….………back in the late 60’s when Mum and Dad decided to sell up their thriving cottage café in Ilfracombe, N Devon to buy a motor-home and “follow the sun and surf”. Most of our family and friends viewed this idea with shock and horror because to achieve their dream they had to sell everything they owned and had only the princely sum of £17 per week to live on. To supplement their income they planned to pick grapes and fruit whenever they could – this at the ages of 58 and 60!
In due course they sold up and bought their motorhome (Commer Highwayman) and this was to be their home for the next 10 years travelling extensively throughout Europe, Morocco,Yugoslavia and Greece and mostly wild camping to save money. They had no bathroom/shower/toilette – a chemical portaloo bucket arrangement behind a screen did the trick! Mum cooked the most wonderful meals using just a two ring cooker with a hotplate, grill, pressure cooker, a Moroccan tagine and a circular cake ring that she cooked delicious fruit cakes in on top of the stove. One of my lasting memories is of her warm girdle scones with lashings of butter. Mum was a very inventive cook and nothing daunted her – often entertaining 10 or 12 people. They had none of today’s sophisticated aids to camping and as most of their camping was wild, relied on gas or oil lamps. The van came with a small gas fridge and one leisure battery which my father (with the help of a home built inverter)used to run a radio and record-player for entertainment.
My father kept a daily diary of their travels and make interesting reading! Tales of frozen gas, milk and eggs were quite common along with stone-throwing children, the Gestapo type police in Spain while Franco was still in power, the Civil Guard in Morocco where to stop you they strung spike chains across the road. Driving as far as the Sahara Desert until the road ran out and bartering with cast off clothes (often ours) for goulimine beads from the nomadic Blue People of the desert. Mum getting stung by a scorpion and being treated in a Moroccan Hospital-not very pleasant. The numerous stray dogs and cats they befriended and looked after only to see them rounded up and shot or worse still poisoned. Of course there are wonderfully happy stories as well of friends met and made from all over the world, of parties, surfing the big waves at Tagazhout in Morocco, camping and walking along deserted beaches and in the mountains, playing golf and kite flying. They never did get to pick grapes, but they did pick fruit in Essex in return for free camping!
Below is a couple of photos taken at Tagazhout, their wild Camp pitch and getting their water supply!.
The travels of my parents inevitably influenced Arthur and I and we became hooked on the idea of owning a motorhome when we retired, although we both agreed we could never sell up everything as my parents had done. We had always enjoyed driving and touring type holidays and our motor-sport hobby took us to various racing circuits around the country. Arthur had bough an old Ford Van and converted it into a basic motorhome, which we had painted bright yellow to match our racing car, we were known as the Yellow Perils!
After a lapse of twenty years, our thoughts of retirement and buying a motorhome uppermost, we began the long process of research and find. One day during a visit to Plymouth we called in at the then Plymouth Motor Homes and on wandering around came across a Pilote Galaxy 27MX with no price tag on but we thought we would take a look inside. Well it was love at first sight! We just had to have it as for us it had the WOW factor and when tentatively asking the vital question “how much?” we were delighted that it was in our price range. I won’t go into details of the deal but a word of warning here, we agreed a price, paid our deposit and went home to sort out cash. The salesman kept pushing us to settle the deal as soon as possible, however it took a while for us to sort out our money and Arthur is not one to be hurried into anthing. Eventually the big day came and all went well but with the promise from the Works Manager of fixing a few things that needed doing at a later date. The point of this story is that at the time we were collecting our van Plymouth Motorhomes went bust! We were very, very lucky not to lose the van and our money, not so for some people who did lose everything.
So, in November 2002 we became the proud of our first “proper” motorhome. I was still working although due to retire at the end of January 2003 so we decided to make our first trip out to the Shepton Mallet Show to buy equipment for the van. The weather was dry and cold when we set off from Torquay. We were so excited to be off in our new home, like a couple of kids – little did we know what was in store for us!
We duly arrived at the show and as we were driving along looking for somewhere to park up I said to Arthur “Look there’s a flag with Pilote on it just like our van” So we drove down the track and stopped by the flag where we saw lots of other vans marked Pilote so we thought this would be a good place to camp. Across the entrance was a wire and a man in charge the wire politely asked “Are you Members?” We replied “No, but we would like to be” (hoping that it was the Pilote Owners Club)”In that case you can come in and we will find a spot for you” said the nice man. Soon we were set up but refused the offer of electric hook-up as we had nothing electric with us. Everyone was most helpful and we were soon chatting to everyone and filling in the necessary forms to join the club. It had become gradually colder as the day went on and by evening the temperature had really dropped. We spent our first night in the van huddled in our sleeping bags with the temperature as low as minus 8 degrees!
In the morning Arthur got up to put on the gas heating and to boil a kettle- nothing! We decide we must have run out of gas so Arthur changes the gas but it still won’t work. After a while we eventually decide we will have to go home because by this time we are so cold we think hypothermia is setting in! Then, to the rescue come Mick to plug us in to the electric, Sylvia with an electric fan heater and kettle to make us a hot drink and John and Alan who then explained to us that our big problem is that we have BLUE gas bottles instead of RED and so our gas had frozen! Also that our heater boiler dumps water when the temperature drops below freezing. Ahhhhhh now we understand and memories of mum and dad’s stories of waking up in the mountains to find everything frozen come flooding back!
So we didn’t return home but spent a wonderful few days meeting a really helpful and friendly group of people and learning a lot of ‘do’s and don’ts from some very experienced campers. We certainly learnt a lot more about our Pilote motorhome.
Below are a couple of photos of our yellow Ford Thames Minibus conversion, our yellow MG Midget race car and our first Pilote Motorhome.
