Diary 11. The First Night In Our Converted Camper
It was pouring with rain when we came off the train so visibility was poor. The drive to Folkestone was short and smooth so I was feeling awake enough to drive for another hour or so.
We had only been on the French roads for 15 minutes when we came to a toll gate. It was our plan to avoid tolls altogether but we had forgotten to change the setting in the satnav. It had us completely confused.
Firstly, we didn't know which lane to go in because they all had different signs. I picked one that ended up with the machine on the passengers side. It gave Jenna a ticket and let us through. Why did it give us a ticket? Weren't we supposed to pay something? Confused, we drove on.
We immediately changed the satnav, which directed us off of the motorway at the next junction. That brought us to another toll gate. We thought we were avoiding those now! Bewildered, we pulled up to a machine again. We were probably sat there for 5 minutes while we tried to figure out what to do. Luckily there was no traffic behind us, and with a wing and a prayer, Jenna popped the ticket into a flashing slot. Then we had no ticket, and a machine telling us our payment was invalid. Great.
A little panicked, Jenna phoned her Dad to check what to do. The machine displayed a required payment of 2€70. All Jenna saw was €70 and panicked even more. She started counting out €10 notes which made my eyes widen. I took a closer look to assess it myself. €70 can't be right for 5 minutes on the motorway?
I quickly realised that it was actually asking for €2.70, it was just displayed differently to what we're used to in the UK. The machine seemed to ask us to insert our card into the same slot as the ticket. That was new. Money hadn't yet transferred to our travel card so we had to use one of our English cards and risk incurring a hefty fee. The card went in, the card popped out and the barrier went up. I quickly pulled away before it had a chance to change its mind!
It was such a silly little thing to confuse us but it caught us off guard. We realise now that the cost of French toll roads are measured by the distance you travel on them. We don't plan on doing it again unless we have to.
Now we were travelling on single lane roads passing through the odd small village. It had become dark after an hour, so we started to look for somewhere to setup for the night. We had been told there were plenty of Aires we could stop at but we hadn't seen any since we left the motorway. We hadn't even passed a petrol station.
We were struggling to spot a place through the rain and darkness. Then, as we were passing through a small village, we spotted a proper motorhome parked in the car park of a church. We weren't sure whether that would be allowed, but decided to turn around and follow their lead. At least we would feel safe with another traveller there.
We made dinner, laid our bed, put our phones on charge and began to watch a film. Only half way into the film, our inverter started to beep loudly. We switched off a phone charger at the socket and the noise stopped. Five minutes later the beep returned. We turned off the TV and it stopped. We eventually realised that it was the inverter telling us that the battery was out of power. But surely not? It had been charging without use for weeks and we had only been using it for an hour.
I had a look at the battery setup and realised that the solar panel was charging our main leisure battery, but Jamie had attached the inverter to our small backup battery. That meant one battery was being charged while the other was being drained.
I clipped the inverter onto the charged leisure battery and we were set. We finished watching Austin Powers, cracked open a cheap bottle of prossecco and had a peaceful, albeit cold, nights sleep.
Matt :)
Next Post: 12. The Day We Almost Became A Convertible
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