In the late 1960s or early 1970s my parents took my brother and I for a holiday in our car and caravan to Southern France, Northern Italy and Switzerland. The holiday was fraught with problems concerning my Dad’s Triumph 2.5 PI car. The one I remember vividly occurred in Aosta in Italy. The car’s alternator packed up and as a result the car’s battery discharged and the swish Triumph ground to a halt.
To cut a very long story short, we were towed to the small workshop of one Bruno Bazetti, at least that is the name which has stuck in my memory. He removed the alternator from the car and to Dad’s horror threw it into the corner of his workshop and I think used the German word “Kaput”. He then proceeded to spend the whole day, while we whiled away the time in the sun baked backsteets of Aosta, manufacturing a new alternator from scratch, using the Triumph one as a template. It worked, Bruno requested some ridiculously small payment and we made it home. The Triumph dealers at home were amazed and we used an Italian friend to write a letter of thanks to Bruno.
Something similar happened to us today. As I explained a few weeks ago our television was broken almost as soon as we crossed the English Channel. Since today we were sailing from Bari, which is a big city, we thought we would try to buy a new 12v television. I found a place called Camping Levante on the internet, but when we arrived there this morning, I was not hopeful. Camping Levante was crammed into a tiny area near to Bari, with barely room for 5 motorhomes. Nevertheless we pulled in, taking up all remaining space on their forecourt.
Camping Levante
The parts section was bigger than I had imagined and sure enough they seemed to have a television for sale. The owner spoke English and confirmed that it was indeed a 12v television with the correct connections for satellite. He came out to Basil and tried fitting it, but it was too big for the space available. I thought that was the end of the matter, but he had other ideas. He had a look at our old TV and said he would have a go at fixing it.
He and a colleague worked on our tv for over an hour. They goT out the circuit boards, unsoldered the old connector and then made a completely new connector out of some co-axial cable and soldered that in place. Eventually they refitted the TV and lo and behold it worked. How much I asked. €35 came the reply!! Absolutely amazing. If I had gone to my local motorhome dealer and bought a TV I would probably have to make an appointment two weeks later to have it fitted and no way would they get involved with poking about in the innards of a TV. Bravo Camping Levante.
TVs fancy new connector
From there we did a big shop at Auchan and then on to the port at Bari. WE parked on the quayside next to a huge burnt out ferry. It was very off putting to read on Wikipedia that this was the Norman Atlantic which caught fire on a similar route to ours in December 2014, resulting in 9 deaths and 19 unaccounted for.
The Norman Atlantic
Loading was predictably chaotic compared with the regimentation at British ports. However we are now onboard. Basil is parked up and plugged into mains electricity. Suddenly there are lots of Brits. Well, two motorhomes and two cars. We set sail in about an hour and arrive in Patra in Greece at 1pm tomorrow. We will be sleeping and living in Basil during the journey. I hope the sea is as calm as my research on sea states suggests it should be!!
Basil on board