MOT time and great tyre debate …

Paloma our 2000, 3.5 tonne Pilote Motorhome, has been to the garage for that dreaded day, thankfully after a false start, with the tester calling in sick.

For the first time in my life, I stayed to watch the test, which was a lot more involved than I imagined and I was amazed how clean the underneath of the van was.

And bless her, she has passed her MOT and come away with only one advisory note

like any Girl, She needs new shoes (or a front N/S tyre)….

Not bad for an old girl

And here the great tyre hunt commences!

Our vague plan once the season of working as campsite wardens comes to an end is either to head for off in winter maybe for some of that the sunshine – so we might get to see some snow and ice, but then with little to no plan it could just as easily be winter sun too,

With our 3 month holiday from our new career of campsite warden looming fast, we need to start making plans !

Our route isn’t planned out, but we may need to avoid a drive through Germany or Austria in winter, as according to the AA, that means we need tyres with a snow flake symbol on the sidewall to be legal.

So our options are:-

1 Full-on winter tyres. Best suited to driving in the cold, better grip, but not well suited to driving in warmer conditions. People using these seem to have two sets of wheels – one with summer tyres fitted and one with winter tyres. One slight problem, we don’t have a garage to store a spare set of wheels….

2 Mud and snow tyres. Unlike winter tyres, this is a bit of a mine field with no real set guidelines. Manufacturers don’t have to go through any independent testing to allow them to mark their tyres as ‘M+S’ … umm

3 Finally summer tyres. On our #big trip we used these, but most of the time we baked in the heat, and we ran fast at our first glimpse of snow. Legally we could have (and still can) visit most countries in winter with these tyres, as long as we have snow chains, which we do, after cutting it fine for leaving Italy by November 16th..

I started reading up on which motorhome tyres to get, and pretty soon ended in a complete information mess!

So I turned to the motorhome blogging community and luckily Ian and Sue’s blog was the best write-up I found, but the tyres mentioned were all rather expensive and the advise is a little out of date

So we still had to make a choice, after speaking with our local tyre filter, the choice was made .

In the end we went for the easy option,

▪ They are rated to carry the load of the van.

▪ They’re M+S marked, which hopefully will give us a bit of reassurance if we encounter white stuff on the way though France

▪ They’re made by one of the largest tyre manufacturer in the world

So The outcome: we’re swapped all five- yes all 5 of the tyres for Michelin Agilis Camping tyres for a cost of £651 including fitting, well the old girls deserves them !

They’re summer tyres,but are M+S marked, and are specifically designed for motorhomes with reinforced side walls for when she stood still for longer period of time .

Paul.