From day one, I’ve had a deep mistrust of one of the tyres that we were running on our camper; it just looked wrong. The tyre was the right model. The air pressure was right. It had just passed an MOT test.

Yoko, our VW camper van, has been developing a new sound every day. Nothing serious, but rather just a bit of personality growing as we wake her from the slumber in which she was placed by her previous owner.

Today, those charming noises developed into something more serious. At low speeds, we developed a significant chug and at high speeds, well, we couldn’t actually get to any high speeds. Happily I spotted a ‘Speedy’ workshop (same chain as Kwik-Fit in the UK) out of the corner of my eye and pulled over. A tyre change later and most of our squeaks and squeals had gone, however another tyre had suffered badly as we ignored the early warning signs. In fact, the mechanic mentioned that we had been quite lucky in getting to him without it going “boom!”; for those that read my last travel blog, contrast this with having <link>two tyres simultaneously explode on a 36 foot motorhome</link> at speed on a highway, in which we had to get the police to close a lane and the poor on-call tyre-changing guy nearly got killed when a dumb motorist ignored the police signs and narrowly avoided his legs.

I’m pleased to say that two new tyres later, and our machine is running brilliantly again. We even treated her to a hoover and a wash to say thanks for not adding another notch to my bedpost of crashed cars.

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