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.

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