Today is the day I collect Betty Bus! Well take 2 of collecting Betty. I made my final payment and officially took possession of her on August 9th, but knew she needed to go straight to a garage for a service, a fresh MOT and some repairs.
Due to the parts she needed taking longer to arrive than anticipated, it was the end of August before I could go and collect her. My mum and I drove the 2.5hrs from London to Melton Mowbray, the plan being we would drive back together in convoy. We stopped for a delicious lunch in a lovely pub and then went to find Betty.
It was a bit of a shock seeing her again after almost 4 months (I first viewed her at the beginning of May) and she looked huge.
I managed to figure out all the controls and then the first thing went wrong. As I went to put my seatbelt on I realised that it wasn’t long enough. The garage had had to replace the old seatbelt which was damaged so Betty would pass her MOT but not even a child would be small enough to fit this new seatbelt around them!
In disbelief that we had driven so far to not bring her home because of a seat belt, I made the stupid decision to drive her any ways.
Clearly the universe decided it needed to take matters into its own hands as 10 miles into our trip home all of the fault lights on the dashboard lit up and the accelerator stopped working. There I was broken down on a dual carriageway somewhere between Melton Mowbray and the M1 in an ex mobility bus.
The next few hours were a whirl of lovely strangers stopping to help, arranging a recovery vehicle to rescue Betty, and managing to start her and get her off the dual carriageway and into a pub car park. When the recovery vehicle arrived it turned out that Betty was too big to fit on his rig. My only options were to call a company that recovers commercial sized vehicles and wait for them to show up, or try starting her to see if she would drive back to the garage we collected her from only hours earlier. I got lucky with option number 2 and left her back at the garage, then made the long journey back to London with no Betty.
The next few weeks I was in contact with the garage, who had to go back to the company that originally modified her, to get them to send a new seatbelt, as well as re run all the diagnostics to understand why she broke down.
It is now September 28th, the new seatbelt is installed and the garage could find no reason for her to breakdown. I am once again making the trip up to Melton Mowbray for attempt number 2 at bringing Betty home.
I’m both nervous and excited. Surely today everything will run smoothly and I’ll finally be able to start my biggest project to date. God I hope I don’t break down! So far the bus and cost of repairs and servicing totals almost £8,000. I can’t fathom having spent that much hard earned money on a vehicle that I can’t reliably drive. Also the number one proviso for a camper van is that it has to be able to travel to places. I’m sweating as we pull into the garage, and praying to the universe that things will go my way.
I’m handed the keys and told she’s ready to go, but that she may need a jump start. The mechanic is lovely and after getting her going he gives me a whistle-stop tour of all the controls and how to best maintain her. He’s excited to see her turned into a campervan and I promise to bring her back for her MOT next year so he can see the progress. Now it’s crunch time and I drive away from the garage, wondering how far I’ll get before things go wrong.
It’s a miracle and nothing goes wrong!
To be honest the worst thing to go wrong was that the pub we stopped at for lunch 20min after leaving the garage, wasn’t serving lunch!
Betty was a complete star and cruised the M1 and M25 like she was happy to back on the road again. To be fair after sitting in a barn for the last 4 years she was probably dying for her freedom!
I pull into the car park at home and once parked take a moment to be thankful for the safe journey and excited about starting the conversion work. I also make a mental note to replace the drivers seat with something much more comfortable before any more long journeys, as my sore bum is happy to be finished driving for the day!
First step in building a campervan, buy van. CHECK!
Live Wild and Free 