Anon
Deleted
Posts :
Location :
Status : Offline
|
 Part III - The death rattle
Life settled into a rhythm. Arrive at a site, unload the kayaks and the bike in 5 minutes, drop the legs and hook up for 4 or 5 days. Most sites had washing and drying facilities for a few euros (even if the drying facilities at one consisted of a length of rope! Clothes pegs hold your curtains closed to keep out draughts and help your drying.
The French love their food so don't assume that because it's in a can you can heat and eat. One evening of trying to translate the instructions on a can we had picked up ended up with our usual solution of eating out. Frog's legs (with butt still attached) taste nothing at all like chicken and, while tasty, meant we spent the rest of the meal trying not to think about what we'd just eaten. French restaurants were a blast. Whatever you order, it will be good. One proprieter was playing with his child between courses and the two outrageous waiters in Le Puy were a laugh a minute. They insisted we try Madelaine, an oily apple brandy in a plain bottle "Made by local artisans, not mass produced". Translation - the local hooch. Like most people we met, they didn't speak english but appreciated our French, such as it was. Only occasionally did we meet someone who resented that our French wasn't fluent.
The one thing that began to wear on our nerves was the increasingly crunchy carpet. After a week I was thinking that a dustbuster would be nice. After two I was wishing for one. After three I finally broke down and visited the local hardware store. It's a good thing that my US adapters also work for french plugs since nobody there had any adapters for foreign travel. At least we managed to find one of the filter funnels for making real coffee (nobody stocks them in the UK). I pounced as soon as I saw one in the supermarket with a cry of "I gots the precious!".
Having a motorbike was fantastic, almost to the point of necessity even if we weren't shuttling. The beastie went from site to site and the bike took us into town, scouting rivers, scouting petrol stations (100mpg vs 20mpg) and, particularly in anarchic France, parking was a breeze. Plus, later on, it was to become a lifeline.
Kayaking in the beastie was the ultimate in luxury. No more stripping in the snow! At the end of a run, straight in, light the fire, put the coffee on, throw the wet gear into the shower and dry naked. Ahhhhhhh. We used the gas sparingly since the only replacement common to the UK and France was camping gaz, we did manage to get hold of an adapter just in case but the bottle lasted the whole trip. The heater was only used after a run, we didn't use the water heater and brewing the morning coffee heated up the beastie to a comfortable temperature.
We even made it as far as the mediteranean although we quickly fled the tourist-refugee camp of Skegness-sur-la-mer.
Things were going well, I had 2 weeks before my flight and we began to head North again when the engine developed "The Rattle". It sounded like a bolt being thrown around the gearbox mangling everything in it's path and occurred in all gears, including neutral, except third. We drove in third at a sedate pace to Le Puy, the nearest large town where we might find a mechanic. On route, I noticed that the hitherto unworking temperature gauge had started registering normal. It was only when we pulled into the car park and the radiator "relieved itself" into a big puddle that I realized that it had been working all along but reading low by around 50%! When it hits normal - beware! Fortunately, the radiator was undamaged and refilling it and keeping an eye on the coolant level revealed no leaks.
The fat, unhelpful manager of the garage listened to the engine, got annoyed that I didn't know the french for "clutch", took one of those intakes of breath (can you believe that???) and said that he "might" be able to look at it in 10 days. It was a little desperate to hope that a french mechanic might work on a 20 year old english vehicle but our garage-to-garage hop across town was greeted with downright rudeness! The whistling intakes, I got used to but some of them actually laughed. One old guy wanted to give it a go but his manager, who looked like he'd never got his hands dirty in his life and was more used to selling new cars, listened before replying "non" and walking away.
Dejected, we limped the beastie to the nearby campground. The owner's cringing as we rattled in (it really did sound like it would fall to pieces at any moment) was a picture, as we were trying to look as if nothing was wrong! Chatting to a couple of local guys in the bar, they complimented me on my French. I said sure, I know how to ask a mechanic why my gearbox is rattling (pourqua est-ce que mon boite de vitesse fait cliquee? Write that one down - it may come in useful!) but why bother? I know damned well I won't understand his reply.
Safe for the time being, we took stock. We were 600 miles from AA coverage (the beastie was too old, had too many owners and not enough service history for them to touch it) with 2.5 tons of gear including a beastie that didn't sound like she would last 10 miles. My flight left in 14 days and if I missed it, I would be thrown out of the US. No local mechanic would touch it and even if they did, a replacement gearbox might take weeks to get here. So we could either patch it up ourselves (I used a local cybercafe/cafe internet to send out an SOS to the bulletin board) or scrap the beastie, try to rent a van for a one way trip to Calais and meet someone from the UK there to salvage what we could.
Things were looking pretty grim.
----------------------
|
New posts since your last visit
Old post
