I spent the first part of this morning giving my van a bit of tender loving care before the heat got up.  A 12 year old Volkswagen Transporter is a 12 year old Volkswagon transporter and you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

But you can scrape off the rust on the wheel rims and give them a fresh coat of hammerite, tidy up the loose cables hanging out of the back and refit a couple of bolts back onto the mudflaps so they don’t look broken.

I’m off camping again at the weekend. Les Carroz again with a bunch of mates for someone’s birthday. Some VTT, a nice outdoor pool & a blinged up van to make the pikey camping bit a pleasure.

Bling Van

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All my siblings are having car trouble this New Year. One sister over in New Zealand had an unplanned stop in Christchurch for a few days due the van her and boyfriend are touring the South Island in breaking down. The other sister had to join the RAC to get her hard working VW Polo back to Germany after her holiday in Devon. And my van’s been practically out of action since Christmas. The damn thing just refused to start when it was cold and it’s been very cold up here recently. The only way to get it going was to bump it, and that meant parking it pointed down a very long hill.

My initial thought was the battery was dying, because I’d left the lights on and flattened it at one point. I checked that and there was no problem with battery or alternator. Then I decided carburetter/fuel lines were clogged with carbonised crap, so I tried a bit of that cleany/burny stuff you stick in it to clean it out. No joy. Then I finally worked it out. It’s the glow-plugs.

In diesel cars you have these little gadgets which pre-heat the fuel when the engine’s cold, allowing it to start. You turn the key half-way and wait for the little yellow light to go off before turning the engine over. The little yellow light works fine which foxed me a bit, but it’s the actual plugs which are fried. The mechanics agree, and it’s down in Les Houches waiting to be fixed on Friday. I was hoping it would be a cheap fix – those little glow plugs don’t cost much. Turns out that’s not what’s going to cost the money. They have to remove most of the front of the transporter to get at the plugs, and that’s going to take a few hours of labour.

Still, on Friday evening I should hopefully have a working car again. On the other hand, I’m actually starting to enjoy living without it. It’s a good excuse to stay in my lovely warm house all day long, making bread, tinkering with my computer and only venturing out to go skiing in Le Tour or on the Grande Montets.

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I knew last night was going to be unsuccessful from the start. I kind of knew it was a bad idea from the moment I left the house and realised I’d forgotten my gloves and hat and didn’t bother to go back in to get them.

A friend of mine who runs a marketing company let me know that someone at the Guardian travel section was looking for some pictures. Specifically a picture of a group of seasonaires enjoying themselves at a bar.

So the Office Bar in Argentiere had a band on &  thought we’d give it a go. It was snowing hard and had been all afternoon. The snowploughs were finished for the night and there was still 12 inches of snow on the road down from Le Tour. I knew as I was driving down it that new snow tires or not, the van wouldn’t make it back up that night.

I went to the bar anyway and took a few photos. They weren’t great. This one was probably the best of an uninspiring set.

Sure enough I managed to get the van stuck in a snowdrift in the dark on my way home and had to abandon the thing and walk the 1.5km up the snowy road. I quite enjoyed it, actually. Less so when I woke up this morning and the first thing I had to do was go and dig the thing out with my avalanche shovel. The snowploughs had been past and dumped even more snow on it. I earned my bacon and eggs for breakfast.

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