Homer’s first birthday.

Sunday 14th January 2024.

We haven’t exactly given Homer an easy first year with us, having arrived back today from 35 days away in Spain and France he has covered 9,624 miles since collection. We have put in 1,620l of diesel at a cost of £2,280😵‍💫 fun isn’t cheap.

He has had a small amount of modification with an extra lithium leisure battery and a beefed up solar panel both of which work well.

For cooking and keeping the central heating going in wintery conditions we have used 107 litres of LPG ranging from 60-90p a litre.

We have spent a total of 124 nights away from home staying in car parks, marinas, camping aires and campsites oh and Alison and Peters drive, 23 of those were free and we paid from 3€ up £32 to stay at the variety of places we use.

We have managed to go to the tip of Cornwall, out to the east coast of Yorkshire, up to Edinburgh and to the coast of Wales plus of course numerous places in England. Altogether we have visited France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Spain and some of those more than once.

Have we been satisfied with Homer? Well it’s a tale of two halves.

The Peugeot Boxer aspect has been superb, driving is easy and comfortable it has plenty of power and it’s 6 speed gearbox is great, we are euro 6 compliant ( damn Adblue) so we can if we wish travel into cities, we do have the relevant stickers on the windscreen for France and Germany.

Then comes the living side of Homer, we chose the layout with an end bathroom which is superb and a large kitchen with plenty of storage, a good fridge, microwave( good for storage😊). But there are downsides, the cooker is flimsy and on one of our first trips the door fell off it was held on with minuscule screws. Even after being returned to the dealer to be sorted the door still came open as we drove along and I ended up solving the problem myself. The drawers and cupboards have a mind of their own and even after we check they are shut before we start off invariably one will fly open, catches are not sturdy enough. The dining table was in it’s own storage cupboard on pull out runners, that didn’t last long 10 mm screws aren’t up to the job.

These are design faults that could be overcome with a little more thought by the manufacturers.

Are we disappointed, no not really we have learned to overcome the problems and have beefed up items where we feel they are flimsy. Learning to live in a small space teaches you to be tidy and organised and everything has its own place, on a 35 day trip such as we have just undertaken where we needed winter wear and summer wear, there is very little space to gather extras as you go along.

So here’s to Homer’s second birthday who knows where he will have taken us, well I do have ideas in mind, we will see, as they say “watch this space”😊