We lost power on a hill somewhere between the Alentejo and the Algarve, hazard lights on, flooring it and going nowhere fast. The van was loaded, the hills were steep, and Fiat Camper Assist were about to teach us exactly how limited breakdown insurance can be on a Friday afternoon. Not our finest hour. But as problems go, we could have ended up somewhere a lot worse than Mickey’s place.
Where we stopped
- Walter’s town (Portugal): Local metal workers, arranged by our host Walter, arrived at 8:00 a.m. to tackle the bent skid wheels. By 9:22 a.m. they had straightened the chassis, added metal tubes to stiffen the wheels, and given us an honest verdict: the wheels will likely bend again on speed bumps, but they are the first thing to take the impact rather than the van’s rear bodywork. We decided to keep them on for now and play it by ear.
- Bacalhôa winery (Portugal): Walter’s birthday treat, and what a treat it was. A 1,200-barrel French-oak cellar, art woven through every corner of the estate, and a tree the plaques reckon was planted by the Romans in 650 BC. We worked through a white, a red, a muscatel, then a five-year barrel-aged wine, then a ten-year. That ten-year was something else entirely: you could taste every percentage point of the water that had evaporated from the barrel each year. Gorgeous does not quite cover it.
- Walter’s aunt and uncle’s restaurant (a tiny bay, Portugal): No way we would ever have found this in the motorhome. A hidden family beach bar, stunning views, razor clams described on arrival as “knife surf and turf,” bottles of wine pressed on us to take away. It felt more like my birthday than Walter’s.
- Mickey’s Place (Algarve, Portugal): We limped here on a van with no power and no diagnosis. Pricing on arrival was €25 per night without electricity and €30 with it, children free. We ended up on an XL pitch chosen for shade rather than size, at €35 per night plus €5 for electric. Honest caveat: that pricing was quoted to us verbally at check-in, so worth confirming when you arrive. Either way, in a bit of a mechanical pickle, it was the right place to land.
The breakdown: what Fiat Camper Assist actually delivered
Calling it a breakdown is almost generous because the van was still moving, just very slowly uphill. No warning lights, no error codes, just a noticeable loss of power that felt exactly like the turbo pipe issue we had in a previous motorhome. The difference this time was that nothing was visibly loose and no codes appeared.
Fiat Camper Assist picked up promptly, sounded professional, promised a callback in five minutes and a technician soon after. What actually happened: a recovery driver (not a technician) asked us to confirm where the van would be repaired before he came out. We then discovered that Stellantis breakdown cover has what they described as “quite severe limitations,” that motorhome dealerships do not operate over weekends, and that our best option by Friday afternoon was apparently to be towed into storage to wait until Monday. We cancelled that.
The local approach worked better. A German solar and leisure-electrics specialist at the campsite pointed us to a Ukrainian mechanic about four or five minutes up the road. He plugged in his OBD scanner, found nothing, could not replicate the fault on a rev, and said the van was too new for his equipment. He told us to come back in the morning if the problem persisted. We took it for a 25-kilometre test run, found a couple of hills, and it climbed them. Whether the fault cleared itself or we imagined the whole thing remains genuinely unclear. The bigger hills on the way into Mickey’s place had been the real test, and we passed. Tentatively.
The lesson from all of this: if you are travelling in Portugal on a Friday and your breakdown cover is Stellantis-issued, do not expect anyone over a weekend. And as I have said before, local hands-on tradespeople, whether it is metal workers at 8:00 a.m. or a Ukrainian mechanic willing to look at a van he has never seen before, will get further faster than a motorhome dealer on a Tuesday.
Mickey’s place: why we keep coming back
We have been here before and we would come back a third time without question. The pool is the centrepiece, shaped and lit in a way that I would genuinely copy if I ever built a campsite, and George spent every available hour in it (standard). The pitches near the pool would have had us fighting over them five years ago; this time, with the boys a bit older and less in need of constant supervision, we chose a shadier spot further back and were perfectly happy.
What makes Mickey’s place different from most campsites is the personality of it. Mickey herself is an artist, and her work is everywhere: sculptures, paintings, glasswork, scattered across the site in a way that feels genuinely curated rather than decorative. There is a small farm with rescue animals, including Hugo and Teddy the alpacas, who were the reason we first found the place years ago. There is a hair salon bookable via WhatsApp (I got a haircut, eyebrows done, cost me €15 and was overdue). There is a spa with a Thai massage practitioner and a reflexologist. There are several small clean bathroom blocks dotted around the site. The on-site restaurant does a full English for €9 if that is what you need.
On the topic of complaints: I have heard two recurring ones from viewers. The pool went green for one week when there was a water quality issue; the campsite is aware of it and it was a one-off. The animals occasionally look a little rough around the edges; that is because Mickey’s place only takes in rescue animals, some with ongoing health problems, and they are well looked after even if they do not always look it. I am satisfied with both explanations.
One thing that genuinely caught our attention was meeting Robin and Jenny, a couple who have pitched their motorhome there permanently in retirement. Their neighbour’s pitch was potentially coming available. Pitch fees work out at around 320 euros per month, roughly 4,000 euros a year. For a shaded pitch, use of that pool, the spa, the restaurant, and all the rest of it. Lyndsay will tell you I got a bit carried away at this point. She is probably right.
Questions people ask
How bad was the power loss, and what caused it in the end? The van lost significant power on uphill stretches, bad enough that we were not confident of cresting some hills, with no dashboard warning lights and no error codes on the OBD reader. It felt identical to a turbo pipe fault we had experienced on a previous motorhome. The Ukrainian mechanic found nothing obvious, the van performed better on the test run afterwards, and we do not have a definitive diagnosis. We are watching it.
What did Fiat Camper Assist actually offer when things went wrong? After initial delays and a communication breakdown over the weekend, the practical offer was recovery to a storage facility to wait for a dealership to open on Monday. We declined. The cover appears to have real limitations outside of weekday business hours, and Steve was openly frustrated by the experience. If your motorhome is Fiat-based and you are travelling in Portugal, it is worth understanding what your Stellantis cover can and cannot do before you need it.
What does Mickey’s place cost and how do you check in? When we arrived, the rate was €25 per night without electric, €30 with it, and children were free. We were on a slightly larger pitch at €35 plus €5 for electricity. The advice from the team at Mickey’s is to drive in, find an empty pitch first, then go and check in. They will ask you to do that anyway, so save yourself a queue.
What is the Wolf Box dash cam and who fitted it? The Wolf Box was sent to us to try out, and S&G fitted it before the trip. It clips to the rear-view mirror using bungee attachments, which means the Remis blinds can still come across the windscreen without any conflict. The front camera shoots in 4K, the rear is slightly lower resolution but still very good. The screen is large enough to display both cameras simultaneously. One important note for longer motorhomes: the cable that comes with the kit works for cars but not for an 8.6-metre van, so you will need to source a longer run. Voice commands work well for locking footage and switching between cameras. One of the better gadgets we have fitted.
If you are planning a trip to Spain or Portugal and want a sense of what the driving and campsite experience looks like, our motorhoming in Spain guide covers a lot of the practical ground, including the ferry crossing, aires versus campsites, and what to watch out for on the road.
Watch the full video to see the Bacalhôa winery in all its glory, Walter’s birthday lunch at the family bay restaurant, and to find out whether we actually make it over the border into Spain.
Watch the full video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUaXx6_ivSk