Is amazing what you can find in France, at various times a shredded tyre, a bunch of very lost people, a man standing over a Rolls Royce with a fire extinguisher, friendship, community and of course a château (well you can find it eventually). However let me start at the beginning, Operation Stack and the A20.
The morning dawned full of hope and not a small amount of trepidation. I had driven the Datsun from lovely Somerset to quite nice South West London-ish, traffic was light and it was not an unpleasant journey, although I did need Radio 4 (Longwave) at nearly full volume to be able to hear it over the exhaust/engine noise of my rather stupid car. I backed out my fully loaded car (clothes, laptop, various bits of electronics, camera kit, projector and sound system) on to the suburban streets and headed for Ashford to pick up my usual partner in crime Tim (along again for some chilling and photo ops).
M25 was kind M20 had Operation Stack, but it was all very quiet so I figured off at A20, bomb down there and to Ashford no worries... WRONG... there was a long traffic jam on the A20...
Here is the thing, my car overheats if it is stuck in traffic for a while, the first time I discovered this was on the A20, about five minutes later I discovered that it takes longer than five minutes for the water to cool from boiling (it actually takes about 15), 10 seconds after that discovery I took this photo:
Okay I had some more water and some coolant, because I wanted to top up before returning in case my mystery leak got worse. Plugged my laptop into the USB on the ECU and got an ETA on when it would start to steam and stop again. Every time it crept over 95 degrees I'd stop for five to ten minutes and let it drop back down before heading out in traffic again. I made it to a petrol station in three of these hops of cool, grabbed some more coolant, a load of water and a universal petrol cap (nothing to do with the overheating I've just needed one for months). Traffic cleared a bit and I made it to Ashford with just one more cool hop.
Tim jumped in along with his luggage. It is interesting how soft my rear springs are and the noise that arches make on tyres when you go over bumps, French roads are great though right?
[Insert an uneventful ride in an underwater train here]
Calais!!
When I looked for where to meet for a convoy down I found a CarreFour in the Euro tunnel terminal just down the main street. For some reason everyone's sat nav took them through the back of beyond, ours included, we were one of the last to arrive, due to crazy heat shenanigans. The site that greeted me made the pain of getting to it worth while.
Loaded up on booze and food and booze and booze, we jumped in the cars with Darren in the Mercedes in the lead as he had a working satnav that could get pretty close to the destination.
What he didn't have was tyres that would make the entire journey. A few kilometres after our first stop at about a hundred and ten kilometres an hour the Mercedes overtook a lorry and then started swerving all over the shop. A shredded tyre, ten cars worth of people in high vis got the whole thing changed in F1 pit stop time and we were on our way.
Rouen!!
Rouen is the vile pit of hell.
Last year when we went to Le Mans Classic Rouen's tunnel and bridge were shut, no diversion signs resulted in us being lost there for at least half an hour, on the way back a particularly slippy round about, bad road surface and a little lack of speed judgement on my part meant my Smart FourFor ended up sideways. I already did not have good memories of Rouen, and now I have even worse ones.
The convoy was falling apart, Darren was doing the best he could to keep it together but too many traffic lights and different ways to go had resulted in the convoy being in multiple parts. I ended up in the last three cars along with the lovely red Pug (owned by Jonathan) and Rich's Cortina estate of awesomeness. As I put on the brakes for one set of lights I heard an alarming clunk, but I was more worried that I was stopping again and the engine temp was creeping past 90. The lights changed and I shot off for the next set of lights, by which I mean I went forward a foot, followed by an horrific grinding sound and the car stopping skewed to the left refusing to move forward. Somewhere around the same time someone drove into the back of Rich's trailer and pushed it into the back of his Cortina. This was not good. We were holding up the traffic in Rouen, hurrah! A bit of experimenting later and we found that the Datsun could reverse, so while insurance details were exchanged on top of the Cortina Jonathan helped me reverse the car into a nearby street, where I got out and put my head in my hands.
Rich also made his way into the street and we assessed the damage... well he assessed the damage I called my recently purchased breakdown cover to see if I could get home. "We don't have a record of that membership number". Oh that is handy actually because Rich Vennels is an Actual Legend. A literal mystical prophet of awesome. You see after hearing the lack of membership number record I called my wife to tell her I was probably coming home, this was a little bit emotional for me as I'd planned and been looking forward to the trip and really needed to be there, but my stupid car failed me. By the time I got back to the car Rich had worked out what had happened, a bolt had fallen off the calliper and if we could find one that matched it closely enough we could fix it, oh how about this one that is the same size I have in a random tub of bolts I've got in the car. Yes that'll do it. Rich is a Legend. His garage is local to me as well, so guess who gets to fix other things on my car (oh the fun).
Sadly there wasn't much we could do for Rich, the Cortina and the bent trailer, so we had to leave him and his family on the side of the road awaiting the recovery truck.*
[Insert long uneventful journey down the A28 with some magic biscuits** that cured my headache and my mood]
We made it to the Château at about 10pm, amazing. The car made some truly awesome grinding noises on the little country roads, rubbed its tyres fairly regularly on the Autoroute but generally behaved itself on some really terrible roads. Having a pre-erected tent is the best thing in the world and yes I did actually camp in a real actual tent.
The coolest thing was arriving, seeing all the cars lined up and people hanging out in the outside social area, it was all coming up Millhouse.
Chatted to people far too late in the evening*** then headed to bed. It was a million to one shot but this might just work.
* Happy ending to this story, a night in a hotel later and he found some people that could sort the trailer out, he is still in France on holiday in Caen
** not a euphemism for drugs, those chocolate sandwich "Prince" biscuits and made of real magic, by wizards.
*** and now I have a list of comic books I need to start buying as well, sigh.
The morning dawned full of hope and not a small amount of trepidation. I had driven the Datsun from lovely Somerset to quite nice South West London-ish, traffic was light and it was not an unpleasant journey, although I did need Radio 4 (Longwave) at nearly full volume to be able to hear it over the exhaust/engine noise of my rather stupid car. I backed out my fully loaded car (clothes, laptop, various bits of electronics, camera kit, projector and sound system) on to the suburban streets and headed for Ashford to pick up my usual partner in crime Tim (along again for some chilling and photo ops).
M25 was kind M20 had Operation Stack, but it was all very quiet so I figured off at A20, bomb down there and to Ashford no worries... WRONG... there was a long traffic jam on the A20...
Here is the thing, my car overheats if it is stuck in traffic for a while, the first time I discovered this was on the A20, about five minutes later I discovered that it takes longer than five minutes for the water to cool from boiling (it actually takes about 15), 10 seconds after that discovery I took this photo:
Okay I had some more water and some coolant, because I wanted to top up before returning in case my mystery leak got worse. Plugged my laptop into the USB on the ECU and got an ETA on when it would start to steam and stop again. Every time it crept over 95 degrees I'd stop for five to ten minutes and let it drop back down before heading out in traffic again. I made it to a petrol station in three of these hops of cool, grabbed some more coolant, a load of water and a universal petrol cap (nothing to do with the overheating I've just needed one for months). Traffic cleared a bit and I made it to Ashford with just one more cool hop.
Tim jumped in along with his luggage. It is interesting how soft my rear springs are and the noise that arches make on tyres when you go over bumps, French roads are great though right?
[Insert an uneventful ride in an underwater train here]
Calais!!
When I looked for where to meet for a convoy down I found a CarreFour in the Euro tunnel terminal just down the main street. For some reason everyone's sat nav took them through the back of beyond, ours included, we were one of the last to arrive, due to crazy heat shenanigans. The site that greeted me made the pain of getting to it worth while.
Loaded up on booze and food and booze and booze, we jumped in the cars with Darren in the Mercedes in the lead as he had a working satnav that could get pretty close to the destination.
What he didn't have was tyres that would make the entire journey. A few kilometres after our first stop at about a hundred and ten kilometres an hour the Mercedes overtook a lorry and then started swerving all over the shop. A shredded tyre, ten cars worth of people in high vis got the whole thing changed in F1 pit stop time and we were on our way.
Rouen!!
Rouen is the vile pit of hell.
Last year when we went to Le Mans Classic Rouen's tunnel and bridge were shut, no diversion signs resulted in us being lost there for at least half an hour, on the way back a particularly slippy round about, bad road surface and a little lack of speed judgement on my part meant my Smart FourFor ended up sideways. I already did not have good memories of Rouen, and now I have even worse ones.
The convoy was falling apart, Darren was doing the best he could to keep it together but too many traffic lights and different ways to go had resulted in the convoy being in multiple parts. I ended up in the last three cars along with the lovely red Pug (owned by Jonathan) and Rich's Cortina estate of awesomeness. As I put on the brakes for one set of lights I heard an alarming clunk, but I was more worried that I was stopping again and the engine temp was creeping past 90. The lights changed and I shot off for the next set of lights, by which I mean I went forward a foot, followed by an horrific grinding sound and the car stopping skewed to the left refusing to move forward. Somewhere around the same time someone drove into the back of Rich's trailer and pushed it into the back of his Cortina. This was not good. We were holding up the traffic in Rouen, hurrah! A bit of experimenting later and we found that the Datsun could reverse, so while insurance details were exchanged on top of the Cortina Jonathan helped me reverse the car into a nearby street, where I got out and put my head in my hands.
Rich also made his way into the street and we assessed the damage... well he assessed the damage I called my recently purchased breakdown cover to see if I could get home. "We don't have a record of that membership number". Oh that is handy actually because Rich Vennels is an Actual Legend. A literal mystical prophet of awesome. You see after hearing the lack of membership number record I called my wife to tell her I was probably coming home, this was a little bit emotional for me as I'd planned and been looking forward to the trip and really needed to be there, but my stupid car failed me. By the time I got back to the car Rich had worked out what had happened, a bolt had fallen off the calliper and if we could find one that matched it closely enough we could fix it, oh how about this one that is the same size I have in a random tub of bolts I've got in the car. Yes that'll do it. Rich is a Legend. His garage is local to me as well, so guess who gets to fix other things on my car (oh the fun).
Sadly there wasn't much we could do for Rich, the Cortina and the bent trailer, so we had to leave him and his family on the side of the road awaiting the recovery truck.*
[Insert long uneventful journey down the A28 with some magic biscuits** that cured my headache and my mood]
We made it to the Château at about 10pm, amazing. The car made some truly awesome grinding noises on the little country roads, rubbed its tyres fairly regularly on the Autoroute but generally behaved itself on some really terrible roads. Having a pre-erected tent is the best thing in the world and yes I did actually camp in a real actual tent.
The coolest thing was arriving, seeing all the cars lined up and people hanging out in the outside social area, it was all coming up Millhouse.
Chatted to people far too late in the evening*** then headed to bed. It was a million to one shot but this might just work.
* Happy ending to this story, a night in a hotel later and he found some people that could sort the trailer out, he is still in France on holiday in Caen
** not a euphemism for drugs, those chocolate sandwich "Prince" biscuits and made of real magic, by wizards.
*** and now I have a list of comic books I need to start buying as well, sigh.