Chinon

14/05/2010

After such a lovely day yesterday, we set off towards Chateau D'Usse in good spirits. However, about 10km from Ballen Mire disaster once again sprang from the dark corner that it constantly lurks in. Along a straight stretch of road, doing about 80km/h, Skippy's engine made a hell of a bang followed by loud rattling, thumping noises and a horrible burning smell. I may have said something like, 'My jolly goodness, that doesn't sound too good, does it, what?'.

Luckily we were very close to a little space at the side of the road where we could pull over. I had a look under the bonnet but couldn't see anything obvious. It had sounded bad, though, very bad. Thank goodness we had breakdown cover. After callling RAC and arranging for a tow, we made use of our fold up chairs for the first time (a positive) and sat outside to wait. The driver got lost finding us, despite my excellent directions. He didn't speak any English and our French is very limited so communication with him was a bit difficult. He did discover what had happened and that is that a spark plug had decided to eject itself from the engine. It was still intact but just dangling from the lead. So up on the tow truck with Skippy. Pulling a 2.8 tonne vehicle up a slope seemed to put an incredible amount of tension on the tow cable and I was tensing up in anticipation of Skippy's rusty old tow hook disintingrating and the tow driver being cut in half by the cable whiplash. Thankfully that didn't happen.

Maybe it's a French thing, but the driver seemed to blissfully nonchalant about hurling a truck through narrow one way village streets, while carrying a very unstable campervan, while smoking. And talking on a mobile. Oh, and the truck had no seatbelts.

God knows how but we managed to get to the depot with both Skippy and ourselves in an extant state. While unloading Skippy, the driver at this stage became a bit more talkative and referred to himself as a 'froggee' and to us as 'ros-bif', which of course we vehemently denied and managed, with the aid of kangaroo impressions, to convey to him that we were Australian (ros-bif=roast beef=English).

Getting a mechanic proved to be difficult as yesterday was a public holiday and a lot of businesses were closed today as well to make a 4 day weekend. However, the RAC cover is excellent and they arranged for us to have at least 3 nights in a hotel until Monday when a garage would be open. They also arranged for taxi to take us to the hotel which was in Chinon, about 35km way, as there was no available accommodation in close by Tours. Thankfully the 85 euro fare was also covered by RAC.

By this time it was about 3pm and, making the best of things, we went for a walk to in Chinon and in particular the tourist office to see how could spend the next couple of days. We then walked back to the hotel for a rest up before heading out to dinner at a Tex Mex we had spotted.

Unexpectedly, we received phone call at about 6:45, before we'd left for dinner. It was the RAC, letting us know that Skippy had been fixed at the depot and was ready to pick up in the morning. Great news, although a little disturbing that what had seemed to be a major issue had been fixed so quickly.