Harpenden to Edinburgh - 400 miles
Isn’t it amazing how music can effect your mood….
Well, I am now sitting in our telly room back in Auld Reekie (as us natives refer to The Athens of the North) having had a pretty decent journey, give or take a few mishaps, from Harpenden. So, without further adieu, here is the second instalment of my ‘road test’, mostly waffle and conjecture but you may find it distracting. I will get some pictures up sometime over the weekend once I have taken some- promise….
When spending the many hours a week I spend behind the wheel of the car, mostly motorway tedium, listening matter becomes quite important. So three cheers for Audible.co.uk and their unabridged audio books. I have downloaded over 120 over the last couple of years and am now working my way through some serious literature and am halfway through Wuthering Heights, cracking stuff by the way for those of you who haven’t read it. However, this morning, if I am honest, I was feeling a tad apprehensive. The route from Harpenden to Edinburgh up the M6 is a long one. I split it into chunks – Harpenden to Norton Crane services on the M6 Toll. Then to Charnock Richard in south Lancashire – Charnock Richard to Carlisle, Carlisle to Abingdon on the M74 and then the A702 from Abingdon to Edinburgh. Given the van’s appalling behaviour on the motorway earlier in the week I was not relishing this drive. I had a lousy night’s sleep and was concerned, as various components of the van had been failing over the last few days.
Wednesday afternoon I leave the office to pop into Halfords in St Albans to get the following: one of their excellent motorist’s tool kits (£20), a sticker with 60 on it to stick to the back, a fag lighter socket, wire and an inline fuse to mount a power socket on the dash – so shit is Halfords in St Albans, all I came out with was the tool kit. 15 mins later I was back however as the heavens opened and the great flood commenced…and, true to shite car form my wipers failed as did my heater fan, within minutes I could see nothing. Then the indicators went, the fuel and temp gauges, the hazards….but the stereo still worked! Back to Halfords, I got in just before they closed and bought a bumper box of glass fuses and a load of blade ones.
Now sadly, my van is of the vintage when automotive makers didn’t really take the leccy elements of a car very seriously therefore the fuse box is in fact 3 glass fuses with no indication either in the user manual or the Hayes one as to what each actually does. Further examination revealed 40 years of bodgery and corrosion. At some point some bright spark had installed a 1980’s era alarm, no one had known about this because the in line blade fuse serving it has disintegrated – the alarm had been forgotten by subsequent owners and screeched back into life on replacing the fuse causing me to bring my head sharply up into the edge of the bonnet – nice – blood – great. On examining the fuse box I discovered a mass of rusty terminals and damp connections – years worth of shit. As the warm Hertfordshire rain (and blood from my head) cascaded off my be-suited back and slowly filled my work shoes (Church’s Brogues - £149 retail) I was rapidly falling out of love with my new van as I saw my smirking colleagues manoeuvre away in BMW and Jag’d luxury. Working quickly and blinking the rain and sweat (poor liver function) out of my eyes I replaced every fuse (they all seemed to be 35 amp and 2 were at least 30 years old, raiding my wash kit I then scrubbed out the box and the surroundings with WD40. Hey presto – the wipers started – clambering in I decided to tackle the indicators in the morning.
So, where was I – yes a nasty night’s sleep and I am not looking forward to the day’s drive and staring with longing at the 535i parked next to the van. Hedging my bets I called the RAC and then started tackling the indicator fault – essentially taking the dash to bits and giving all a good old shoogle and clean – just as the RAC van hove into sight the indicators flashed into life – with a quick thanks to the chap I jumped in and was away.
Switching on Radio 2 I was struck by the aptness of Springstein’s “Born to Run” especially the bit about ‘suicide machine’ as I white knuckle overtook an HGV on the M1 – deciding that I needed new sounds and deciding I couldn’t cope with Heathcliffe’s beastly behaviour and Cathy’s narcissistic selfishness I put on a CD my sister had given me last week and it proved to be the tonic I was looking for.
For those of you who, like me, have no idea who 90% of the ‘celebs’ in OK magazine are (or care) and, who like me, feel that the only use for such magazines is to provide arrest lists for my secret police force when I become Dictator thus enabling them to identify those who have lead the cultural and moral decline of our nation over the last 20 years and ship them to ‘re education’ centres that I will build in Knutsford for ‘processing’; this CD was by a young up and coming rhythm beat combo with a lead who goes by the name of Plan ‘B’. The CD in question is called Strickland something or other. For a – getting you in the mood for a long drive- the combination of gangsta rap, motown, the sort of backing strings Mendelssohn would have been proud of and lyrics describing all sorts of naughty behaviour I would recommend it thoroughly. To boot, listening to such music will give you instant REESPEKT next time you pull up next to a SAXO as, according to my sister who is an authority on such things, this CD reached NUMBER 1 on the LP Hit Parade!
Anyway, I started to enjoy the drive – the van started to handle better, my speed crept up to a respectable 55mph. By Lancaster the indicators had failed again (along with the wipers) I stopped at Carlisle and fixed them by giving the fuse box a good prod with a screw driver with the help of two drivers of Type 2 VW campers in mint condition. Now, I must apologise to the VW fraternity – I know I have been a bit harsh on them in the past and their Audi driving offspring but these chaps were very helpful and very interested in the Sherpa van, the best example they had seen as active classic camper van types – praise indeed! The last 100 miles of motorway saw the van hitting 70mph – no unpleasant lurches. The A702 was navigated at an average of 53mph – not bad for a car let alone a van.
The B series thrumming away up front was in excellent fettle and having mused over my comments in Part 1 of this journey I do believe that I may have been LACKING IN MORAL FIBRE with all my whining about Gilbert & Sullivan and buttock clenching terror. By 1900 I had rounded the shoulder of the Pentland Hills, and there was Edinburgh, nestling by the see.
Why? Well I suspect 2 reasons. Firstly, old vehicles like to be used and I suspect that several hundred motorway miles had freed up the leaf suspension and broken in the new steering box hence the handling improvements. Secondly, in the words of Master Po “Because a man can see, he does not look, Gwasshopper” – I had missed the point of the van – it is, after all, a van…….
And I love it!
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