What I Did on my Holidays

Having recently become the proud owner of an elderly but fully functional Motorhome, I have come to realise how important good sound is to motoring pleasure.

What I did on my holiday

Having recently become the proud owner of an elderly but fully functional Motorhome, I have come to realise how important good sound is to motoring pleasure.

I don’t think I have driven anything just for the fun of it since the carefree days of my youth. Driving for me is a functional process of getting from one place to another.

Back then, a weekend drive through the Cotswolds, close to where I was born, gave me a huge buzz and was a regular way to spend my weekends.

Now with a grown-up family, I began to yearn for those days when life seemed so much simpler. And so it was that I convinced my long-suffering wife that a Motorhome could be a better investment than a costly once-in-a-lifetime three-week holiday somewhere.

Eager to try our new acquisition out, we took some local trips over the winter (-3 and snow on our first time out!). We were encouraged by how cosy we were, and loved the brisk walks (to pubs, usually) during the day.

In February, we decided to try out a longer journey and drove 250 miles to Keswick.  The Motorhome is based on a Fiat Ducato base. We tried listening to the radio on the journey up, but with little success. The factory speakers were 4” dual cones mounted on the dash, firing up to the windscreen. The van, complete with the living accommodation, was a noisy drive. We had to make an unscheduled stop to stash the noisy grill pan and oven shelves away. This helped a little, but the cab was very loud anyway. The distorted squawk of the radio was less than enjoyable, so we settled for running a Bluetooth speaker from a phone, which was a vast improvement, although still far from perfect.

Despite this and the M6 Hell we encountered on the way home (8 hours, you are kidding me!), we had a great week away.

We had always planned some trips to Scotland (not necessarily Scotland’s own M25, or the NC 500 as it is known). We have to work around school holidays to suit my wife’s work, and decided that Easter would be a good time to go. Before we travelled this time, however, we felt the need to address the lack of music on the move.

I called my dear friend Stuart Crombie at Accutek. I wanted him to address a number of shortfalls, such as a rear-view and reversing camera system, and asked him to install a pair of speakers for me. I was operating on a strict budget, and Stuart came up with a solution that included a pair of Audison Prima APK 165s. There was an existing 6.5” mounting for the woofers in the doors. However, he did have to run the wires! He also removed the very old single DIN DVD player,  adding a Pioneer 11” screen with Android Auto and DAB so that we could see the route that Google maps was taking us on.

Being a true professional, Stuart added Skinz sound deadening to the doors. This, along with full-range speakers, made a huge difference, and our even longer drive to Luss on the banks of Loch Lomond was improved a million times.

We spent two weeks travelling a pre-planned route around Scotland, and listened to music all the way! This was better at A and B-road speeds than on the motorway, but the improvement in driving pleasure has been immense. Eventually, I will add an amplifier and subwoofer to the Motorhome as well as more sound treatment, but don’t tell the wife!

Top Five Tunes

Doctor Wu – Steely Dan

Purple – Wünderhorse

Ship Building – Elvis Costello

Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes – Paul Simon

This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody) – David Byrne