Seems we're having a spot of bad luck following the police fine yesterday. Robert's playground injury hasn't got better overnight and he says it hurts to put pressure on it and when we turned on the engine we had a warning message come up that there is an Adblue malfunction and the engine won't restart after 500 more miles. We had hoped perhaps this was due to low levels in the tank but it was still there after we filled up and having driven another 100 miles. We're now at Wolfsberg where we'd planned to enjoy a day filled with kids activities and looking at cars at the VW autostadt. We know however we're not going to make it to Dunkirk with the miles we've got left so it's time to call the breakdown cover team. We explain the problem and they tell us they will work with the EU team to send someone to take a look at the problem. They can't tell us how long they'll be so in the meantime we decide to enjoy our day as planned.

We're in the park for 10 minutes and managed 2 goes on the giant slides each (the last one for me results in scraping the skin off my elbow 😕) when we get a call from the team to say they'll be with us in around 45 minutes. We decided we'd all leave in the hope we can get the tickets transferred to tomorrow since the place was so big and it was already lunchtime. Luckily the man who sold us the tickets was very understanding and although he couldn't swap them he did give us a full refund. Back at the van the kids and I played some board games and thankfully they didn't seem bothered by the change to the plans.

When the breakdown recovery team turned up however it was clear our spell of bad luck wasn't lifting anytime soon. They were expecting us to be broken down and to tow us to a garage and even then they didn't have space for us all as passengers to get us there. There was clearly a miscommunication somewhere, we had hoped (like in the UK) they would have had tools to look at the on board diagnostics and maybe even reset something if it was purely a sensor issue. All they could do was give us the names of a couple of nearby garages and they were on their way. We're now back to square one with no help on the way. We call the UK team back and part of the policy is they will find a suitable garage for repairs. They ensure us there will be no more communication issues and they'll let us know when they've found a garage. They can't give any time frame so we decide to have a walk over to the designer shopping outlet across the river. The kids are happy because there's a haribo store.

In the meantime we try and call the garages the breakdown team gave us. Neither of them were able to help and the second one I spoke with said most garages in Germany that could help with this problem would be fully booked for at least three weeks due to the holiday season. We get a call back from the UK team who tell us the EU team have found a garage just 11 minutes away so we head back and drive over. Al goes in to speak with them and this is where things go from bad to worse. The garage have no equipment to fix our problem so what on earth are the EU team doing other than wasting our time. It's back on the phone to the UK team who ensure us the EU team will look for an actual garage this time. We've run out of food and there's only an hour left until garages will shut for the day but despite this the UK team are still confident we'll get a call before 6pm. We head to the supermarket so wherever we end up tonight we won't be hungry. As it happens the kids have failed with their self control and smashed through their entire bag of sweets each whilst watching a movie so apparently they don't want tea 😂

Al finds us a quiet place to sleep for the night nearby as its clear nothing is going to be resolved today. No surprise it's 6.30pm and we've not been called back. The UK number is 24/7 so I'm back with them and talking to someone new. It's time to step things up, I now have zero confidence these jokers can actually do anything to help and pretty much tell them this. I want answers about what the next steps are and how we get home. I ask outright are they telling me I have to just keep driving for 400 miles until the engine refuses to turn back on before they will help and yes is the answer. They can't even tell me what will happen when that occurs he'll just send me an email with the policy wording (which if you've ever tried to make sense of it's not always clear - like the time we were broken into and the insurance cover screwed us over). I've no signal on my phone in this spot so using our now precious remaining miles we find a new spot to work out our next best steps. The policy has repatriation cover so we start thinking about breaking down as close as we can to an airport, even better if it can get us to Southampton rather than London. Amsterdam has options but we'd have too many miles left so the crazy thing is we'd have to just drive loops until we ran out. I need to offload so turn to my trusty WhatsApp mum group. My fellow adventurer, who is herself on a European road trip with the kids, mentions the Holland to Harwick ferry that she's planning to take on the way home. We look it up and yes we can make it to the ferry with 80 miles left. Is this going to be our saving grace? There's still space on the ferry, it will set us back £325 but that's so worth it versus the hassle of trying to get us home let alone the moho! With a new plan in sight neither Al or I are that hungry either now so we decide to blast through some miles and end up stopping near to the Netherlands / Germany border where we all manage to have a good night's sleep.

Day 20 and what should have been a chill out day (we didn't have a plan in the spreadsheet but we'd been looking for swimming pools before all this drama) is now just a driving day. The ferry leaves at 2.15pm and our sat nav suggests we'll get there for midday. It was a good drive and we are checked in by 12.15 and on the boat for 12.45. Our cabin is lovely and definitely worth the extra £50 given it's a 6.5hr crossing.

Once back in the UK we're not quite out of the woods. The engine won't cut out in 80 miles but if the engine turns off after that it just won't restart meaning we've got to get our tank full of fuel find something to eat then keep driving for another three hours. It's not ideal but we make it home just before midnight and we at least can chill out for a few days before heading back to work. We missed out on 5 fun filled days including the VW Museum park, swimming, cave tour, atonium / miniature world and theme park but we still packed in a lot with the 18 successful days we did have. Borrowbox has been our saviour for the driving getting through 13 books totalling 41hrs 54 minutes. We drove through 9 countries although only had days out in 7 of them (should have been 8, we never had anything planned for France). I walked 321,918 steps including logging a run in 6 countries (5 new ones) plus a run on the ferry over the baltic sea. We visited 19 museums, 9 churches, 3 swimming pools, 3 castles, 2 beaches, 2 zoos plus various markets, monuments and scenic walks. The ice cream count this trip was much lower than expected but was overtaken by bakery visits instead. We've all had a great holiday and the kids haven't battered an eyelid by the change in plans despite them being really excited to visit the Plopsaland theme park but we've told them we'll plan a return trip, Liliya might even grow that 4cms needed to go on their upside down ride. Whilst we're looking at the silver linings we've now got an extra country stamp in our passports and Al didn't run out of clean underwear either 😂 Until next time, Team SM x