!

Having arrived back from 3 weeks in France on Monday we hired a van to drive to Kendal, where the motorhome dealer is, with the pile of belongings that we had planned to take with us in our motorhome.

There was a lot of stuff, including 2 bikes and I was worried that we would be taking too much. Arriving at the motorhome dealer with a mixture of excitement and trepidation we unloaded our rental van and we were then given a handover talk lasting about 3 hours. There is only so much information you can absorb and after 3 hours and many questions answered I had information overload. I like reading manuals and learning for myself and I have about 10 manuals to read weighing an absolute tonne! That’s part of the fun though!

Our motorhome on a campsite pitch
Our motorhome on a campsite pitch

The time had come to drive off to our first campsite, which was only about 3 miles away, so I climbed into the driver’s seat and Anne into the passenger seat, started the engine and immediately stalled twice! Not a good start considering I had to turn right across the very busy A591 and I was worried I would stall again but all turned out well and we were on the road.

I haven’t driven a vehicle before that is over 7 metres long and weighs 3.5 tonnes but it was no surprise that the acceleration and stopping distance are completely different to a normal car.

I couldn’t fill up our motorhome!

Our first job was to fill up with diesel so we headed to a nearby service station and pulled up next to the pump. First problem – I could not unlock the filler cap. I am similar to most men in that I don’t like asking for help but Anne asked a friendly looking Scottish truck driver and he solved the problem straight away. I was using the wrong key!

I then moved to another pump to fill our gas tanks with LPG. We have a refillable system. Luckily I had done my research and knew how the pumps worked so managed to fill the two 11kg tanks without a problem. I was starting to get more confident!

I couldn’t plug in!

Having arrived  at the Windermere Camping and Caravan Club campsite we drove onto our pitch for our first night in our new motorhome. First thing to do was get our electric hook up sorted so I got the cable out but could not work out how to plug the cable in. After a lot of cursing and swearing Anne decided to ask our friendly neighbour for help and sure enough the problem was sorted in seconds. The simple things can sometimes be difficult!

After a busy day we decided to eat in the campsite pub so we both had a very nice steak and ale pie before settling in for what tuned out to be a very comfortable night’s sleep.

What will day 2 bring?

Read more about our motorhome adventure

How to live in a motorhome full time


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