I just agreed to have the Beast repaired...

Reasoning:

1. I just spent a weekend travelling in the old-style: Flights, airports, buses, hostels and junk food. There are definite advantages to having your own transport and taking your home everywhere with you.
2. It would be such a waste! ok, they'll sell what parts they can, but the rest is a huge, perfectly good van that would probably end up in landfill or whatever it is they do to dead car carcasses.
   
3. The insurance company will let me renew the insurance over the phone, as long as it's before midnight today (when it expires)
4. I'm not allowed to be afraid of a couple of days driving through what will probably be very cold and possibly snowy conditions. I have good 'all-season' tires, and, while they aren't winter tires, they should do on the highways.
   
5. And I'm not allowed to be afraid of freezing to death. I can always pay to stay either inside or somewhere with electricity if it's bad, although I was doing pretty well finding gas station car parks that have power outlets before...
   
6. I realised that I'm not likely to do nearly as much travelling in spring without it.
7. I'm reading John Steinbeck's "Travels with Charley" about his journeys in a van (a far nicer, custom built van) with his large poodle. I've only just started it, but it has some useful ideas already, mostly about the anonymity and freedom of solo van-travel, and about eternal wanderlust.

So now I just have to hope it doesn't take two weeks more just to get it back on the road...