babbo_umbro
Established member
I'll do a longer write-up on our twice-yearly transfer from Devon to Umbria later but here's a brief note about the outward journey.
We'd done about 20 miles on the A30, out of total journey of 1250, when another vehicle threw up a stone that caught the nearside of the windscreen about halfway up and within a half inch of the edge. It started a crack which grew to about 12 inches in length over the next three days; very distracting but I was reluctant to have it replaced on the way to Italy as we had Channel Tunnel and hotel bookings. In the event, I made a call to AGEAS on Thursday afternoon and they undertook to set up replacement via their Italian windscreen contact. I'd heard nothing by Friday mid-afternoon; called AGEAS again - they'd made contact with Vetrocar and suggested that I geed them up. If I didn't speak Italian this would not have been too helpful but I was able to speak to the local contact and all was replaced very efficiently ( as far as I know) late on Saturday afternoon. The windscreen man actually had an accident in his van on the way to us but didn't seem too bothered about it. I told AGEAS that our Swiss motorway pass would be lost when the screen was replaced and they said they'd take that into account, so we'll see how that sorts itself out - it costs 40 Swiss francs - about 28 quid - and is designed to be impossible to remove from the screen.
The good news is that the 4x4 behaved impeccably and, despite being fairly heavily loaded and cruising at 80-85 where possible, the average mpg has gone up from the 37-38 I see around Devon to 42 for the current trip.
We'd done about 20 miles on the A30, out of total journey of 1250, when another vehicle threw up a stone that caught the nearside of the windscreen about halfway up and within a half inch of the edge. It started a crack which grew to about 12 inches in length over the next three days; very distracting but I was reluctant to have it replaced on the way to Italy as we had Channel Tunnel and hotel bookings. In the event, I made a call to AGEAS on Thursday afternoon and they undertook to set up replacement via their Italian windscreen contact. I'd heard nothing by Friday mid-afternoon; called AGEAS again - they'd made contact with Vetrocar and suggested that I geed them up. If I didn't speak Italian this would not have been too helpful but I was able to speak to the local contact and all was replaced very efficiently ( as far as I know) late on Saturday afternoon. The windscreen man actually had an accident in his van on the way to us but didn't seem too bothered about it. I told AGEAS that our Swiss motorway pass would be lost when the screen was replaced and they said they'd take that into account, so we'll see how that sorts itself out - it costs 40 Swiss francs - about 28 quid - and is designed to be impossible to remove from the screen.
The good news is that the 4x4 behaved impeccably and, despite being fairly heavily loaded and cruising at 80-85 where possible, the average mpg has gone up from the 37-38 I see around Devon to 42 for the current trip.
