{"id":35197,"date":"2019-04-12T18:19:18","date_gmt":"2019-04-12T17:19:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ourtour.co.uk\/home\/?p=35197"},"modified":"2021-08-23T12:07:47","modified_gmt":"2021-08-23T11:07:47","slug":"our-top-ten-scariest-motorhome-driving-experiences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ourtour.co.uk\/home\/our-top-ten-scariest-motorhome-driving-experiences\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Top Ten Scariest Motorhome Driving Experiences"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Travelling in a motorhome’s been an incredibly fulfilling experience for me and Ju (and we like to think the wee man Charlie too<\/a>). We’ve felt a sense of incredible freedom in the ability to go almost wherever we wanted whenever we wanted, to stay in simply beautiful places, and to find a high degree of inner peace in living a simple life. In the interest of balance in all things though: life on the road in a multi-tonne rolling bungalow on wheels brings the occasional face full of cold-water-fear when driving the routes of Europe and North Africa, most of which isn’t warranted, but we face it nevertheless. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Scary unlit tunnel in Norway, reminded us of the opening credits for Dr Who<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For some (most?) of you hardy lot, you’ll lose no sleep over this stuff, but for others we want show some solidarity. Over time there’ll probably be a few roads which have your eyes wide, hands white and arm hairs on end. These are ours, and thankfully we survived ’em all without a scratch (on us that is: our vans have had a few scrapes).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fun Drive 1: Kaboom! Exploding in Spain<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Although I passed my driving test aged 17 (on my third, terrifying attempt), I avoided driving anywhere alone until I was at least 22; I was that afraid of the road. Ironically, that choice could well have killed me and my two mates when, having refused to do my share of driving in an epic 10 day cross-USA road-trip, we all fell asleep at 60mph on an endless road in the desert. We woke up pretty sharpish as we bounced along besides the road with bushes flying over the car, and by some black magic my mate managed to miss the all obstacles getting us back up onto the black top. Anyway, sorry, sorry, I digress!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the time we came to start our first long tour back in 2011, that was way behind me. I’d been driving for over 15 years without crashing, including several trips to France, Germany and Belgium in our campervan (I’m not including an array of motorbike crashes, or that time someone rear-ended our hired removals van, or the time someone drove into the side of my VW Polo, and maybe a few other minor dings…). So when we came to start touring in our motorhome Dave<\/a>, I wasn’t all that nervous about the driving, although I had nerd-idly analysed the various problems we might face and ranked driving as the number 1 danger. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nothing happened for the first few weeks as we pootled our way down through France, giddy at the sensation of escape, having replaced the skylight which we lost on day 1<\/a>, fixed the warm fridge and tried to explain we needed a new leisure battery in French. Over into Spain and a few days in, a rather large bang on a motorway<\/a> threw reality at us somewhat starkly. The tyres on Dave were, how should I say, knackered when we bought him, and in our fear of spending our freedom fund we could have ended the tour there and then. An aged, cracked and worn rear tyre gave up trying to hold on, ripping itself apart and smashing the wheel arch, bending the drop-down step and, in a cloud of dust, blew apart one of the seat cupboards inside the van. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Our motorhome’s tyre after a blowout – the whole of the tread removed itself<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I was driving at the time and my initial flash of thought was that we’d snapped in two like the Titanic. I got on the brakes and pulled us onto the hard shoulder, which catapulted Charlie over my left shoulder from the seat bench behind me and into the footwell, where he struggled free, dazed but unharmed. Getting out and inspecting the damaged van I realised I’d cocked up big style: the cost of new tyres is nothing compared with the potential physical harm to us if this happened again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lessons learned:<\/strong> The van was completely fixed and mostly paid for by insurance, but we learned to inspect the tyres and consider swapping them as soon as they get old (over five years) or wear out (for us this happens before they get five years old anyway). I considered buying cheaper tyres at one point<\/a>, being vigorously persuaded by you guys not do this, and have since only fitted big brand rubber to our motorhomes. We should also have restrained Charlie (by law in some countries) although I have to admit he was usually free to walk around the van but Ju ensured he wasn’t able to get at the driver or any controls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fun Drive 2: Through the Dark Heart of Bucharest<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Whenever we have to do something a bit tough these days, we joke about the day we drove through Bucharest, capital of Romania. What could be worse than that? It was a Friday afternoon, and we’d come over the border from Bulgaria that morning and were heading to the city’s only campsite to the north<\/a>, so we needed to take the ring road around the city. We plugged in the GPS co-ordinates of the site and headed off, blissfully unaware of the fact we’d soon be fighting for street space with every van, tram, truck and car in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Traffic on the way into Bucharest
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We can’t blame Bucharest for our hours of forcing our way through endless streams of vehicles, but we do anyway, harumph. The fact we hadn’t got Eastern Europe in our satnav didn’t exactly help of course (ahem), and when we missed the ring road the screen went blank and off we went into the Heart of Darkness that is rush hour Bucharest. A local later posted on this video with a smile, saying we’d managed to transform a 15 min trip into a 2 hour drive-athon. Whoops. We did get a good feel for the centre of the city though, driving past Ceau\u0219escu’s palace at one point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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