Month: March 2025

Nessie’s new shoes

/ embraceyourinnergoat / 2 Comments

We had a safety moment in a work meeting recently based on National Highway’s TRIP campaign – encouraging you to have a safe journey by Topping-up (fuel, screen-wash & oil), planning Rest breaks, Inspecting tyres & Preparing for adverse weather. 

It’s not always easy for me to check Nessie’s tyre pressure as often she’s parked on a road that’s a bit busy, but this weekend I took advantage of the fact she was parked on a quieter road and that it wasn’t raining, to check her tyre pressure.  Having just thought about the TRIP campaign I also took a look at the tyres. To be honest, even knowing all about the 20p test, I still wasn’t that sure – there were good deep main treads, but as I looked at each in turn, some tyres had fewer little treads than others, and I suspected that meant some of them had been worn away.  One tyre also looked like the rubber wasn’t in great condition on the side either. 

I did what I always do when I’m unsure about car things – rang a lovely man called Ian at a local garage. He doesn’t do tyres, but he said he’d take a look at them for me to see what he thought of them.  He agreed that the front driver and rear passenger tyres could do with replacing. The front one wasn’t too bad, but he thought the back one was a bit deformed. 

I didn’t like the sound of a deformed tyre, so I rang a local tyre company and yesterday Nessie got fitted with two new tyres! I learnt that you find out what your tyre size is by reading the big numbers on the side of it and that it’s worth ringing ahead as they had to order them in for me.  They put both the new tyres on the front as apparently that will help their performance. 

This was fairly expensive…but then I thought of how much I spent on some new boots for myself recently – the price was comparable and I won’t walk nearly as far in them as Nessie will drive on her wheels!!!  Tyre issues are one of the most common causes of emergency breakdowns, so better safe than sorry… and I’ve decided not to begrudge Nessie her new shoes!

This Nessie doesn’t like water!!

/ embraceyourinnergoat / 4 Comments

It turns out that, despite her name, my Nessie doesn’t like water!!

She & I have encountered two types of water recently – the first was the most spectacular, in the form of a ford! It didn’t look very deep and I could see plenty of other normal-looking vehicles in the car park just the other side of the ford at Frensham Little Pond, so Nessie and I ventured through. We made it out the other side, but there was a lot more water than I’d expected. The upside was that Nessie got a nice wash as the river water was relatively clean… the downside is that water went up the exhaust pipe for her heater.

I drove home a different way to avoid the ford, but I noticed a flashing red light I’d not seen before appear on the controls at the back of the van & my instruction manual said this meant you mustn’t use the heater. The little pipe that is the exhaust for the living area heater is quite low down (see bottom right of picture), so I was pretty sure there was water in there and that’s why she was unhappy. I contacted Sussex Campervans a few days later when it was still flashing and they suggested that I might just need to reset the heater & explained how to do that. But sadly, that didn’t work and the light has been flashing for a couple of weeks now.

Back view of Nessie

I’ve been consoling myself that at least it hasn’t stopping the hob from working and that I rarely use the heater anyway. The last couple of days have been sunny and really quite warm, so I was hopeful that might have dried any remaining water out… and good news!… another reset today and now the heater is functioning again!

Given that it’s taken a couple of weeks for the water to dry out, the other form of water Nessie and I have encountered quite a lot of recently is rain! Her windscreen wipers are good, so she’s not too bad to drive in normal rain, but in the rain in the dark is another matter entirely!

On the way home from the Frensham Ponds trip it was dark and rainy and I found the driving hard and tiring. It wasn’t until I was nearly home I realised why – Nessie’s rock-and-roll bed means I can’t use the rearview mirror and I drive just using her fairly big wing mirrors. Only the wing mirrors and side windows get rain on them and, unlike the rear windscreen, they don’t have wipers. Combine that with the fact it’s just generally trickier to judge vehicle speeds in the dark (particularly when merging and changing lanes on big dual-carriageways) and driving becomes hard work.

The following weekend, Nessie & I were off to the New Forest and I knew we’d have a good couple of hours of driving in the dark rain on both big motorways and tiny twisty forest roads. This time I was prepared from the previous dark rain trip – and I put the bed down so I could use the rearview mirror and rear wiper. It felt much easier and safer to drive her that way. And now I know what to do, I’m feeling braver about tackling some more road trips!

I’ve got a plan for later this month – watch this space!

L