Team Basil were up with the larks this morning because Basil had to go to a friendly Hymer dealer, Dürrwang GmbH in Dortmund, the place where we had discovered him languishing and unwanted 4 years ago.
The journey only took us 30 minutes and we were actually there before they opened. They quickly fitted Basil in to have his mirror replaced (you may remember it just fell off in Greece for no particular reason); have his over cab bed repaired (a bolt had come out through vibration and Sarah and I had struggled valiantly to replace it, but failed); and to have Basil’s 4thwater ingress inspection to maintain his Hymer warranty. We were told it would take less than 2 hours and we should wait.
Since we last visited Dürrwang’s they have moved to much bigger premises and best of all they allow dogs into the showroom. Their selection of motorhomes is simply enormous when compared with British dealers. They had just about ever model of Hymer in the showroom to view and outside we estimated they had more than 200 new motorhomes – mostly Hymer, but they also sell Carado (the downmarket offering from Hymer) and the eyewateringly expensive Niesmann Birchoff (the top of the Hymer tree some costing over €250,000!). It is no wonder that the discounts are so good from German dealers given the purchasing power they have.
Interestingly the area around Dürrwang’s new premises used to be a coal field and instead of raising the whole site to the ground, as we have mostly done in Britain, the pit head winches have been left in place as a sort of memorial. We saw others as we drove away from Dortmund later and sign posts to a route of “industrial culture”. Nice to see industrial heritage celebrated in this way.
We killed time drinking free coffee and tea and endlessly looking into new vans and concluded that Basil really couldn’t be improved upon for our needs with the possible exception of one model for which we would have to win the lottery.
The work actually took the best part of three hours, the reason being that the little bolt Sarah and I had been unable to relocate in relation to the overcab bed, had taken two qualified mechanics, which deal with these vehicles daily, two hours to fix! It made Sarah and I feel a bit less inadequate.
So by the time all the paperwork was sorted it was already lunchtime. We discovered Dürrwang have a Stellplatz on site, which will be useful in future, and best of all they have a fancy machine to automatically empty and clean the toilet cassette. So before we left I had to have a go. It costs one Euro and you simply slide your cassette into a specially designed hole, a louvred door closes and the machine does its thing, returning the cassette clean and sweet smelling!
After a quick lunch we set off for France, where we are going to get Mabel and Melek wormed for their pet passport, which must be done more that 24 hours before we get the tunnel on Monday. It is a five hour journey so we have broken it on a car park in Arendonk, Belgium (51.322629, 5.085940 Free with no services). It turns out to be a car park for a swimming pool. My databases say an overnight stay is permitted but it looks a bit informal to be honest.
