Shake,rattle and roll

On our caravan trip, we used some secondary roads, all bitumen but there were a couple that were narrow and a few holes on the edges. Warren always makes a point of pulling off the road where possible when a couple or more vehicles are behind us. Our first stop on the first day for lunch was about an hour, ten minutes up the road. We have topped there several times before and it is a free camp with a power box and a toilet block.

Everything was fine in the van and we enjoyed sitting inside eating lunch. Next stop was our stop for the next two nights. Parked the van and opened the door to be greeted with the TV upside down on the floor and a few tins rolling around the floor as well. Apparently one of us had not secured the bottom latch of the pantry. Not damage there though.

TV was a different story. We take it off the arm and place it upside on the bed to travel, never a problem before. However we realized that each time we have done it before the bed had been made up with a doona. This time the bed had only been made up to a sheet and the doona had travelled inside the car due to having been washed and put inside the house instead of the van. The sheet had acted as a slide and I guess with some movement and braking etc, The TV had slid down the bed and straight on to the floor.

My thought was "How much is a new TV and DVD player?"We gingerly picked it and turned it over, the screen was intact so we slotted it into the arm on the wall and turned it on. It fired up but no picture so we attached the aerial, but still no picture. Warren tested lots of things and found it wasn't the TV it was the connection for the aerial!

This is after its slide to the ground, a couple of rub marks and that's all.

We had some reinforcements done on the outside of the van and it seems the guys when fixing some chequerplate, drilled through the wires for the aerial.

This is how we solved that problem in the short term. Warren has since threaded the wires through the pantry and back outside to the pole that is our aerial pole.

One other stop we had and a light shade had fallen from the ceiling, again no damage was done, didn't even break! Our mattress moves forward on the base each time so a small shelf it going to put at the end to stop it going forward. We come home after each shake down trip with either some repairs or improvements to be made.

We are considering replacing the seats as they are okay in the short term but after a couple of hours of sitting they become quite flat (I guess as the caravan is over thirty years old, they have had a lot of bums sitting on them). A trip to Clark Rubber is in order to see if we can get thicker/denser foam rubber.