Thursday 8 September - Flechtingen

Where's Bertie? He's in a gently sloping car park in a rather nice spot in the town of Flechtingen. Exact location: 52.33052, 11.24154.
Weather: Rain, rain, rain and a bit more rain.

The rain started just before we went for a run this morning and postponing for a short while didn't make it stop, so we got a little damp around the edges when we finally headed out.

Given that we weren't going to be doing anything else out of doors until it stopped, we could just have stayed in Haltensleben, but the car park there wasn't quite appealing enough, so we moved the 12km along the road to Flechtingen. There we found a car park on a notable slope, dictating that Bertie needed to park with the windscreen away from the view - rather a shame, as it was a good one.

Having not had any significant rain since the end of July, we couldn't really complain when it continued all day, and in one respect, it was most convenient. In July, we discovered that Bertie was still leaking and have since been trying to work out where the water's getting in (the leak into the living space was solved at the beginning of June; the ongoing leak is into the garage and on the sub-floor*). The problem has been that despite our efforts with a watering can and a hosepipe, we'd not been able to recreate it - it's only been happening when it rains persistently.

So, yesterday I removed our crates from the garage into Bertie's living area (via the hatch between the two spaces; I didn't have to go outside), removed his spare wheel from its mounting, and immediately found the source of the leak - a vent that sits behind his rear bumper on the outside, and behind the spare wheel on the inside. I spent the rest of the day, with a timer set for 25-minute intervals, crawling into and out of the garage to inspect the whole space, and to wring out the cloth that I had soaking up the water at the point of ingress. The good news is that a failed vent seal is a much less significant issue than a failed body panel seal, and shouldn't require us to take up residence at the dealership for another three-day stint.

Unfortunately, we also managed to establish that the driver's side rear wheel arch is also leaking, and that is a three-day fix**.

With all of the crawling in and out of the garage, some book reading and a small amount of work, the day slipped away at an alarming pace. When the rain finally let up at around 1930, we abandoned the dirty dishes to be done later and went for a quick look around Flechtingen, learning on our way of the death of the Queen.
No snaps - with the light fading by the time we went out, they had to be postponed until the morrow.  

^{(*There is no wood in Bertie's structure, so having a bit of a water leak isn't as destructive these days as it used to be. The fact that it's not impacting his living space also helps.
**The opposite one was resealed in 2019 having, it turned out, been leaking from new, but it took us two years to find the source of the leak. Other Hymer owners with the same issue told us at the time that both sides should have been resealed, but as we could find no fault with the driver's side, we didn't push the point with our dealer. Turns out we were wrong, although, at least we've discovered it just about within the warranty period.)}