On the Sunday it was windy. Like very windy. You know, the sort of wind that we get at home on top of the Pentlands when you have to lean to one side when running over the hills in order not to fall over sort of windy. In many ways we felt at home :o) It was a shame for the triathlon folk (which we kind of missed anyway) as it would have been hideous to run, never mind cycle in that wind.
We wandered about in the morning failing to find the start of the triathlon but did manage to locate a coffee. Well done us. We didn't fancy a long walk or cycle of any distance ourselves so decided to take the Bongo out, go get some (more) diesel and head off to Chateauneuf du Pape. Go on, just try to say the name without doing the Del-boy impersonation. Anyhow, things started to go wrong about then; we had thought that the road noise had been a little louder in the van over the last trip but thought maybe different road surfaces etc. would account for that. At first we thought a tyre may be going flat as there was a lot of noise and major vibration when going anything over 15 kph. We stopped and looked at the tyres and all was well but we knew something was afoot. Not too sure what to do we vibrated off to Chateauneuf du Pape at lowish speed getting blown about by the strong winds, oh what fun. We made it there in one piece and stopped for a coffee again - it's never too early to have another coffee - then took a quick look around. A great wee place with vineyards on the slopes and land around and a ruined chateau at the top of the village. Funnily enough nowhere in the chateau gave us shelter from the wind, how does wind do that?
Before leaving we visited the Maison du Vin to find out a little more about the appelation and found a 500 page book that did just that! We got some info from it (like the goood years and the ones to avoid) and sauntered off to buy a couple of bottles which we did from a lady who still works on the vines herself and uses old fashioned methods to produce traditional wine that is of good quality. Having now already enjoyed the contents of the bottles it is safe to say she does a good job!
Back to the Bongo. The journey back to the campsite was again slow and juddery and we knew we had to do something about it, though being Sunday nothing could be done until Monday anyway so we thought we'd better go for a beer at our current local as that would help. It did, and all was well for us, if not the Bongo.
Monday was asserted to be garage day. The nice reception lady at the campsite told us about a local garage that would be able to speak English as our French isn't up to all of "Hi there, we seem to have a problem with the transmission on our grey import Mazda and whenever we accelerate all hell breaks loose. Can you take a look?" and associated return questions so we thought we'd give it a shot. They were not even prepared to take a look but pointed us at a Ford garage (The Mazda Bongo was also badged as a Ford Freda - who thought up these names?) near Avignon so another 10k rattle later we got there. Not the friendliest bunch it has to be said. The basic upshot is that they only really do basic services and that they didn't have the correct machine to "plug the Bongo in to" which equates to "we are not real machanics and unless a computer tells us what is wrong we can't fix it, and besides you do not speak enough French so there!" Thanks entirely to another customer who spoke perfect English we got pointed towards another bigger Ford garage about 20k away.
The next garage was much more friendly and with a mixture of French/English/pointing etc. after a drive in it they at least understood the problem we have and put it up on a ramp so they could have a look and a good poke about, but couldn't find anything wrong. On the plus side, there were no rusty bits either! AseEverything looked fine they said they'd phone Mazda to find out more about the Bongo (as they have never seen one) and see if they could help further,and we would call back later to find out the result. We did and they can't/won't. Bum. Andy called the Bongo Fury mob back in the UK to see if there are any Bongo friendly machanics in France; the quick answer is no but there is one in Germay and another in Spain... On the plus side from the call and chat we are pretty sure we know where the problem lies. On the minus side it looks like the gearbox (an automatic job made by Nissan as it turns out, at least we have the part numbers) which will probably not be good. All we need now is a local auto-gearbox specialist who understands what we are on about.... There is one on the south coast of England. A little disheartened we both went for a short run which always helps. Andy decided just to run at marathon race pace but ended up going somewhat quicker; maybe worrying about a sick motor is good for speed training? After the run we ate and headed out for a beer only to discover that nowhere is open for beers on a Monday night in V-L-A, yet a restaurant that hadn't been open at any other point was actually open, how strange. We did find a wine bar and the wine here isn't too bad you know...
We packed up on Tuesday morning having made the decision that we needed to limp north to either a) find someone to fix the Bongo and then hot-tail it to Italy for the marathons or b) head back to Blighty early to get the van fixed. This would be a real pity in many ways, though we have already been in France for getting on for two months now and who knows, perhaps we could go to Wales instead of Italy? They do both have mountains after all. The plan initially is simple. We do shortish hops, try to find someone to fix the van, do another hop. Although we have breakdown cover the van needs to no longer work at all for that to kick in; knowing it may die isn't enough, so we'll plod on and see what happens. We started to head north deciding to avoid the toll roads to keep the speed down. We then realised it would take an extra two hours for a journey that should take less than two...time to take the tolls we thought. And here's a thing - 15 kph up to 113 kph in the van is awful, terribly noise, the entire thing shakes, the end of the world may just be happening. 114kmph to 132 kmph is just the usual derv engine racket but totally smooth otherwise. We now realise that we don't need to limp home, more do it in little sprint sessions. It was still very windy however and the higher speeds made for some interesting lane choices, not all at the drivers request!
Our route took us back through C-n-d-P as we had to get more of that wine. Priorities as always. We finally made it to Tain L'Hermitage (having originally gone to the nearby village of Tournon sur la Rhone and left quickly as the circus is in town, right beside the campsite we were aiming for) and what a lovely place. Hillsides covered in terraced vineyards, some ridiculously steep. We think we'd better find out a liitle more about the area and are now thinking that even if the van isn't strong enough to make it to Italy maybe pottering around France for a while searching for garages may not be a bad idea. There's plenty more appelations for us to learn about and get to know on a more wine based level :o) Besides, our current campsite has a cycle path running past it that goes from Switzerland down to the sea; there's plenty cycling and running and drinking to be done.
Let's see what the next few days bring, be it a working van, journeys north, east, south or the UK on a breakdown truck; whatever it should be interesting!
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