Short lived recovery

Tuesday, August 31st

Christophe, Virginie and Sasha were off to Bordeaux for the day while I was going to head to Dune de Pyla with my newly revitalized campervan. Christophe and Virginie had nicely offered me to stay at their place instead of paying for camping near the dune so my plan was to return at the end of the day.

Well, I had a short day... I drove to the big grocery store, the Carrefour, to get something for lunch and not longer after leaving there, I heard the same nasty sound that I had heard just before I stalled on Saturday. Uh oh. I was very close to the roundabout that I was stranded in before and in fact drove through it, in search of a bit of a hill to park her on as I had had to use the magic spray to get her going at the Carrefour. I stopped, popped the hood and sure enough there was some smoke coming out of the engine. I made a baguette sandwich while letting her cool down a bit and the plan was to limp back to Christophe’s.

Thankfully I made it, crawling along at 20-25 km/hr. I parked in his yard and spent a lazy afternoon catching up on my blog and email. Philippe, the mechanic next door, had a quick listen and diagnosed it as a broken rod bearing and that I needed to replace the engine...damn. Paging Doctor Christophe, paging Doctor Christophe...