A 'bumpy' ride to (and a lift back from) Whitby

After a successful summer with the camper van running pretty well, our main holiday was looming when suddenly an issue emerged. One day Trevor just wouldn't start and we had to resort to a jump start. This happened another few times (most notably, in the Ikea car park with our screaming baby looking on).

The camper was cranking but very slowly so Husband charged the battery but it made no difference, despite showing 13volts on the cabin voltmeter (normal). Next he swapped the battery for another one but again, no joy. He assumed there was a problem with the earths as the engine was cranking, but just very slowly. He checked and cleaned the earths and...still no joy. Finally, Husband connected jump leads directly from the battery to the terminals of the starter motor but this again made no difference. His conclusion was that the starter motor was, in his words, "knackered".  He replaced the starter motor and hey presto, Trevor was brought back to life - the holiday was back on!

We made our merry way up to North Yorkshire and stayed at the excellent Whitby Holiday Park which had great facilities (playpark, cafe, clubhouse, laundrette, shop) and was really well maintained, and it benefitted from stunning coastline views.  Once or twice on holiday the cranking was slow again but generally the van seemed ok - until....

We were travelling over the moors between Rossdale Abbey and Egton and stopped briefly to take a picture of the stunning views:

North Yorkshire is beautiful!

A happy scene was replaced by morose disbelief when Trevor refused to start. As we'd just come up a steep incline, the Husband used the hill to great effect by managing to do a reverse bump start (much to my concern, yikes!!). The van roared into life and we were off back to our lovely campsite.

From then on the van seemed ok and Husband's latest suspicion for the cause is a broken wire letting power through for a time but which increases resistance once heating up, preventing enough power reaching the starter motor (did anyone understand what I just wrote there? Mechanics are well beyond me...)

The journey home started off fine, albeit with a bump start off the pitch courtesy of our fellow campers (thanks everyone!). We hadn't even made it past York when the brakes suddenly failed. Luckily we were travelling slowly behind traffic and Husband managed to bring us to a safe stop off the main carriageway. We'd had to stop suddenly a bit previous to this happening so the thinking is that this caused some problem. There was no sign of brake fluid leaking so Husband is assuming it's a broken seal in the master cylinder (again, I have no idea what I'm talking about here!)

The journey resumed an hour or so later, with the camper languishing on the back of a pick up truck, and our toddler son thinking this was possibly the best, most fantastic end to a holiday ever!!

Poor Trevor!

We've been here before, and although a breakdown is not a desirable situation in anyone's book (apart from our toddler's!), the kids were actually really good for the remainder of the trip home (8 hours total journey time, yikes...) - but we now need to get cracking and sort out the problem as the next trip is just 10 days away!Blimey. Nothing is straightforward with an ancient campervan, eh?

Anyhoo, I can't finish a holiday blog post on a negative note...we had an absolutely great time in North Yorkshire with steam train trips, traction engine fairs, beach visits, pretty towns to see, country shows with prize bulls to amaze at and a fabulous coastline, illustrated with this spectacular sunset from our last night:

Plenty more for us to see in this part of England - we will be back (once the brakes are fixed...)!