# The perils of little knowledge . . .



## Silama (Sep 22, 2008)

One day recently I decided I'd worked long enough - I closed my business the following Friday and decide to do some travelling.  I'm a 60yr old Aussie (currently residing in Aus.) but would like to travel in Europe for an extended period.  I have travelled a little in US and NZ and "touristed" in some other countries.  While thinking about how to do this without breaking (into) the bank I have started to build (my third) camper for Aus.  I have fallen in love with the Unicat style of luxurious overkill.  To this end I have purchased an Isuzu 1992 FSS500 4x4 (all 11000kg GVM) with only 100,000km and fitted it with Super Single ie 385/65R18 22.5 wheels/tyres (at a ludicrous price) as a start.  I am currently designing a torsion free body mount and accommodation unit etc. (my business was engineering manufacturing).  My intention was to make this unit self contained and detachable(ie all the gear in the unit - not attached to the truck)  and eventually ship it to UK (as a start - as I only speak English) in a container and buy another truck (not necessarily a 4x4 as I am not (currently) planning any thing too adventurous) and do some extensive sealed road travelling.  I don't have a return timetable.  It's all "growing a bit like Topsy" . . . and I have discovered I am attached to my Isuzu.  So -  now I'm trying to figure out if its possible (I'm sure it's not too sensible - but that's not the point) to ship/drive the whole kit and caboodle to Europe.

Well that's enough for everyone to laugh at for the moment - but seriously if anyone has any positive input with regard to options (I have the rest of my life to fill in - and travel seems the most attractive option at the moment) I would welcome all suggestions.


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## guerdeval (Sep 22, 2008)

I know that  "grimaldi line"  operate a ro-ro service from USA, S America, Africa so maybe they can help, have you been to Europe before? , the idea of "wild camping" in Europe is probably nothing like Australia, your lucky to find any roads that are not tarmaced , I'm 60 too, everyone should finish work as early as possible as you never know whats around the next bend.


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## Deleted member 2636 (Sep 22, 2008)

Best thing is to crate the thing or see if anyone has a part filled container
Any shipping agency should be able to help on that.

It may even be easier to buy a vehicle over in the UK or Germany - have a look at http://www.mobile.de/home/index.html#0

and the motorhomes bit CLICKY

The sort of thing that you describe is a demountable unit - here's a list of manufacturers. LINKY You could easily put one onto a crew cab vehicle.


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## Deleted member 775 (Sep 22, 2008)

well i for one cannot give any helpfull hints but all my best wishes go with you oh by the way welcome to wildcamping


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## Tony Lee (Sep 23, 2008)

> as a start - as I only speak English



Probably best to avoid most of the UK and stick to Holland, Belgium, Sweden, Norway and Iceland if you want to understand the spoken word.

Having just survived 5 weeks starting from Scrabster, down the west coast to Wales and lands end (where it costs close to $10 AU to park - we didn't bother) I can understand where the Aussie term of endearment for those from the Mother Country -  "Bloody whingeing Poms" - came from. Believe me, they have plenty to whinge about --

First, there is the rain. Hardly one day without at least a few drops, and many days with plenty more than a few drops.

Then the roads. I don't mean the M1 and such. They are very good and would be even better if people could be persuaded to stop clogging them up by using them. No, I'm talking about the A roads. You would think this means it is quite good enough to drive at or even above the 60 miles per hour speed limit, but after considerable experience, I have come to think it means any bit of tar with a dotted white line down the centre. Never mind that thanks to the criminal incompetence of the entire membership of the ancient Guild of Hedge Trimmers the hedges are not only 20' high (better to go to Sweden and drive back and forth along the 25km-long tunnel - the view is the same and the road is a hell of a lot wider), but encroach on the roadway so far that each lane is about 6' wide. Not only idiots in motorhomes use these roads but full-size tour buses and even semi-trailers use them too - AND they are less inclined to scratch hell out of their paint work than the motor-homers, so you can imagine the consequences of the usual meeting point on tight bends, narrow roads and with the usual 50 cars lined up behind each.

Then there is parking - or rather an extreme lack of parking. Of course the locals have come to believe that the double yellow lines mean they can park in the main street of any country village completely oblivious to the fact that full-size buses need to pass each other in the same street - a street where the last improvement in traffic flow happened 500 years ago when they finally pursuaded the citizens to stop emptying their commodes into the gutter in the middle of the street. That widened it enough to paint a dotted line down the middle and call it a "A" road. The rest of us must pay through the nose  - another AU$10 to park and ride - or AU$5 to use the car park in the shopping centre for "up to 4 hours". Makes that expensive bottle of milk or loaf of bread seem like luxury food.

Then of course - forget any hopes of wild camping. The absolute best you will find is an occasional layby that is just wide enough to fit a motorhome let alone huge tractors pulling manure spreaders that infest all roads and occasionally pull into a layby to let the traffic past. If the stink doesn't rouse you then the squeal of 10' diameter tractor tyres rubbing along the side of your nice new motorhome surely will.

I could of course go on and on - it doesn't take very long to fall into the ways of the local inhabitants -- but the absolute pits was reached when in only the second caravan park used in the 5 weeks, I thought I would make some use of the 5 million gigawatts of energy pouring out of the BBC tower right next to the Crystal Palace van park (where burglar alarms go off day and night due to the electrical interference and you can cook meals by just putting the pots outside near the tower) and watch the local TV programs instead of using the satellite system. It was very nerve wracking as unlike Oz where they gave up such a silly system 50 years ago, the Brits have a whole system of spys who try to catch you watching TV without having paid the several hundred dollars TV license fee. Penalty about $10,000 quid - can you believe that? Kill someone driving unlicensed and without MOT and tax discs and the penalty is a few quid. Same stupid legal system as we have back home apparently.

Anyway, back to the TV. The ultimate bad experience that left the rest of the UK bad experiences in the shade was watching TV and having to put up with adverts - not any adverts mind you but totally tasteless adverts for dunny disinfectants - RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF WATCHING "THE BILL".
Can you believe it?

Maaaaate - best stay home where you won't have to put up with such indignities


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## Deleted member 775 (Sep 23, 2008)

hi there tonylee just had a quick read at your excellent post regarding the good ole uk and i seem to agree that things could be better, but a quick explanation why may help. obviously when we decided to civilize good ole oz we sent all our crims and undesirables over on ships that we used to discover most of the civilised world ,and look what they did over there made australia what it is today .  apart from everything that crawls or swims would like to kill you even when sat on the old dunny when having a good ole think  it looks as if we ought to have kept them and put them to work civilizing us he he. me thinks that looking at all the countries we have made as they are today including the usa and all of what we called the british empire we ought to have concentrated on good ole uk and then we may have been in a better state than we are now but the thing that i cannot understand is why people come to the uk then say how bad it is and then come back a second time somthing i cannot understand is why us brits are called poms shurely it is the ausies that are prisoners of  the mother state and it is the indigenous people the aborigines that are the true Australians  as for the continues rain that is what keeps this terrible country of our so lush and green something visitors from all over the world admire so much not dry dusty bush  so in future my advice is stay in good ole oz if it is so undesirable to visit our uk for all its short comings at least it is safe to park up at night in the wild and not fear some deranged bushwhacker shoot and kidnap your girlfriend and the have the authorities not take a blind bit of notice


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## guerdeval (Sep 23, 2008)

Silama, hope you do visit the UK as  most Brits love aussies, unless of course they insist on telling us how crap the place is and its so much better everywhere else, its certainly not as motorhome friendly as the Continent I'll agree but if you don't like it you can still leave at any time


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## alan and sue (Sep 23, 2008)

Tony Lee said:


> Probably best to avoid most of the UK and stick to Holland, Belgium, Sweden, Norway and Iceland if you want to understand the spoken word.
> 
> Having just survived 5 weeks starting from Scrabster, down the west coast to Wales and lands end (where it costs close to $10 AU to park - we didn't bother) I can understand where the Aussie term of endearment for those from the Mother Country -  "Bloody whingeing Poms" - came from. Believe me, they have plenty to whinge about --
> 
> ...



From a whingeing pom, am I not right in thinking that this post is one big whinge?


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## alan and sue (Sep 23, 2008)

*Whinege*

QUOTE=Tony Lee;42148]Probably best to avoid most of the UK and stick to Holland, Belgium, Sweden, Norway and Iceland if you want to understand the spoken word.

Having just survived 5 weeks starting from Scrabster, down the west coast to Wales and lands end (where it costs close to $10 AU to park - we didn't bother) I can understand where the Aussie term of endearment for those from the Mother Country -  "Bloody whingeing Poms" - came from. Believe me, they have plenty to whinge about --

First, there is the rain. Hardly one day without at least a few drops, and many days with plenty more than a few drops.

Then the roads. I don't mean the M1 and such. They are very good and would be even better if people could be persuaded to stop clogging them up by using them. No, I'm talking about the A roads. You would think this means it is quite good enough to drive at or even above the 60 miles per hour speed limit, but after considerable experience, I have come to think it means any bit of tar with a dotted white line down the centre. Never mind that thanks to the criminal incompetence of the entire membership of the ancient Guild of Hedge Trimmers the hedges are not only 20' high (better to go to Sweden and drive back and forth along the 25km-long tunnel - the view is the same and the road is a hell of a lot wider), but encroach on the roadway so far that each lane is about 6' wide. Not only idiots in motorhomes use these roads but full-size tour buses and even semi-trailers use them too - AND they are less inclined to scratch hell out of their paint work than the motor-homers, so you can imagine the consequences of the usual meeting point on tight bends, narrow roads and with the usual 50 cars lined up behind each.

Then there is parking - or rather an extreme lack of parking. Of course the locals have come to believe that the double yellow lines mean they can park in the main street of any country village completely oblivious to the fact that full-size buses need to pass each other in the same street - a street where the last improvement in traffic flow happened 500 years ago when they finally pursuaded the citizens to stop emptying their commodes into the gutter in the middle of the street. That widened it enough to paint a dotted line down the middle and call it a "A" road. The rest of us must pay through the nose  - another AU$10 to park and ride - or AU$5 to use the car park in the shopping centre for "up to 4 hours". Makes that expensive bottle of milk or loaf of bread seem like luxury food.

Then of course - forget any hopes of wild camping. The absolute best you will find is an occasional layby that is just wide enough to fit a motorhome let alone huge tractors pulling manure spreaders that infest all roads and occasionally pull into a layby to let the traffic past. If the stink doesn't rouse you then the squeal of 10' diameter tractor tyres rubbing along the side of your nice new motorhome surely will.

I could of course go on and on - it doesn't take very long to fall into the ways of the local inhabitants -- but the absolute pits was reached when in only the second caravan park used in the 5 weeks, I thought I would make some use of the 5 million gigawatts of energy pouring out of the BBC tower right next to the Crystal Palace van park (where burglar alarms go off day and night due to the electrical interference and you can cook meals by just putting the pots outside near the tower) and watch the local TV programs instead of using the satellite system. It was very nerve wracking as unlike Oz where they gave up such a silly system 50 years ago, the Brits have a whole system of spys who try to catch you watching TV without having paid the several hundred dollars TV license fee. Penalty about $10,000 quid - can you believe that? Kill someone driving unlicensed and without MOT and tax discs and the penalty is a few quid. Same stupid legal system as we have back home apparently.

Anyway, back to the TV. The ultimate bad experience that left the rest of the UK bad experiences in the shade was watching TV and having to put up with adverts - not any adverts mind you but totally tasteless adverts for dunny disinfectants - RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF WATCHING "THE BILL".
Can you believe it?

Maaaaate - best stay home where you won't have to put up with such indignities[/QUOTE]

From a whingeing pom, am I not right in thinking that this post is one big whinge?


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## Tony Lee (Sep 25, 2008)

> somthing i cannot understand is why us brits are called poms shurely it is the ausies that are prisoners of the mother state



I think it is the correct way around mandrake. Assies USED TO BE prisoners of old mother England, but once they got out to OZ and managed to get all of HM soldiers off the rum and sober enough to do their jobs properly, the place went ahead in leaps and bounds - helped along by all of the free Brits who felt like escaping the Mother Country and who started up the colonies in the rest of Australia.  Wasn't long before they started winning all the sports events right up to the present day when the venerable London Times admitted that OZ trounced GB in the 2008 medals count as well. 
Nowadays the current Prisoners Of Mother State ie the British - apart from those who are too poor to change their pounds into  enough Euros to pay for a ferry trip - are escaping their prison and apparently heading for southern Spain in such large numbers that they are collectively  causing major upset to the locals.

(I'd put lots of smiley faces in amongst my posts, but I'm assured that the British - unlike the ex-British who went to the americas - DO understand the use of irony and sarcasm, so I won't bother and will leave it up to the reader to get all hot and bothered or have a good laugh depending on their state of mind.)


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## Deleted member 4053 (Sep 25, 2008)

*tonylee*

Hi there, at least in Edinburgh we yelled GARDYLOO before emptying commodes in to street too bad if you did not move quickly enough!

We then modernised by building Outgangs through the back of the houses, this then ran down into the Norloch "one of the early Sewage systems."

the Norloch is now Princes Street gardens which enjoys very rich soil for the plant life

always some good things happen from ****

All the best in your travels

weez
Tony


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