Up early today to get a head start on the trip home. The van started immediately, so after saying goodbye to Beatrice and Kibo, we headed down the hill to Schüpfheim, then turned right to Hasle. I had been thinking overnight that one (roundabout) way to solve the problem with the fridge always defaulting to running off the starter battery, might be to use a C7 battery charger running off 240v mains power in the van to recharge the starter battery while it is powering the fridge. While this is not the most efficient way to run the fridge (it would be better to just run it off the mains power directly), it might be a temporary way to get the fridge working while we're stationary, until we get the automatic selector working again. In the meantime, we decided that we needed to buy an emergency battery starter so that if the battery runs flat again, we can use the emergency battery starter to get the van running (as we have done many times with the PanBus back home and both our cars when we get back from France each year).

We found Camperworld in Hasle and talked with Mr. Portmann about our options. He said he could provide a new battery for 300euro and put an emergency battery starter on order for tomorrow. Or we could keep the secondhand battery for 80euro and find an emergency battery starter ourselves. We said we needed to think about it for a little while, and he offered us the use of the toilet and grey water disposal facilities in his adjacent campground while we did our thinking! Eventually we decided on Option 2, and paid him 225euro for his late-night Friday service call and the secondhand battery. We then headed off for Montbeliard, where we planned to buy an emergency battery starter at FeuVert.

Along the way we stopped for lunch at a motorway rest area (hoping the van would start again after lunch!), and saw a sign for a Euro-Relais campervan service area. These facilities must obviously be funded by the European Union, probably across all of the EU. While we didn't need to use them today (having emptied everything at Hasle), it was worth noting their existance and memorising the sign for future trips.

After lunch (yes, the van did start), we continued on to Montbeliard FeuVert in search of an emergency battery starter. They had several in stock, but with a couple of different ratings, so we asked the staff for advice as to what we needed for the campervan. They said that none of those on display would be strong enough for the vans diesel engine. As we were about to despair, the manager came over and joined the conversation and said he would check "out the back". A few moments later he returned with a higher capacity 3000cc jump starter, saying "Je pensais en avoir vu un là-bas" ("I thought I'd seen one of them back there"). When we explained why we needed it and the problems we'd had with the starter battery, they told us to pull the van around to their service area on the side, where they proceeded to quickly do a free checkup on the state of the battery and the alternator. Both were declared to be free of problems, which reinforced  that our earlier diagnosis was probably correct about the faulty selector switch being the cause of the starter battery running flat. Thank you, FeuVert.

We then drove on to Auxonne with some peace of mind. However, when got back to Auxonne, we found that the travellers (gypsy) encampment was back again next to the port carpark. While we have no evidence that they were involved in the theft of the campervan when they were last in Auxonne, we decided not to take any chances this time, so we drove the van and the Scenic to the secure parking area at St Jean de Losne, unloaded the van into the Scenic, and then brought the Scenic back to Auxonne, where we enjoyed a quiet dinner on the rear deck (secure in the knowledge that the van was out of potential harms way).