It's been a while...

In the years since the last post we have been enjoying the fruits of our labours, taking the van across England and Wales, France, Andorra, Spain, Luxemburg, Belgium, Germany and Holland. We've found some amazing places and the freedom the van has given us has been priceless. Last year we spent four weeks driving all round France stopping whenever a place took our fancy, or we were tired. It still amazes me that in Europe you can stop at the majority of campsites on the day (mid summer) and get a pitch. The same can't be said for England, and I know where I would rather holiday!

In that time we've done a few tweaks here and there:

- abandoned the table in the sliding door idea and bought a kiravans door storage, which is pretty good, although we had one of the early models which had an incomplete bottom pocket - I still need to work out what to do with that.

- fitted a kirvans double seat swivel - it's a good bit of kit once you get the knack of swinging it round, which involves opening the passenger door and dropping the handbrake (which is a bit annoying when you've leveled the van on blocks), but see below.

- moved the leisure battery to behind the fridge (as a result of adding the swivel), which is a much better place for it anyway.

- added a Atera Linea bike rack. I ummed and arred whether to get a towbar mounted one (Atera Strada) to allow easy access to the back but a) they were more expensive and b) this one stays on the van meaning it is really quick to chuck the bikes on c) you can still lift the tailgate with a couple of bikes on (after getting the struts uprated) and d) the rack I got was a return so I got an even better deal!

- last week I actually removed the double swivel bench seat and replaced it with a far more comfier single seat. After selling the bench seat with swivel on ebay I was only down £50, which is well worth it in my opinion. I'll be putting in a seat swivel with safe from CMC when it arrives. I'm left with two seat bolt holes on show, but I plan to use something like an elevator bolt or adjustable foot to plug the gap. Photos to follow when the job is done.

The van has also picked up a few scratches and stone chips along the way. I wasn't quite sure how to tackle it effectively but the video below was really helpful. For stone chips I just got the right touch up paint and used a very fine paint brush (rather than the thick brush that comes with the paint) and applied the paint as best I could. I then used 1500 and then 2000 wet sandpaper to smooth it down (a bit nerve-racking the first time you do it, but you can be pretty gung-ho with it) and then used Super Resin Polish and Paint Restorer to bring the paint back up to a nice shine. It's not perfect but it is much better and will prevent rust.