We turned our back on the Alps and headed to the Unicat workshop. Time for some adjustments and upgrades before setting off in a different direction.
Spent a week at Lets Gets on the French border. We were there to meet up with an old friend and ski. It snowed quite a lot. The slopes were crowded. Many Brits on package tours.
This used to be a very popular location for motor homes. Close to a chair lift. The ‘Aire de Camping Cars’ costs €18 per day. For which you get – nothing. Well, not quite, there is a hole in one corner of the car park to empty your washing up water. However, that really is the full scope of the facilities. When the inspectors came round, they took our money and then told us we were not welcome. Too big. Do not come back. How big is too big? They got very vague on this and shuffled a bit. Oh well. Lets Gets just got a little less popular.
We headed into Austria, again, following reports of lots of snow. We got completely stuck because of weight restrictions, again. In fact there were extra restrictions in place because of the snow. After a couple of days we did manage to reach one ski resort but were told quite firmly that we could not camp there. So we left Austria disappointed, again, and headed for Germany, again.
Garmisch is really the only serious ski area in Germany but it is lovely. There was fresh snow, good runs, good views and good restaurants.
Its the start of the ski season and the start of a small tour of the Alps for Baloo. Alpe d’Huez, at 1800m, is perched high above the Romanche valley which is frequently filled with cloud (at least, it was while we were there). We had to share a motor home park with many other vehicles. Fantastic views and very convenient for the slopes.
Austria is a very pretty place. In the snow it looks really fabulous. We learned that Baloo is impeccably behaved in fresh snow – breezing over the Obertauern pass we were the only truck that did not need snow chains. But being truck sized in Austria appears to be a bit of a problem. For a start you need a ‘GoBox’ tracking unit to pay the rather expensive road tolls but the real kicker was all the weight restrictions. We found it really difficult to get anywhere without encountering a restricted road. Eventually we rolled into a town where, from the center, every exit had a weight restriction. Including the road we had come in on. At this point we gave up and took the most direct route out of Austria.
Trekking North through Bosnia we found some wonderful lakes, mountains forests and roads
We also came across minefields. I once had a close encounter with a land mine and have been a bit nervous of them ever since. Inevitably we wondered if the unmarked areas were really safe, so we tended not to linger anywhere or wander too far off the road.
Then one morning we woke up in the snow. We had moved from summer to winter in just a few days.
Building a vehicle like Baloo takes a few years. Some of this is the physical construction but the greater part is the planning, preparation and discussion necessary to drive the project.
When I first met up with Thomas Ritter at the Unicat workshop, I had a few clear ideas about what I wanted but only a few. I also had many questions and a massive list of uncertainties. We spent a whole day looking at vehicles, talking about my plans and discussing possibilities. By the time I left my head was awash with ideas and dreams. It was all possible. The life that Diane and I had discussed many times might actually be possible. The vehicle would be based on a commercial 6×6 truck with a motorcycle mounted on the back.
Diane and I have a long history of camper vans and motorhomes. We had a good sense of issues that needed addressing so that we could travel, full time, in a vehicle. We were far less certain of how to resolve these issues.
One of the fundamental problems is simply that of capacity. Fresh water, grey water (from the shower and sink) and black water (toilet) are heavy. A conventional camper is limited to a maximum weight of 3,500kg so that it can be driven on an ordinary (class B) car licence. Despite being made of lightweight materials the vehicle and its systems will take up most of the allowable weight. The final payload is typically just a few hundred kilograms so total water capacity will usually be well under 200kg. This translates to just a few days of water, especially if you want a shower each day. The toilet will be full in a few days. Not a problem if you stay on campsites but makes going further afield difficult.
Similar considerations apply to batteries. It is difficult to carry enough capacity for more than a day or two and difficult to keep them charged.
In the winter keeping a camper van warm can be hard work. LPG is the usual energy source for heating, cooking and water heating. LPG is compact but even so our experience was that we could easily burn 10kg a week in the Alps and that meant a weekly trip to buy gas.
Our previous camper was a beautiful tag-axled Dethleffs Esprit. With a curbside weight of 5,500kg (class C1) this gave us a bit more scope but even so, being more than just a few days away from a campsite services was tricky. Worse, as a vehicle it was horribly compromised. The immense rear overhang would ground out on the slightest inclination and the front wheels would lose traction on even slightly damp grass.
With a truck, the payload is measured in tonnes. A 6×6 can go anywhere. A motorcycle is the perfect complement to a somewhat ponderous truck.
There was clearly a great solution here. For me there were two immediate problems. I could not drive a truck and had never ridden a motorcycle.
I was never very aware of Albania having Alps. But it does. Really good ones. Steep, remote and spectacular.
NW from Shkodër we wandered up a terrific valley and finally settled for a couple of days at a lovely little spot nestled in the curls of the road. Six cars a day. None at night. Felt like we had the place to ourselves.
As the sun set there was not a light visible anywhere. Not even the glimmer of a farmhouse light in the valley. Clear skies and a new moon made for stellar panoramas. We spent quite a few hours huddled under blankets watching for meteorites.
South from Montenegro into Albania and we came across a wonderful campsite by the side of the immense Lake Skadar. The lake is one of Southern Europe’s major bird reserves. We did see many birds but they all looked a bit like seagulls to me.
Shortly after we arrived another truck turned up with another travelling couple. The remarkable Fred & Alice with their two lovely children Estaban & Ruben. Their story is here http://www.lespetitsvoyageurs.fr/
South from Croatia we continued to follow the beautiful coast road. We drove through a tiny bit of Bosnia to get into Montenegro. A couple of days later we found a perfect little beach spot with a bar just 30 minutes walk away.
Beautiful and ancient Croatian city. Still a popular tourist destination despite being heavily shelled in the ‘homeland war’ of 1991. More recently used as a set for Game of Thrones and Star Wars. Baloo is way to big for the streets and car parks of Dubrovnik so we parked several kilometers away and bobbed in on the bike.
This was supposed to be a bit of a cultural day. What we actually found, Venice at high tide, was damp, decaying and smelt of sewage.
The day after we visited the water was 0.5m higher. This caused lots of problems.
Vehicles like Baloo do not come off the shelf. They are quite uncommon. In fact our concept of a dream vehicle seemed to be something unique until we met up with Unicat.
The plan, here, is to post a series of articles describing how we set about working with Unicat to come up with the sort of vehicle we wanted. Unicat are, in my opinion, the absolute world leaders in this sort of thing. You can find them here: https://www.unicat.net/
The vehicle is a genuine mobile home. Not a camper van. The difference is to do with compromise. When camping you accept using sleeping bags and paddling across the grass to use a shower. That is all great fun. For a while. Eventually you want to get back to your proper bed and your own shower. We wanted a mobile home that we could live in for years on end so we needed a vehicle that did not compromise how we lived.
Baloo is what we ended up with.
Industrial Camping is the term used by Unicat owners to describe camping at the Unicat factory. We did several weeks of Industrial Camping as part of the process of moving into our new home. Packing was a big part of this. Packing everything into lockers, drawers and cupboards. Clothes, tools, equipment, food, supplies. Everything apparently needed packing at least four times, unpacking, rearranging and packing again. Eventually things started to fit into place but it was all remarkably time-consuming and difficult. The essential question of what to take, when examined in detail, is almost impossibly hard to answer. We spent an awful lot of time packing things, thinking carefully about it, changing our mind and then unpacking them again. Ultimately some order emerged. We were pleased with some of the packing and when boredom set in we stuffed everything else into boxes marked ‘misc’.
