Our plans
to leave are somewhat stymied this morning. We have packed up Valerie but she is
in a snit and refuses to start. Once again the trusty European AA come to our
rescue – their drivers are amazing, zooming down the narrow campsite lanes with
nary a qualm – no worries with overhanging trees for these boys – Campers watch
and learn. Fortunately all that’s wrong with Valerie is a flat battery, but
Monsiuer AA declares that “il est mort” and we actually need a new one if we are
to have any hope of holing up for a couple of days without it dying on us. So..
we head off to Narbonne Accessories in Beziers to go and get ourselves a new
one. This is duly accomplished with relatively little pain, although we had to
bribe one of their mechanics to fit it! Fitting a new battery isn’t hard
normally; unscrew, disconnect, lift out, replace, reconnect rescrew. , but
Valerie has so many funky connections for water pumps and such like that we
gladly shell out the extra €20.
Superzoomed up we head towards Narbonne for a
heavy culture hit. While navigating the outskirts of Narbonne we find another,
considerably bigger, arm of Narbonne Accessories – the mother ship we think. We
pop in to ask about a couple of other problems that Valerie has encountered and
we are put in the safe hands of what all talented mechanics across the world
seem to look like: dreadlocked, skate shoes, threadbare surf t-shirt, with his
own old VW clapped out van that still works perfectly. This is one of those
moments when you know that even it’s completely heath robinson the fix will
work. Sure enough, within the hour Valerie is not only fixed but the original
design considerably improved upon. Merci Monsiuer (big shout out to S.O.S
camping car).
Much as this has been successful we are a bit wiped out having
spent the day either on the road in the garage an neither of us can face the
metrop so we decide to hideaway in a French passion for the night and do
Narbonne tomorrow. There is a French passion
not very far away in Sigean and we arrive to find a really lovely peaceful
little secluded hotel/restaurant. Alain, the owner, is lovely and waves us
around the corner to go and park up on a large stretch of immaculate shady
lawn. Ideal! Dogs loose, pichet of wine from Alain, everybody happy (except
Alain’s wife for whom the wind seems to have changed at the wrong moment). After
a mooch around Sigean we plot our assault on Narbonne and then retire for the
night.
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