animalambulanceman
Free Member
- Dec 18, 2007
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Hi everyone,thought that you may be interested to read about my experiences when travelling abroad with my dog.In 2006 having had a bad experience of local kennels and their poor service when leaving my dog behind I decided to get him "passported up" and buy a campervan to take him along with me in 2007.Bought a used 1988 RHD 2.0 litre petrol fiat ducato highwayman without power steering 33k miles on the clock in Jan when the price was at winter level and in February after a good service & fitting a pair of snow tyres on the front set off across the channel on a Sea France ferry.Had a great 3 weeks going through France,Belgium,Germany,Poland and Slovakia and the camper was perfect-engine never missed a beat-and came back to Calais 3,500 miles and 3.5 weeks later.When checking in at Calais my dog had to be scanned for his microchip and there was a problem as the scanner would not detect it initially.At this point maybe I should mention that my dog is a big white long haired german shepherd and the check in girl was scared of dogs,especially when he kept trying to eat the scanner as he thought that it was a game and was playing away happily while being vocal and giving out a deep play growl as he tried to get the scanner.After she freaked out and not being able to get a reading she asked me to do it for her.Trouble was that I could not find it either for nearly an hour as it had moved from on his back between his shoulders and had managed to get under his front left armpit.However once it was found we were allowed to join the queue for boarding although we had missed our booked ferry due to the microchip hunt.In August having had such a great time in the cold weather we did almost the same trip again and had 5 days next to the sea on the Hel peninsular in Poland but when coming back though Germany we were pulled over by the police as Loopy(my dog) was sat on the passenger seat(he had a full harness on and it was clipped into the seat belt anchor point) because they thought that it was dangerous as it blocked my line of vision when looking in the door mirror.I agree that it did restrict my view a bit and after a telling off was allowed to go on my way with Loopy sitting somewhere else for the rest of the trip.After getting back home I decided to sell my campervan as it was not perfect for my needs-when I initially bought it (my first ever campervan) I was not fully aware of all the options and having driven it for about 8k miles knew that I wanted power steering,diesel instead of petrol & Left hand drive which mine did not have.I sold it for "summer money" in september last year and have now bought a lhd turbo diesel engined Euramobil with power steering which I intend keeping for future holidays unless Ken Livingstone stays as mayor which will mean that i will have to get rid of it because of the "low emission zone" rules.From October 2010 it will not meet the required standard-like all the other older campervans or vehicles that are over 1.2 ton in weight-and living in London I won't be able to keep it without paying the £200 a day fine for beaching the rules.I would be interested to hear from othes what ,if anything we can do to get round this low emission zone hurdle-it's going to affect everyone with a pre 2003ish diesel engined camper/mobile home. Michael
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) in that position. Manager with no brain, methinks.
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