Well, the breakdowns continued. The van conked out coming into Tesco at Dover. Then on the A2 so I had to call the RAC out for the first time.
Managed to get it going and followed by the RAC man for 10 miles. All good so he went on his way. 5 miles later, the engine died again on the A2, but then started pulling again. Next, an explosion and the exhaust was blown apart.
Not my day 🙁
The trip across Belgium did not go well. Poor old Sooty van broke down twice on the motorways..
Something wrong with the ignition but I’m not sure what – instant loss of power both times. It looks like a poor fit of the distributor cap along with it being worn out after less than 500 miles.
In future I will buy genuine items instead of cheap shit off eBay. The few quid saved is no consolation when you are taking a van apart at the side of the motorway with trucks roaring past.
Rant over…
Day 10 takes me from the Neue Donau Campingpark on the outskirts of Venice to Camp Korana at the Plitvice Lakes National Park. The day did not start well – at 06:50 I was ready to go and just had to empty a couple of things out of the cab. The floor was soaking wet, but there had been no rain so where did the water come from? I touched the stuff, it felt like oil but a quick taste confirmed it was brake fluid. Lots of it, all over the brake pedal and the floor.
The brake fluid reservoir was nearly empty but I could see that the fluid was coming from one of the two pipes connecting to it. One pipe had split very slightly at the top and the jubilee clip had broken which didn’t help. The big problem is that the dashboard has to come out (including steering column) to get to the relevant bits. I didn’t have time for that so using some pliers up the back of the dashboard I managed to get the pipe off. As luck would have it, there’s a Shell garage outside the campsite so I managed to get brake fluid without having to walk too far.
In all, I lost just over an hour but it could have been worse, a dashboard out job or a low loader back home.
The rest of the trip went fairly well, it took a few miles to get through Austria but Slovenia went quicker than expected. Getting into Croatia, I decided to have some lunch and stopped off at a shopping centre which turned out to be a Croatian designer village. It looked very nice but didn’t have much in the way of customers, or much in the way of lunch as it happens.
A major traffic jam occurred just outside Zagreb which cost me another hour but once past that, the Croatian roads were excellent.
The scenery was something else, and if I hadn’t been in such a rush would have taken some pictures of the valleys with their colourful houses.
Arriving at the campsite about 4.30PM local time, I was told just to park up where I liked. Campsite Korana has enough pitches for 2,500 people, all with electric and water nearby. Also free showers and free WiFi complete the picture.
Having been baked in the roasting sun on the last few sites, I took the opportunity to grab my own shady little space surrounded by four trees.
A bus (also free) takes visitors from the campsite at 09:00 every day to the National Park main entrance which is about 10km away. It picks up at 17:00 on the dot, so probably best not to miss it.
I’ll bust the big camera out again tomorrow for the lakes – stay tuned 🙂