[Lily]

Hey ladies and gents,

The sun is shining (well… partially), and it’s got me thinking: summer is just around the corner! 😎🏄‍♀️

Soon, many of you will be getting ready for road trips abroad. I absolutely love travelling around Europe by car myself, but one of my worst fears is breaking down in the middle of nowhere 😅

Have you ever had your car break down abroad? What happened? And how did you get out of the situation?

[Nick]

Not my car, and not a breakdown, but I have been a passenger in a friend's car and we ran out of petrol driving in France! That was a long old day, walking through rural France looking for a petrol station. Luckily we were young and fit enough - it was before the days of heading into Europe and having a decent mobile signal without costing a million pounds !

[Lily]

@Nick how long did you have to walk? I've got to say, I support 90s nostalgia, but I do appreciate how many things (like asking for help in situations like these) have become way easier now thanks to mobile phones

[Nick]

haha, I don't quite remember, but I do recall that we were lucky on two counts - one; it was morning so we had the whole day ahead of us if needed, but it might also have been dark by the time we got back, and two; the petrol station we eventually found was pretty small, realised that we'd already walked for miles and gave us a lift back to the car in his wife's Citroen 2CV - it all felt like something out of A Year in Provence or something!

[Rolebama]

Back in the days when Hermetite was king, I was riding through France when the chain driving my dynamo snapped. Not an immediate problem, but to get to it I had to remove a cover. Unfortunately the cover gasket snapped, and when I restarted the engine there was an oil leak. I headed to the nearest town according to the map, but found a small garage at the first village I came to. I had no idea of the French translations for engine parts, but my conversational French, and a bit of pointing did the trick. We took the cover off and I produced the chain, which was now so badly damaged as to be unusable. I was told he had neither a gasket nor a chain available, but he would do what he could. I was invited into his house, where his wife plied me with coffee. He had a conversation with his son, and the son disappeared. After a while it became apparent that the son had gone to the town to see what he could obtain. On his return some time later I saw he had a length of chain and a sheet of gasket card. The man told me to wait in the house and disappeared. After a while the son came and told me to go back to the workshop to see what his father had done. He had cut the length of chain to fit, and hand crafted a new gasket. He had also worked out why the chain had broken, and rectified that. The bike was reassembled, and it was fine. It was now getting on to dark, and beginning to rain so they insisted I spend the night with them. In the morning I asked about the bill, and was told there was no bill to pay, and that they had enjoyed having some company, and they were not going to profit from my misfortune. I found out that the father and son were partial to a drop of whiskey, and the wife liked sherry. I revisited them twice whilst still in Germany, and took their tipples on both occasions.

[Santa]

We toured France several times, both in a tent and later a caravan. One day, I pulled into a country garage for fuel and saw a Ford with English plates parked by the workshop. The driver came over and asked me if I spoke French, and I offered to try.

The problem was that he had "Europ Assist" and wanted to use that service to get the replacement alternator that his car needed. The mechanic was trying to explain that they would send the part from the UK, which might take a week, while he had a Peugeot alternator that he could fit – but he would want paying.

We agreed on a price (well under €100), and I left, happy to help a fellow Brit.