Day trip to Beja

 Wednesday 31/08/22

We took another day trip in Bokkie today, partly to do some food shopping, partly to give Bokkie a decent test drive and partly to try and see more of this area of Portugal.  

We picked Beja, a historic city just over an hour's drive from us, and it was a lovely day out.  

Bokkie performed fantastically so we're really hopeful we have finally made progress on the intermittent fault.  All the work we have done has made a real difference to her and she seems much more smooth on the road.  We have inserted some foam holders for our plates and non-slip pads under all the cutlery as Bokkie occasionally goes over a speed bump too quickly and, as the kitchen is right at the back, items sometime get noisily re-arranged.  She was as quiet as a mouse today, drove like a Rolls and behaved impeccably. Go Bokkie!

The chapel of Saint Andrew at Beja

We feel like honorary Portuguese already, we always have to have an espresso before anything 
else can happen.

The impressive castle keep

I can't see any savages, just as well as I forgot my bow and arrow.

The first floor of the castle; a knight's tomb

Beja was a lovely place to visit, the weather was stunning and we had a great lunch in town before finally heading home.  

The Castle visit was definitely the highlight of the day - it was built by King Denis of Portugal in 1310, as part of the policy to strengthen the defence of this territory, although it's foundations sit on Roman ruins which date from as early as the 3rd century. 

The most significant part of the Castle is the imposing Keep, with its battlements and the veranda all around, all built in marble.  The interior consists of 3 floors and the top is reached by 183 very narrow steps - called the snail staircase, (we climbed them all!) which leads to the most amazing views over the city and countryside; one can only imagine the battles that have taken place over this land over the years.

The very ornate Capela de Nossa Senhora da Piedade

We've also included a short video of the dreaded entrance to the property: the gate is only slightly wider than Bokkie and the road is quite uneven which makes entries and exits rather interesting.  We park Bokkie mid-way along the drive to benefit from the shade of the Blue gum trees as the sun tends to scorch her if parked near the house. Enjoy.

Slowing down at Santa Luzia

 Tuesday 30/08/22

We rarely have clouds in the evening, but were treated to a fantastic
display as the wind whipped these ones into various shapes

We're just over six weeks into our sit and have finished up most of the work planned (and unplanned) for this trip, and are starting to think about moving on.  

In spite of thinking we were finished with the interior painting, Toni and I decided it was the perfect opportunity to do the cab ceiling as this now looked a bit off compared to all the areas we had painted.  We still had enough paint left and the weather is nice and dry here so we decided to tackle it now rather than wait until we were back in the UK or Brittany.  We're very pleased with the result.

Before (lower photo) and after of the ceiling which also holds Bokkie's bed

Toni doing her Michelangelo impression

Happy with the final result, the cab is much brighter

That left us with the limping problem still to be tackled and after much e-mailing and many phone calls to E-Bay and the Spanish courier company, I managed to finally get delivery of the diagnostic cables I had ordered.  This meant I could hook my laptop up to the engine management unit and read off the stored error codes - a game changer for me.

The result confirmed what I had suspected after all the research I had done; it seemed to be related to the throttle control.  I was then able to check the pedal assembly (which seemed to be fine) and then track down the six wires that feed the information from the pedal to the ECU in the engine bay.  I had read these sometimes deteriorate or are damaged and, even though you can't see anything wrong with them, their resistance increases to the point where the results from the pedal potentiometer fall outside the range the ECU is expecting, and it returns a fault and enters limp mode.

The suspect wires under the dash

Using a new red wire as a temporary bypass

When I tested the wires individually, the first three had around 30kΩ, a little higher than expected, the next two were around 2kΩ which is more normal and the third was 312kΩ.  At last I had a firm suspect!  I wired a new cable in for us to test if this resolves the issue - we won't know for certain until we've done some more driving, but I'm really hopeful I may have solved the problem.

To get away from the boring technical stuff, here are some animal videos!

The horses having a canter on a lovely morning.

Molly, the world's chattiest cat.

Horse Hide-and-seek at Monte Ruivo

 Sunday 21/08/22

We love watching the sun set and seeing the different patterns the hills make.
This one looks just like a cat!

This morning we decided to do a horse poop-scoop at the back of the house.  This is the one area the horses can access around the house and outbuildings so we tend to try and keep it clean to avoid stepping in any surprises, and to keep the fly population down around the house.

Finding the perfect spot for a roll is essential.

Bliss!

Unfortunately horses are very sociable and they came over to join us for a while.  Not a problem, we gave them a spray with the hose as the day was going to be very hot.  They then thanked us by leaving giant piles of droppings all over the cleaned place!  Back to square one...

The owners had also explained the game they use to give the horses extra nourishment, hiding buckets of high-energy feed and then letting them find these.  We decided to give this a try as it also lets us separate Galante to get  him some extra rations.  You can see the result in the video, the owners had their own video to demonstrate the process to us and described it as horses chasing a donkey.  I am almost as graceful, but you will notice I was leading the race for a while!

The feed smells wonderful in spite of the look.

The others don't realise he has extra rations

All in all it was lovely to spend some quality time with the horses; they really are fantastic animals.

Day trip to Vila Nova de Milfontes

 Friday 19/08/22

We decided to break the routine at the house-sit and head out for a day trip to our favourite Portuguese coastal village, Milfontes.  

We decided that this would be good to prevent us from becoming complete hermits, give a chance for a rare meal out and the opportunity to do some shopping.  As an added bonus, we knew from last year that the temperatures are much more tolerable on the coast.

A good indicator of the water temp is the total lack of swimmers.

The drive down took us around an hour and, as we know the town quite well we could get to the parking area without too much trouble.  We were a little worried as the sand in the large car park was very fine and quite loose but we parked somewhere we felt was safe for Bokkie.

We had a lovely wander through the town, packed with (mainly Portuguese) holidaymakers enjoying the lovely weather.  Toni had researched all the restaurants and we headed for our first choice which was luckily fairly quiet as we tend to eat early.  We both ordered seafood skewers, mine with octopus and Toni's with monkfish.  We are usually so careful about checking that there are no prawns or shrimps as I am allergic but, for some reason, we forgot to ask this time.  Imagine our horror when we found the skewers were liberally filled with huge prawns!  Luckily the waiter was very understanding and they re-made mine with chorizo; both meals were really lovely.

We headed back to Bokkie only to find that the 'safe' route we had used to our parking spot was now blocked by parked cars and we had to go around the field to get out, definitely not part of the plan.  As expected, Bokkie bogged down in the sand, but managed to get out on the third attempt - this was the closest we have come to getting her stuck and will make sure we stay alert.  She's a big girl and definitely not designed to get out of soft spots.

On the way home she made her displeasure known as she entered limp mode a few times, eventually causing us to pull over, switch her off and on again before carrying on again.  

We should have called her 'Microsoft'...

Bokkie still causes quite a stir when returning - we feel like celebrities.

All in all, it was a lovely day out!  We are heading into a heatwave with upper-30 degree days, so happy to stay put again for a while.

No more Mellow Yellow for Bokkie

 Tuesday 16/08/22

This is the second post on work we've been doing on Bokkie during this sit - thanks to the warm and dry weather.

Another age-related issue with these Hymers is the gradual yellowing of many of the internal plastic material, mostly due to prolonged UV exposure.

Before and after of the driver's door.

The habitation door looking much better; we've also replaced the fly screen material.

You can see the difference as soon as the first coat starts to go on.

There are apparently ways to improve the discoloration with peroxide but there are concerns that this can make the already brittle plastic even more so.  We therefore opted to go the painting route followed by many other Hymer owners.  Although the paint may mark and chip with time, it will still be infinitely better than the current nicotine-yellow areas that contrast with the general clean, white areas inside.

Painting the window surrounds

The newly-revived passenger window surround back in place

You can see the contrast between the door, unpainted at this stage, and the window surround.
The problem is the ceiling which houses the bed now looks very out of place.
A future project!

We used a Multi-Surface Paint that gives good adherence to the plastic and should give quite a durable, washable finish and generally applied two to three coats.

While in the UK I had to re-seal the main skylight so used the opportunity to paint the surround 
which had also yellowed and looked terrible against the white ceiling.

One problem with starting a job like this is that once you spruce up one section you immediately want to tackle the next area that then looks a bit shoddy by contrast!  

Owning a 20 year old motorhome keeps one busy but we love Bokkie and enjoy treating her to a little TLC.

Refurbishing Bokkie's bumper

 Sunday 14/08/22

This is a technical blog about Bokkie's repairs, more for our record but some of you might find it interesting.

The quality on German-made Hymer's is generally very good but there are a few issues on Bokkie's vintage that tend to become a problem later in life.  

One of these is a delaminating topcoat on the grey bumpers; something you tend to see on all Hymers of Bokkie's age.  Also, as the front shocks are often an issue, the low front bumpers tend to scrape and crack over time.  Ours was no different - quite badly cracked when we bought her and we also had a minor altercation with a bollard in Calais last year. 

I followed the process on how to repair and paint the bumper on one of our favourite blogs, Jay and Ju of Our Tour

https://ourtour.co.uk/home/diy-repair-and-respray-of-a-hymer-motorhome-bumper/

This isn't' Bokkie but shows what the flaking looks like on Hymer bumpers after a few years

Last year, while at this same sit, I removed the bumper and repaired the cracks with fibreglass and resin in preparation for re-painting.  I have also been gradually peeling the loose, flaking paint to accelerate its removal.  While in the UK I bought all the paint and accessories I would need; I decided to o for spray cans as there isn't a compressor that I can use on this sit and had the correct colour made up.  I opted for respraying with the original Fiat colour rather than having a colour-match done to get an exact match - she's an old girl and if the bumper doesn't exactly match the rest of the trim, we'll live with it.

Although the cracks had been repaired from behind with fibreglass, they
needed to be filled and sanded smooth before painting.

Starting to paint.

Once we had settled in here, I removed the bumper and began filling the last of the cracks, peeling of the rest of the topcoat and sanding the bumper to a satisfactory finish for re-painting.  It's a long, laborious process and it's hard not to overdo it, seeking an absolutely blemish-free finish so we keep reminding ourselves that Bokkie is an old girl and we need to make her look better than she did, not necessarily like new.

Primer on, ready for the next stage.

Metallic base coat and top-coat applied, ready for polishing.

Once I was happy with the sanding, I started with three primer coats, sanding any remaining rough spots that became evident.  This was followed by six coats of base-coat, the metallic grey colour.  Then came about four clear coats, flatting off and polishing.  Unfortunately the huge polisher we had brought with for the job managed to self-destruct and shook itself apart.  This meant finishing the polishing by hand, another long job for already tired hands.

Getting ready to re-fit the newly painted bumper

Bokkie looking proud of her smile again.  I love the way the light is shining through her Hymer
sign onto the radiator (below the number plate)

Once polished, the lights and number plate were replaced and the bumper was fitted to Bokkie.  It's by no means at the same level as you would get from a professional paint shop but at around £130 for materials and some of my labour, she looks pretty good again and it's been nice to spend quality time on a project like this.

The horses of Monte Ruivo

 Tuesday 09/08/22

At last the horses were at the right place at the right time, taking advantage of the beautiful evening light for a photo op.

The aptly named Puppi, gas powered, puttering along, emitting a constant stream of methane gas.

Silke and Charmeur

Branco

Post drinking dribble-time

Quizzy Branco, hoping she'll convince me it's time for more hay.

Poor downtrodden Galant, always bottom of the pecking order

Of course, it wouldn't be fair to neglect the other 'wildlife'.

You can see how the cattle have grazed the fields to dust.

Even though Molly loves the heat, she still has to seek out a cool spot 
in the heat of the day.

For this trip we also brought more staple food stuffs (like rice, tinned vegetables, bags of oats & long-life milk) so we're not having to cycle for food shopping as often, which means we can focus more on other things.  One of the advantages of repeat sits is that we know what to expect so can plan really well.

We're filling our days with exercise and multiple jobs on Bokkie.  Some of them are coming to an end so we'll post some photos showing the results soon.

Sounds of Santa Luzia

 Wednesday 03/08/22

It's hard to believe July has come and gone; the year seems to be flying by!  

At the start of the year we were still in South Africa, then Brittany, then the UK and now we are in Portugal and it's August already.

A nice cool morning with the first of the grey mist from the ocean

We had a few very hot days in a row which was quite tiring but it has cooled down again which is a huge relief, this morning was the first misty morning and it works wonders for the temperature, especially as it means everything just cools down a little overnight and makes the days more bearable.

Finding the coolest spot to rest is a constant challenge

We're keeping busy with the usual stuff on the farm and some Bokkie jobs and will post some more photos once we start to get some parts finished.  We've decided to take advantage of the cooler weather tomorrow to do a cycle around the farmlands and hopefully stop for coffee and a pastry in Garvao.

Every evening, we finish off our day by sitting on the 'stoep' outside our room -  watching the sun set with the melodic (sort of) tinkling of the cattle and sheep bells in the neighbour's fields.  

If you listen carefully on the video you will get a taste of this as the flock of sheep move past the bottom of the property.