| Previous | Day 2 - 3rd September 1999 |
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| We're through the tunnel and in Calais!
It only took us 9 hours to get from Manchester to Folkestone!!! To be fair, we did stop
for about an hour to try and fix one of our indicators that had stopped working. Fuelled
by a Burger King - we sat at the motorway services and tried to get the thing to work ...
but we failed and had to limp on through the night with no indicator. I thought a fine
from the police would just about top things off nicely.
Luckily - it didn't
happen. Once we were in France ... we both breathed a sigh of relief ... we were out of the country, and that had to be a good sign! Looking for a new indicator for the LR we wound up at a 4x4 garage in Calais The owner of the garage, Monsieur Guyot patiently tolerated my unique mix of hand and facial gestures as I tried to explain that the indicator light was knackered. He did the French thing of letting me flounder for about 5 minutes and then saying in perfect English "that's no problem ... I've got a genuine Land Rover one inside - why don't you come on in"! Liz stayed with the van as I went inside with the Gallic off-roader. Inside his office was a shrine to all things Land Rover and as he filled out some paper-work I saw he'd scribbled "Old Sodbury" on a bit of paper. "I couldn't believe it - but it turned out that Monsieur Guyot goes several times a year to a massive LR jumble sale at the small village just outside Bristol. I knew that Old Sodbury was the place to get obscure car parts - but I hadn't realised it was drawing crowds from France! After pointing out our route to him on a big map, I left with the part I needed ... and a promise from him that he'd fly out any parts we needed - wherever we were in the world. He was a nice guy and I know he meant it - so we may end up giving him a call before the trip is out! |
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