We had this Volkswagen camper from about 1997 to 2006. It lived in England, mostly with Stuart, a VW aficionado who kept a herd of them in a yard at or near Minehead, Somerset. It also stayed some years with John and Joan Heffernan on their beautiful property on a hill near Roadwater, also Somerset. In the video it will go up the Toll Road to the high country of Exmoor National Park. It was a 1980 VW, still had the engine in the rear, but of course it didn't have the 'je ne sais quoi' of the classic wagens of the 1960's. We couldn't take care of it as well as we should have because we'd only run it for two or three months at a time, and sometimes we'd miss whole years. It was always a bit of a panic to get it going again, and Stuart did his best to keep us happy. We went for about three years where we had a great deal of engine trouble, parking on hills or push starting quite a lot. It was worst worrying when we were on the ferry to and from France, wondering whether it would start up again on the other side. Holding our breath as we turned the key in the ignition. The problem was solved when we got a new starter (duh!) In the meantime we had broken down and been towed and repaired in places like Dumfries, Doncaster, London and Le Mans.
Eventually, we thought we'd had enough. Insurance was always a problem and to this day I'm not sure we ever had insurance, though we'd paid premiums to several companies over the years and got pieces of paper telling us we were insured. It's just that we never ever made a claim, so we didn't know whether it would be honored. Our license plate was part of the problem, even though we never quite understood why having a "Q" on the plate would make us difficult to insure.
But the Great White served us pretty well. She was very comfortable for camping and we used her that way quite frequently. The upstairs was a perfect storage place for our musical equipment; it could be seen through the windows and I think (little) Alice was the only person to actually sleep up there. We bonded with Bimbo the first night she slept in the VW in Tom's Field near Langton Matravers, on the Dorset coast.
