No campsites? No problem! 🇫🇷 2022

3 nights for €0.70?! A busy weekend in the South of France 🇫🇷…campsites are full but we are enjoying free (or ‘wild’) camping around the popular coast near Nice. We are enjoying the freedom of a hard top van and feeling less conspicuous and enjoy Jo’s birthday away with the Nugget!

[@ebh246]

What a treat it was to find your long video on here last night! I enjoyed it so much that I’ll be watching it again tonight on the television. Your videos always show a good mix of scenery and interesting places and also how you as a family use the campervan. You all come across very naturally on camera which makes great viewing.

[@CaliCamperFamily]

Hi Aoife, that is such a lovely comment! Makes us all very happy that you enjoy our videos and that you’re going to watch it again on your TV tonight! Its nice to hear that you like the scenery and ‘how’ we use the camper, as those are some of the key elements we try to do. Best wishes from us all in Italy 😃.

[@JuanCarlosSendon]

You have a lovely family and its been great watching your adventures in the Ford Camper! Have a great New Year Cali Camper Family!!!

[@CaliCamperFamily]

Hello and thanks for watching! Happy New Year! 🤩👍

[@waiheketranscend]

I had lost you for a while & do glad I found you again. It's so lovely to see you all. Holly & Izzy & Poppy, you are such beautiful girls & so lucky to have such a cool mum & dad. ❤ We love watching your campervan adventures. Love from Waiheke Island, New Zealand

[@CaliCamperFamily]

Hello to you in New Zealand! We remember you from before…nice that you have found us again! Thanks for your very kind comments and supporting our channel 👍…best wishes from Italy 🇮🇹

[@lorrainesonn]

Great video. Love your family and how you enjoy life. We bought a four wheel camper pop up on a Ford f250 in the USA. Your set up is perfect and I'm wanting one to live on the uk and Europe for 6 mths a year in my dreams. Im British living in the USA 33years and Italy looks fantastic. Your kids are so lucky to live like this.

[@CaliCamperFamily]

Thanks Lorraine, I bet your pop up on the F250 is fun! Yes, the Nugget is perfect for us…I hope you can realise the dream of touring Europe. Thanks for your lovely comments, much appreciated. Best wishes from us all!

[@Wheres_wanda_wandering]

You found some lovely places. Take care Gill

[@CaliCamperFamily]

Thanks Gill!

[@captaincoxyboy]

Always good to see you guys, wonderful family holiday and great to see you putting the Nugget through its paces, thanks for sharing 👍

[@CaliCamperFamily]

Cheers! We love getting the most out of our Nugget, it’s a super way of spending family time together!

[@gilesmatthews7772]

Lovely van .have fun everyone

[@CaliCamperFamily]

Thanks Giles 😃👍

[@russellrivers-scott7928]

And another great video, and love how you produce them and how they show how much your young family enjoy your adventures. Also, I agree, Lincolnshire sausages are the best, well done for making then yourselves. BTW love the Nugget.

[@CaliCamperFamily]

Thanks Russell. We do love Lincolnshire sausages!!! Glad you enjoy our videos, and we appreciate your kind comments. All the best from us all!

[@LifeistooshortCK]

Great to see you guys again. Love travelling along with you so thanks for sharing your adventures. You do a brilliant job of documenting your holiday so naturally and we love “Izzy Cam” ❤

[@CaliCamperFamily]

Hello! Sorry for the slow reply, we have been headsdown with a childrens charity project and now we are just about to start long awaited house renovations. But, we will still be in the Nugget on our adventures! We’d rather sell the house before the van!!! We are really enjoying your Norway series; gives us inspiration to travel North, we’d love to travel around Scandanavia. Love it that you guys find the time to watch and thanks for your encouraging comments too. Have a very merry Christmas! Jordan, Jo, Holly, Izzy and Poppy 🤗

[@LifeistooshortCK]

@@CaliCamperFamily thanks for the lovely reply. Good luck with the house renovations. Hope you have a lovely Christmas and lots of fun adventures in the Nugget in 2023 🎄🎅🏻🚐😀 x

[@josh_bfc_2769]

Brilliant video. Loved the versatility of the nugget. Never seen that version here in the UK on my travels. Looking forward to your journeys in the future 👍👍

[@CaliCamperFamily]

Thanks Josh! Its versatility is one of the reasons why we love it so much! 😎

[@vikrantnikumbh]

such cute family, touchwood and love from India

[@cirkuscederstrom]

If you havent fitted a lifepo4 battery as leisure battery, highly recommend. A 200ah gets you off grid juice for days. add a dcdc charge booster and no need for solar panels at all.

[@hanspronk2749]

Nice vlog again after a wile, we missed you. Perhaps a little tip: move the camera a bit slower, it is not so pleasant when we watch your vlogs on the tv screen.

[@CaliCamperFamily]

Hi Hans, thanks for watching and yes, we do need to slow down our camera work. We have a lot of footage already made and on the editing table, so the same might be true on those videos too….sorry about that! Thanks, keep watching and we’ll work on it 👍🏻

[@francoissodexim6041]

Hi! Nice video! Just to know, what is the model of your black wheels? I wouldlike the same on my nugget!

[@brunogrimard9516]

Hi, thanks for your video! We also have a Spicy Curry, what is your bike rack? Thanks for the info ;-)

[@larrybird8896]

Awesome lifestyle ❤

[@CaliCamperFamily]

😎👍

[@celinajuarez5175]

Can you a show of your bikes? Havent seen them here in the USA

[@raggaskooljose5151]

We are still waiting out ford nuggets plus pup up roof visit Luxembourg one time

[@CaliCamperFamily]

Good luck with your new Nugget when it arrives! It is an awesome thing to own!

[@IslaSprollie]

Can I ask, how/where do you top up the fresh water tank whist wild camping and can the Nugget force-charge the leisure battery via the engine? I presume you can empty the toilet in a public loo too? If so then I think I could wild camp for a week or two, maybe.

[@CaliCamperFamily]

Hello, yes, the Nugget automatically charges the leisure batteries when the engine is on so we never worry about running out of electricity. We have emptied the toilet (discretely) into a public loo on numerous occasions; we buy/use a sewer friendly (eco) toilet additive called Solbio for this reason. As regards water, all’s you need is potable water from somewhere. If you cannot attached a hose, you can access the water tank under the seat and fill it up using bottles. Our next video shows us doing exactly that, so look out for Episode 4 of our Summer Tour. As a last resort you can buy the cheapest and biggest bottles from a supermarket…all part of the fun!

[@IslaSprollie]

@@CaliCamperFamily Thanks, I’m working my way though your videos but not necessarily in order 🫣 Keep up the good work

[@CaliCamperFamily]

A pleasure, thank you!

[@user-gk5yw3uf3z]

We had the same problem as you with our Control Panel of never reaching 100% charge in our Nugget. Our Control Panel also intermittently, usually after 3 or 4 days started not responding as it should, resetting resolved these issues for a while. After nearly a year of many phone calls and emails to our Ford Dealership and Westfalia, our Control Panel has now the new software update that was required to resolve the fault. It could well be that there are a lot of Ford Nuggets that need the new software update and the owners of these vehicles are unaware because this fault is easily mistaken for a ‘glitch’. Really great videos, interesting and informative, thank you.

[@CaliCamperFamily]

That’s interesting! I guess you had to take your Nugget to the dealership for the software update? Our dealer was very inexperienced at anything from Westfalia, so not sure who would do this for me?! Ours certainly suffers from glitches and uncommanded resets. I will look into this further, so many thanks for your helpful comment!

[@user-gk5yw3uf3z]

As soon as you said that for some reason your control panel would only show a charge of 87% this confirmed my suspicion that most Nuggets sold prior to November 2022 (ONLY WITH THE NEW TOUCHSCREEN CONTROL PANEL) could well have the problem ours did and I realised that you must have the faulty software, so I needed to tell you. I realised that there was a fault with the Control Panel within the first week of taking delivery of our Nugget, unfortunately it took a further nearly 11 months of emails to the dealership, to Ford, to Westfalia and to Dometic (who produce the Control Panel) of frustration and despair at times to get the fault resolved. The short version of how this fault was resolved is that our dealership like yours also had no experience of anything Westfalia related, so the person I was sending emails to (sending emails so there was a paper trail) he contacted Westfalia in Germany and I was asked to describe the ‘symptoms’ yet again, there wasn’t a response from Westfalia of any substance, this went on for a while, to and fro, the dealership waiting for information from Westfalia. After a while someone else took on my ‘case’. All the time tho I had been trying to find out anything I could and I had contacted Dometic who manufacture the Control Panel, they said that they didn’t load the software it was Westfalia who produced it and did this. During looking into the Dometic website I had found out that the Control Panel is designed so that the softeware can be updated, the front of it clips off and there is a dedicated slot on the back for an SD card to do this, so now I informed the dealship of this, I did say that I would prefer a brand new panel replacement panel from Westfalia that worked as it should though. I also said to them that the I suspected that the problem could be to do with the software and I told them how relatively easy it seemed to update the software. The new person dealing with this now was as tenacious as I was and she went back to Westfalia yet again and this time with my theory, thankfully she received a reply from them, with what I’d say was almost an ‘admission’ that they were aware that there was a problem with the software and that they were working on an updated version, I was astonished but really pleased that finally they’d acknowledged the problem existed and that I had this from them and in writing. I realised that the fault with the software in my Nugget that Westfalia were, “working on an update”, would most likely be faulty in the software of every other Nugget sold and anywhere they sell them, that’s sold before about November 2022 because that’s when they sent the new software electronically to our dealership who then downloaded it onto our Nugget Control Panel. During the course of all of this, and when I actually knew that there was a software fault I had asked the dealership to contact Ford UK and take this forward as a complaint, I drafted a lengthy complaint in which I suggested to Ford that ‘they’ could unknowingly be selling a faulty product, I suggested that they might want to contact all Nugget owners with the new Control Panel and tell them to check to see if they had the fault because it is a fault that is not that easily seen, it’s very intermittent. Ford sent a polite official reply via the dealership, in short saying that they constantly monitor quality of their products/vehicles and including this, “We can confirm that there is no common concern as regards to the control panel issue.”, I’d pointed out that Westfalia had already said there was a fault, so it seemed I must have been the only Nugget owner to have identified the problem, and Westfalia and Ford seemed to be adopting a non-proactive approach, possibly because most dealership will have no experience of the Nugget Control Panels, they may not know how to download and the upload the new software, they’d also need special training to do this because if it was done incorrectly that could result in control panels being ‘wiped’, which would cause Westfalia and Ford more problems,,,although all of this is missing the point of the actual Customer getting a product working properly that they’ve paid for. I really do think that all Nugget owners should be made aware of this issue, of the possible fault with the software, so they can then ‘know’ to check their Control Panels and then hopefully Westfalia and Ford will reconsider their approach to this issue.

[@user-gk5yw3uf3z]

Good morning, I hope you and your family are all well. I’m still having the same problem with my Control Panel despite having the latest software update installed and then next, just a few weeks ago, having a brand new Control Panel installed, and I am hoping you can help me by confirming if your Control Panel acts in the same way? So the issue I have and that has existed since I purchased my Nugget, is that when my Touch Screen Control Panel has been turned on and left untouched (untouched, which is important) for a random period of time, the longest period of time being up to 3 days, the “Home” button, the “Messages” button and the “On/Off” button will not function. So do you know if yours does the same please? The Control Panel does actually come out of standby by touching it anywhere other than on the 3 buttons that will not function, the 3 buttons that are supposed to bring it out of standby etc, but even though the screen ‘livens up’ the 3 buttons will still not function as they are supposed to until I completely reset the Control Panel, by turning the power off and on. Separately the issue you had and that I had that was that the leisure batteries would not charge to 100%, this was resolved for me once the software was updated although it’s quite disappointing that it was resolved with the loss of the reading now counting down or up in single digit increments, so now my Control Panel goes either up or down in 10% increments, so 100% to 90% to 80% and so on, instead of as it did originally from 100% to 99% to 98% and so on,,,the issue has been resolved at the expense of now having less accuracy in the readings. I want to try and get my issue with the Control Panel sorted because the warranty is running down and if you do have the same fault then most likely I think everyone could well have and not know, and all of their warranties are running down as well. If you can help and let me know if yours acts in the same way I’d be really grateful,,