H van mission - Part three - the end

[dollywobbler]

This is a few years ago now, but it was in the dark days before I discovered Autoshite, so I’m going to retell it.

 

The day started at our old home in Northamptonshire. I’d sold my LDV 400 Beavertail (2.5 Pug Turbo Diesel, no PAS) to a nice chap with a Maestro obsession in Staffordshire. Then we got wind of an H van for sale in Lancashire. I can’t remember where we found it for sale, but we knew we’d be travelling to Sweden for the 2CV World Meeting later in the year, and had decided that an H van would allow us to enjoy more creature comforts than the 2CV and a tent, merrily overlooking the fact that the H van is much heavier, much slower and drinks twice as much fuel. Mere details.

 

LDV400 Beavertail carrying 2CV

 

 

My wife wasn’t a fan of driving the 2CV, so we loaded her Mini onto the back of the LDV and headed up to Staffordshire. The LDV was a great ol’ truck, easily able to keep up with motorway traffic and about as simple as a vehicle can be. It had an extended chassis, so transporting a tiny Mini was no stress at all.

 

The Mini, still with its chrome bumpers back then

 

We made Staffordshire in good time and offloaded the Mini. Chap had already paid me so we squeezed into the Mini and headed up the M6. This was quite exciting as there were sudden showers to contend with. Rachel was driving and at one point, the revs shot up as we aquaplaned along! Scary stuff.

 

However, we made it up to Lancashire and after a quick test drive, decided that the H van was for us. Unbelievably, we were able to talk the bloke into letting us take the van there and then on the promise of funds (we left a deposit) so I prepared for the lengthy trip back home, in a left-hand drive Citroen van that was launched in 1947 using an engine from a Thirties car.

 

Getting to grips with it

The driving position is typical van, so you’re nice and upright, with a large steering wheel at a truck-like angle. The engine is right next to you, with the exhaust manifold literally centimetres from your throttle foot. I would discover that this was pleasant on a cold day, not so much on a hot day…

 

The gearlever is sizeable and next to the seat. It’s a thick rod with a ball on top and it feels like it’s linked to the gearbox with something conceived by Brunel. It requires a lot of effort but is very positive. First is away and back, second near the driver and forward and third (top!) back from that. You have to get your head around this very quickly.

 

First gear is very low, and with springy torsion bars, initial progress was on the bouncy side. By the time you’re at 20mph, you can go for top, which tells you a lot about what the maximum speed will be. I discovered that 50mph was comfortable, 55mph bearable but 60mph had the engine screaming in a most unpleasant manner. Brakes required a huge amount of pedal pressure, but stopped the thing well – the only thing to worry about being an easy ability to lock the rear brakes if you’re not careful. After all, there’s very little weight back there.

 

A soggy journey home

Then it started raining. A lot. No problem – the single speed wipers were efficient and the heater could just about keep things clear, albeit rather noisily. Things weren’t so pleasant for my wife in the Mini, who was trying to follow me. For a start, she was encountering more leaks than I was, but also, the H van was creating spray which her Mini couldn’t handle. She’d catch me up, then the Mini would start misfiring, and she’d disappear again, only to catch me up a bit later.

 

This went on for what felt like hours. My wife was getting fed up of nursing her Mini and I was suffering deafness as well as exhaustion after a succession of roundabouts. This was partly my own fault as I was discovering that an H van corners much like a Mini. The rack-and-pinion steering is a revelation and being similarly front-wheel drive and front heavy, turn in is very impressive. There is very little body roll and surprising cornering speeds are possible – the only downside being that the heavy controls started to make muscles ache that I didn’t know I had.

 

Eventually, we made it home, starting to feel somewhat daunted about our plans to take the van 3000 miles to Sweden and back. If enough of you are bothered, I’ll tell that tale another time…

 

The van when we got it home

[messerschmitt owner]

I have taken to looking at HYs on Leboncoin, showing my wife and listening to her tell me just how hideous they are.

 

I so want one.

[dollywobbler]

I'm glad we owned one, but I'm not in a rush to do it again. There's a lot to like - a super-low floor so you don't need a pop-up roof, great handling and an almost ridiculous toughness - but they're not the easiest to work on and volume levels are painful. Some quality soundproofing could solve that - we attempted to remedy it by pinching carpet offcuts from the local carpet shop...

[nigel bickle]

Marvellous - I'd forgotten what fun they are.

 

Furthest I've been in mine is leMans-quite enough thank you; so Sweden must have required new ear drums.

 

Pray continue kind Sir, when time permits.

[dollywobbler]

Carpet was pinched with permission.

 

I've no idea what else your on about! Mrs Wobbler bought the van - forgot that detail! She loved it. For a bit.

 

Part two - the European journey, will continue later. There'll be smashed windscreens, scum in Calais, A German heatwave, an American Cruise in Sweden (with an interloping H van) and snowy Norwegian mountains before a mad-dash drive from Newcastle to home the night before returning to the office...(in hindsight, a mistake!)

[Mr Lobster]

Excellent stuff. I really would like a 'H'. I'd just sit there and look at it though as it does seem that actually driving one isn't much fun.

[scruff]

Sounds amazing! Nice pics DWster

[HillmanImp]

Those things are ace. They really look the part. Would have thought they were awful to drive though, but i stand corrected (up to a point).

 

Left on a cliffhanger now. Did it make it overseas........

 

[michiel]

Great words & shots! Here's some from my hood:

 

 

Now blue...

 

 

[trigger]

I've seen a few at local shows making a living, I think they are very cool vans.

 

 

 

[Jack_Harpers_Teeth]

I spotted one of these a few weeks back I did:

 

 

 

 

Parked up where the surfers normally park their VW buses, so made a nice change to see one of these instead - especially one in shite beige!

[dollywobbler]

That's HUUUGE!

 

Anyway, I've been working on Part Two, but it's already 1600 words, and I've only just got to Sweden. Need to plot that a bit more and find where the break it up. Hopefully I'll have chance to get a little bit more up before going camping at the weekend (where ironically, I might see the ol' H van!)

[warren t claim]

Can we now start calling you Frédéric H-Van?

[whitevanman]

Just get the bloody thing posted will you........... I wanna know what happened next

[trigger]

Anyway, I've been working on Part Two, but it's already 1600 words

I can tell your a writer!, I can only string about half a dozen words together before i start to get bor......

[dollywobbler]

Ok goddamit! Here's the next section...

 

H van adventure – Part Two

 

After buying the H van, we thought we’d better try to test it out before undertaking the 3000 mile epic. We pottered up to a small 2CV meet in Derbyshire and it was very pleasant. You do learn to settle down to a 50mph cruise and just let the world hurtle past you. I became everyone’s friend as we went to a wine tasting session, with seat space in the van suddenly very popular indeed.

 

I’d occasionally use the van for my 25 mile commute to Peterborough. Yeah, this was alright. Slow, heavy but fun, especially on the bends – though too much hoonery would cause the contents of the kitchen cupboards to roll about…

 

Quickly, July arrived and after a hectic Friday in the office, we hurled everything into the H van, said goodbye to our cats and roared down to Dover for the ferry. The excitement was really starting to kick in now. France has a lot of ‘aires’ that are specifically designed for motorhomes. There is one in Calais and we hoped to stop there. However, it was gone 11pm by the time we docked, and the aire was full. As we parked up in Calais wondering what to do, a bunch of local ruffians turned up and demanded cigarettes. We don’t smoke and tried our best to tell them this, but two of them jumped on the back of the van while others tried to rock it. This was not good. Fortunately, the van is a quick starter so I fired it up, reversed hard to dislodge the ruffians and we quickly made a bid for freedom. Well, as quickly as an H van can go.

 

Before the ruffians descended at Calais

 

We were quite shaken up by this and ended up just driving. And driving. We entered Belgium and kept going, but by 1am, I was shattered. We pulled up at the motorway services and crashed out in the back. Here, the romance of kipping in a van began to fade. It was hot and ventilation was lowsy. Then some joker slapped the van at about 7am. Merci! Le Twat.

 

However, this did enable us to head to Bruges for breakfast, which was pleasant. We parked in a general car park in which camping was forbidden, so a warden came over to make sure we were aware of this. On discovering we were English he said: “You like the froggy cars eh?†Yup, we do. After breaking our fast, we continued towards The Netherlands, as we’d agreed to meet a former colleague of my wife in the city of Maastricht. We found a local camping ground and ended up next to another H van! This one was local, so the owners obviously spoke very good English. They were on their way to Sweden too, but by a very different route. We hoped to meet again once we were at the big meeting.

 

Brugges camper-shite

 

Dutch H van and ours

 

GETTING HOT IN GERMANY

 

Despite my wife’s protestations to the contrary, this is not a road

 

A quick look at a map will quickly show you that Maastricht is not exactly on the way to Sweden, and nor is crossing the channel at Dover the most direct route. We now crossed into Germany, which was very, very hot. Autobahns are terrifying when you’re in something doing 50mph. Occasionally, we would actually find something going more slowly than us, but overtaking was nightmarish as you’d check your mirror, move out and suddenly there’d be a Beemer or Merc screaming up behind you.

 

Once more, we ended up driving well into the night, mainly because it was too hot to stop. Again, 1am came around and sheer exhaustion caused us to stop. The problem now was that there was massive heat soak from the engine, and it just wouldn’t cool down. The temperature was in the low Twenties. It was horrible.

 

Too darned hot!

 

We thought things couldn’t get much worse and pushed on Northwards. Sadly, things got a lot worse. Firstly, Rachel started feeling ill. She was actually sprawled out on the bed as we passed through the busy port of Hamburg. S’pose that’s an advantage to an H van! It was just a cold, but it left her feeling drained.

 

Later that day, as we passed Neümunster, we were both up front having a chat when the windscreen suddenly exploded. It must have been a stone chip but the toughened windscreen shattered into a million pieces and fell in on us. Being pelted with sharp shards of glass at 50mph is not fun. Fortunately, we both wear glasses and we got away with a few small cuts. However, we were now marooned on the hard shoulder of a motorway, in a country where we didn’t speak the language, and no windscreen.

 

SMASH!

 

It was time to test my European Breakdown cover with Footman James. It was quite stressful. We were stuck on the hard shoulder and it wasn’t quite as simple as a quick phone call to arrange recovery. It took hours to get someone out to us, but thankfully the chap who finally turned up spoke English and was very helpful.

 

He took us into Neümunster to a generic windscreen specialist. The people there spoke no English at all, but were supremely helpful. The bad news is that they would have to custom-make us a windscreen and it would take four days. The good news was that this would be laminated (so no more chips-in-the-face) and we’d allowed a few days excess to tour Denmark, so we wouldn’t be late for the meeting.

 

We stopped in town that night, laughed at the moustache/mullet combos of the locals and wondered what to do. It quickly became apparent that Neumunster was not a place to spend four days, so we hired an Audi A3 and went to Denmark!

 

This was an interesting diversion, if a little frustrating. Apart from a nice 130kmh blat up the German autobahn (no unrestricted section) we ironically soon found ourselves in Denmark, where most roads have a 50mph speed limit. Despite this, our four days allowed us to tour the whole of the first island of Denmark (the big one) before we headed back to Germany.

 

We drove to the windscreen specialist and sure enough, our van was ready for us. Alta Vista’s Babelfish came in handy as we tried to get across to the people there just how grateful we were. They even presented us with a bottle of champagne!

 

The next bit was tricky – we needed to get the hire car back, on the other side of town so the logical step was for me to drive the hire car while Rachel drove the H van. Fair play to her as she’d only previously driven it about 400yds and never driven abroad before! It was a little worrying seeing how close she got to the kerb at times, but I certainly can’t argue that she won’t give anything a go!

 

Going back to the pedestrian pace of the H van was interesting after the Audi, but soon enough, we were back in Denmark, on a gorgeous little campsite next to the sea. The next day, we tackled the bridges. These immense structures link the three Danish islands. The largest is 6790 metres long – though still shorter than the immense link between Denmark and Sweden that we had yet to cross. There was a jam on one of the bridges, and we had the unusual experience of being stuck in the middle of the sea. It was warm, but the H van showed no signs of overheating. As ever, it just kept plodding along.

 

Stay tuned for adventures in Sweden and Norway...

[wuvvum]

This:

 

 

is a cool photo. Just saying.

[trigger]

Another great installment Ian! I bet my Opel hasn't got a safety front screen neither, It's a worry of mine that shattering like that as well.

[scooters]

great adventures DW, I love H vans -

 

having owned the Sherpa for 2 weeks now I am becoming a through 'van' convert!

 

look forward to the next installment - I only wish the doris was as enthusiastic about hairbrained long distance trips as I am!

 

r

[michiel]

Wonderful stuff, except for the Calaisian bastards and the exploding screen...

[scooters]

BTW Ian, were there any off the shelf camper convesions based on the H van?

[binhoker668]

Awesome travelog mate! I'd love an H van - we had one on a scout trip to Rennes many years ago - loved it's spartan appeal!

More posts like this on Autoshite pls!!

[Marshall]

Top stuff. H vans rawk! Sooo much cooler than a VW in so many ways.

(ooofage etc! )

[Mr Lobster]

Excellent stuff!

 

Although I'm not exactly surprised about nightime trouble in Calais.

[dollywobbler]

BTW Ian, were there any off the shelf camper convesions based on the H van?

There were some. I know one that's done in the traditional (ie chassis cab with aly caravan-esque bit) manner but I'm not sure many were done to standard vans. Forgot to say, our H van is actually an ex Fire Support Vehicle! They did use them for all sorts.

 

Vans are indeed very, very cool. Think I'll opt for one with a bit more oomph next time though. Quite fancy a Transit or LDV 400 as they go quite nicely.

[scooters]

I have become a big fan of the LDV - pure Britshite

[dollywobbler]

My apologies. Life got in the way of the third instalment. It's taking longer to write than it did to do!

 

When you last tuned in, we'd crossed a HUGE bridge from Denmark to Sweden. It rained.

 

We remained convoying with a friend in his H van and the red Dyane, which had major steering issues and was proving a nightmare to keep in a straight line! However, as it happened, the speedy group of 2CVs and Dyanes didn't get that far down the road before a Dyane developed gearbox trouble. Getting fluid in without a long tube was interesting...

 

There was some cool stuff floating around – I mean, how cool is this caravan?!

 

I annoyed the wife by getting all excited about a car park with some shite old cars in it...

 

Just wrong!

 

Eventually though, we arrived at the World Meeting!

 

Italian 2CV on a Range Rover chassis...

 

The friggin' 'scene' gets everywhere!

 

[dollywobbler]

The Dyane gearbox was ruled terminal, so my mate bought a gearbox and our chums dug in to replace it at a local garage.

 

I just took photos of nice motors littering the place...

 

Successful test drive after a few hours of work! (no, he's not quite naked...)

 

Be like James May! (before James May got one...)

 

Campsite art

 

One day, we filled the H van with friends and headed to a Bjornpark. Thankfully, this is a zoo with bears, not an Abba tribute. On the way back, we stumbled on an American car festival!

 

Back at site – vans of differing sizes

 

The Dutch turned an Acadiane into a gull-wing English-themed pub! Complete with glitter ball and proper beer taps.

 

After the meeting, some friends headed back home, others headed up to the Artic Circle but, knowing pace wasn't on our side, we opted to go across to Norway. On the way, we found cars from the cruise heading back home too.

 

Norway is stunning. Fact.

 

And surprisingly full of shite!

 

 

Up in the mountains, it got very, very cold, so I improvised a grille muff out of a cardboard box. I love the way the chevrons show through...

 

This was some contrast to the baking heat of Germany. Very welcome! The H van was making a clonk from somewhere up front. Here's me making a pathetic attempt to cure it with grease. It didn't work.

 

It was only a minor knock, but I don't like things like that. Oh well, we just pushed on.

[dollywobbler]

More mountains.

 

The first glacier I've ever got this close to.

 

This was taken on our final night in Norway, after we'd driven 4.8kms up a tunnel in second gear. It was very steep! There was a slight smell of burning from somewhere. Oh well. Push on!

 

The next day, we headed for our ferry home, and met up again with our chums.

 

The ferry home was a somewhat alarming 24 hours, that included sunbathing in the middle of the North Sea. Odd. It was great to swap tales and true to 2CVer form, it turned into quite a late session! We were therefore far from pleased to be woken up by the ship's captain at 8am the next day telling us to grab breakfast. Not nice!

 

We arrived back in Newcastle at 8pm, rather daunted to be about 250 miles from home, with work the next day, after three weeks on the road. The drive back was horrific. We were tired, the van was slow, the A1 was closed for roadworks and we got diverted all around the houses. We were glad it couldn't get any worse. Then it did.

 

The burning smell came back with a vengeance, forcing us to pull over and investigate. It was then that we discovered that the floor in the back was really warm – to the point that the carpet had melted! In fact, there was so much heat that it had melted through the strap of our picnic bag. It was now gone half ten, but I grabbed the tools and simply removed the rear section of the exhaust. Problem solved! Sure, it was even noisier, but we could safely continue.

 

And we did, backfiring on the over-run and waking everyone up, but eventually we got back home at 1am and headed straight to bed. This wouldn't normally be an issue, but our cats were very, very pleased to see us back and announced this fact very, very loudly outside our bedroom window until we gave up and let them in. We didn't get a whole lot of sleep and the next day at the work was bloody horrible.

 

Still, we were home and we'd done it! Were we glad to have done it? Well, yes, on balance. It was a great adventure, we met great people, had nice times and had a nice, comfortable, portable bed with us.

 

Would we do it again? No chance!! Too noisy, too heavy, too slow and definitely not the right vehicle for a 3000 mile road-trip. Which is why we sold it. THE END!

[garycox]

That looks amazing! Where did you go in Norway? I'm planning to go next February...