Oh, Well, That Was Fun…

As trips go, this one was mixed. The drive through France was fraught with appalling weather. Continuous rain meant visibility was reduced by spray. This wasn’t helped by a tendency for the car to aquaplane on stretches of waterlogged road (of which, more later). So the trip across the Millau bridge was a murky affair and we saw nothing beyond the lights of the preceding car. It was at this point that my wife mentioned the noisy car next to us at the péage. Except, it wasn’t the car next to us. It was us. My conclusion that the exhaust had blown proved to be correct.

These things have a way of playing out that is both frustrating and predictable. I just knew it was going to take all day and possibly more. Experience of similar mishaps in foreign countries with the bikes had always played out this way – so why should this be any different? The Roman philosopher, Seneca, said that if we expect the worst and the worst happens, well, we won’t be disappointed. It think what he actually said was along the lines of we tend to expect too much and are consequently disappointed. With that in mind, we set out early the following morning and made getting the car fixed our main priority.

The garage in Lodève couldn’t help as they were all booked up and didn’t have the parts in stock, so we would have to go to Clermont L’Herault some 18Km away. Not a huge problem, but we were conscious of the appalling racket coming from the car. Still, the Renault garage had it up on the ramp to take a look. More bad news. One of the tyres had been badly gashed on the inside. It must have happened sometime on the trip down. The way the tread had been ripped along the wall of the tyre explained the tendency to aquaplane as it must have been filling with water causing the tread to float away from the tyre body. The other front tyre, while still legal, was getting low, so we agreed to replace that, too.

Neither tyres nor exhaust were in stock, so we would have to wait until Wednesday. Today was Monday. Okay, so that’s why we have recovery insurance. They would sort out a hire car. Which, with a little phoning around, they did. It would however mean a taxi trip to Beziers, over 40Km away.

By the time we picked up the hire car and got back to the house, it was gone 6pm. The experience was repeated on Wednesday – ‘cos nothing happens quickly and everything stops for the 2 hour lunch break. If you’re mentally prepared, well, it’s just the way things go – and it could have been a lot worse. That rip in the tyre makes my blood run cold just thinking about it.

On the plus side, we completed the work we set out to do with time to spare – so we had some time to just relax and enjoy the ambience of the French countryside in mid winter.

The drive back was plagued with falling snow – so I still can’t say what the experience of the Millau bridge is like…