Monday, January 18, 2010

Progress? - I hope so...

No news from Autoglass prompted another phonecall to them this morning for an update. Amazingly the depot I spoke to on Friday afternoon had been closed down that evening! Their workload has been transferred to Essex and their computer systems were down so could I ring back later!

At times like these I wonder - is it just me?

Anyway, I've just got off the phone to them and apparently their Pennine depot is collecting my screen from the Swift factory today and it will be relayed down the country to my nearest depot for fitting in a couple of days.....

MOT expires this week so I have many fingers crossed.

Friday, January 15, 2010

Its coming from where????

Oh, the frustration of not getting things done....

The windscreen saga continues. The first one delivered to Autoglass in December arrived damaged and couldn't be fitted so another was ordered. Its now mid January and the clock is ticking down to the MOT expiry date and our motorhome won't pass with a cracked screen. Which in turn means that we'll be off the road and delayed for our journey to Portugal.

With no news about the replacement I started to make my own enquiries as to what the current situation was. Swift confirmed that they had stock but couldn't say whether there was an order outstanding for mine. Autoglass were very helpful at a local level but had to enquire about progress through their 'central ordering office'. Arghh, modern streamlining starting to creep in and in my experience that means problems!

Several reminder phone calls later it appears the buyer is waiting for a response from his contact in..... Italy! - The local office couldn't explain why Italy either.

I told Autoglass that the manufacturer is in Yorkshire and have the screen in stock.

Hopefully we'll have an update today.

Monday, January 11, 2010

The story so far....

Welcome to 'Motorhoming with NEILMAC', our new blog which is our way of recording our adventures during 2010

It's a year since we bought our motorhome, a 2002 Swift Bel-Air 730 and started our European travels. 12000 miles on we are back in a very cold and snowy UK organising the motorhome's annual service and MOT which is dependant on Swift supplying Autoglass with a new windscreen to replace the cracked original, hopefully this will be sorted before we want to be heading of south again for warmer climes.



Our first year saw us climbing the steep learning curve of motorhome ownership, neither of us had had, or even been in, one before! However, we soon took to the life and absolutely love it. All the once 'complicated' procedures are actually very straightforward once practiced frequently.



We've travelled extensively in France during the year solely using Aires rather than campsites to overnight in. These sites are abundant in France which has a very motorhome ('camping-car' as they say) friendly culture. We've found ourselves staying in some lovely locations varying from town and city centres, beachside, marinas and remote villages. During our travels we have also developed a motorhome enthusiasts 'magazine' style website called Club Motorhome and, on this website, we have many reviews of the places that we have been fortunate enough to stay at.



The extent of our UK travelling has,so far, only been at 3 campsites. The first, a very cold 2 day tryout in Thetford Forest last February, then a weekend in August at a campsite in Wales and then one night on a farm site in Monmouth in December where we discovered that a motorhome that weighs just under 4 tons doesn't cope with deep mud very well! Thank heavens for tractors!