Getting back on the Road - a cautionary tale of servicing.

As the days begin to lengthen, the sun climbs a little higher in the sky and February draws to a close, it is clearly time to get the caravan off the drive and set up for the new season. Not that the season ever needs to end, of course - there are still places to go and sights to be seen in November, December and January after all. But at some point it is important to check everything apart and make sure it's all working properly.

In short, you need to get the beast serviced.

Now, there are many things you can do yourself - I'm so insanely proud of replacing the flush on our chemical toilet that I might even write a blog about it at some point - but if only to make sure there's somebody to take responsibility when a part fails, it's a good idea to get the professionals to take care of it.

For the first few years of our caravan ownership, this involved hitching up and taking the snail back up the road to the dealership we bought it from so that their workshop could give her a thorough going over. There were a couple of drawbacks with this arrangement, however. For a start, while I'm not naming the dealership - for reasons which may become evident later I'm just going to refer to them as the "Disgraced Dealer" - they're a couple of hours down the road. Taking the caravan there and back therefore used up the better part of half the day. Twice, once when I took the 'van and dropped it off, and once when I went back to pick it up again, usually the following weekend.

Eventually, I began to regard this annual expedition as a bit of a waste of both time and fuel. I also came to regard the dealership as a little slapdash in their attitude. The caravan began to start coming back with minor things not done, the final straw coming when they neglected to connect the lead which enabled the on-board battery to be charged from the mains hook-up or the tow-car. Since the pump always operates from the battery, its failure to charge left us with no running water, and therefore no shower. Since this happened while we were pitched in the middle of a field with no access to a toilet block our inability to shower was more than a little bit of an issue.

We were saved on that occasion by the generosity of the farm's owner, who let us keep charging the battery up in one of his sheds, but having no desire to repeat the experience we resolved to find an alternative service provider.

Initially we looked around other caravan dealers, taking the view that pretty much any of them would do a better job. The problem with that of course was that we had no real way of knowing how good their work would be, and none of the dealerships we considered were any closer to our house than our original, disgraced, provider. The vaguely pointless trips up the motorway would be forced to continue - surely there must be a better way?

It was Mrs Snail who found the answer.

There is a growing band of  specialist caravan engineers who will come to you and service your 'van wherever you are. It's the perfect service - not only do you not have to trolley your way up and down the motorway, the service is carried out on your drive not in a dealer's workshop. This means that you can see what the engineer is doing, which turns out to be important.

You see, it turns out that in the privacy of their workshop  the team of caravan engineers who I had paid every year for several years to service my little house on wheels weren't actually doing a whole hell of a lot. Being a trusting type I'd just been forking over the cash and assuming that the work was being done to a competent standard. They told me their work was top notch, and I had to take their word for it because I was forbidden to set foot in their aircraft hanger of a workshop "for my own safety".

Hmmm.

We called in Steve, who operates his Caratec mobile Caravan Servicing and repair business from Sheffield. He brought his trailer full of tools and parts up to Road Snail's base in Harrogate and spent most of a cold, overcast February saturday on my drive. He showed me everything he did and explained why he was doing it.

Now, I suspect there may have been other reasons I was never allowed into the Disgraced Dealer's workshop.

Steve greased up my jockey wheel, because it was essentially lubrication free. He did the same thing for the corner steadies. It seems that they hadn't been done in a while. He checked my tyres - both should have been replaced before the previous service, which had been carried out a year earlier by Disgraced Dealer, who had either failed to notice they were past the end of their recommended safe life, or noticed and failed to tell me. Genuinely not sure which is worse.

While we're on the subject of potentially dangerous errors, the gas exhaust flue for the 'fridge was pointing into the 'van rather than out through the vent - something which was not actually a problem because I don't think we've ever run the 'fridge off gas, but  Disgraced Dealer wasn't to know that and if we had we would potentially have been pumping carbon Monoxide into our living space - something which we all should have filed under "not a great idea".

There was more, but you get the idea.

By contrast Steve not only showed me what he was doing, but whenever he replaced something he gave me the part he'd removed so that I could see that it had been done. And then, after spending about seven hours on my freezing cold driveway, he charged me considerably less than Disgraced Dealer used to. What can I say? He was the very model of professionalism and efficiency. His work (which we have subsequently tested with a four night trip down to the midlands) was neat, thorough and effective.  I can't recommend him highly enough - if you're in the Yorkshire/Lincolnshire/Derbyshire area I strongly suggest you check out his website.

If you're not close enough to Steve for him to come and take care of your Caravan, I strongly suggest you find a similar mobile operative near wherever you are - just check and make sure they're members of the "Mobile Caravan Engineer's Association".

Once Steve had done his thing all that remained was to hitch the 'van up to the car and take her out for the first run of the year - about which, more later...

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