SO HERE'S WHAT WE DO THEN....

April 29 - The issue comes down to the money really. We had a sort of budget for this trip. Our holiday fund means we can do a couple of grand each year. Our winterising plans add some £1000 to this. So we knew we could handle the £50 of fuel per transfer each week and the round about £80-100 a week for sites. But we really only expected a couple of hundred for incidentals like the car. Breakdown itself was covered by insurance. Even the robbery should be but we doubt we will get enough.

But major surgery en route is down to us. So just now we are facing a budget deficit of between £2,000 and maybe £4,000. Not something we can really handle. So go home is the solution.

We can save about £700 by not going to Spain and Portugal and by cutting the trip from 15 weeks to about 10. So we are planning a mountain free route out of the Massif Central. That means going west via Rodez and then south west to Albi. From there we follow the lower Tarn to Agen and then to its conjunction with the Garonne. Then stay with that river to Bordeaux from where France stretches flatter and smoother north. Up the N10 will save tolls and we can head to a ferry crossing about late May having had a fairly enjoyable trip – if all goes OK of course. Sadly of course this is mostly country we know very well which is exactly what our original route avoided!

We have been touring the area and re-visiting a few sites. Severac le Chateau was a place we wanted to see and we have certainly done that now. The castle is a impressive ruin of 800 years of privilege. The delightful medieval village is the exact opposite and absolutely lovely. We have seen the Millau viaduct from on and under and it is best seen from sideways. We have re-run bits of the Tarn and Dourbie and the Dourdou and also seen lots of new bits. The area has not changed too much in 18 years al;though there are differences. A bit more commercialisation, more bijou enterprises and houses and Moustejoul seems to have been gentrified – as expected. Millau is bigger, brasher and still rather super. The real roads are still amazing and the A75 autoroute and the viaduct add much – especially the chance to move about a bit more quickly!

So it has been a great couple of weeks all bar the stress. We shall pack up on Sunday and head off to Albi on Monday. If the car behaves OK and I can avoid using maximum turbo boost it will be a breeze, The only stress will be in me pussy footing a car I no longer trust and with 900 kilometres to go even to the ferry terminal. Heigh ho and off we go.

WELL, THAT'S IT THEN....

April 28 - Le turbo finito... Wells that's not what it actually says on the diagnostic report. It says the all the systems controlling the turbo are working fine and nothing has occurred to explain our problem. Except the problem. Which the diagnostic team replicated. They knew we towed a caravan and this was the first time we towed it at 3,000 feet on the A 75. So they replicated a maximum turbo pressure event. And it failed. So they did it again. And it failed. I went on line before taking the car to the garage – a VAG dealer in Millau. So I know roughly what happens. The turbo hits maximum pressure – at about 4,000 rpm in anything but sixth. And it fails to deliver. The engine management system goes loop and shuts down everything, dumping pressure tout suite. Result zilch turbo until you turn off and on again. When the aforementioned EMU runs a re-boot and resets the whole thing. Sadly it appears this is NOT on the event log which the EMU also runs.

Here is our problem – garage fees in France are 50% higher than in the UK and they want “en le environ de” (i.e. about) 1,500 euros. That's 1300 quid or more. The about really refers to whether they replace all the bits that MIGHT fail later or simply put them back. If money was not a problem and the car A – much loved and B – younger I';d say replace. Which probably puts it at 2,000 euros. Stay and do or go?

Here is the best solution as we see it. The car will never need to be run at maximum pressure if NOT towing. So we can drive home with ease and comfort. An d have the job done in the UK. We are deciding to leave the car on a back lot at the site we are on for four weeks. Drive home, have the job done, and drive back in late May to recover the caravan.

Do we feel cheated? You bet. Do we feel jinxed? You had better believe it. One oyster event worth four days. Oh yes. One robbery worth £2,500. What do you think? Two flat tyres worth 80 euroes and a set of brake pads worth 120 euroes. Don't you just love this? And now we have a blown turbo worth 1,500 and a need to turn for home two months early. Don't even ask.

BACK TO THE GORGES DU TARN

April 23 - They say you should never go back but like all rules of life it is proven in the breach. Our return to the Gorges of the Tarn river has been wonderful. It is some 17 years since we were here. Much has changed but muchg remains the same. The road here from Clermon Ferrand has indeed changed. When we last drove it was the RN9. It was my first taste of such a road with a caravan on the hook, albeit a light and easy Lynton of the 80s. It then ran from mountain top to valley bottom in a series of hard climbs and dives of two-lane follow my leader torture. Our carburettor aspirated Nissan Bluebird was 1.8 and automatic! It and we did OK.

Today it is the A75, four lanes of high level motorway that varies only between 800 metres and 1100 metres for the entire 125 or so kilometres. There are long ascents and descents but they are easy meat by olden standards, with slow vehicle lanes going up and down the worst inclines. You seel of France but about as much of the wonderful countryside.

And in our time it ended with an 800 metre descent into the valley of the Tarn, Aveyron and Jonte rivers at Millau. Followed by the 800 metres ascent up the rightly labelled Le Escalier pass into the region of Herault. Today it is the Millau Viaduct, French inspoired, English architected and geniusely engineered to carry the traffic from Causse top at about 800 metres to Hirault plateua at about the same. Gosh and wow are n ot enough.

When back in the day we heard they planned to cross the valley with a huge bridge we were a bit fhorrified. It is a superb place. How could it not be a blot on this landscape? Well it is not. It genius in concrete and steel. The piers that carry it are huge uop close but slender from a distance. And they are double with ba window gap between – it aids wind pressure problems but also diminishes their impact. And the bridge? A bold but slight blade of lights across the gap carried on gossamer wingers of suspension wires. It shimmers against the bright blue skies of the Midi. It is awesomely lovely.

And little else has changed. The Tarn has less water I think than before but the gorge is immense – even more than we remembered. The clifs are amazing, the cirques sensational and the stunning little houses, hamlets and villages that hang precariously below threatening rocks and above precipitous drops are charming beyond words. And some are on the wrtong bank because when built they did not go by horse and cart but by boat and a bridge was an unnecessary expense. Today some are even served by breeches buoys across the chasm.

You descend into and climb out of this 4-500 metres deep gorge by roads that spiral like spagehtti, forcing smart gear work out of lazy drivers. And rob the driver of his wits as he balances risk against pleasure to enjoy at least some of the view. Even down in the gorge this only just 100 years old clif-cut road snakes frighteningly along gthe noirthern bank, here in a tunnel overhung at 3.5 metres, there between blasted cliff borders with little but inches between passing mirrors. Along the weay are a myriad stopping places where eager fingers press shutter releases to pruduce trillions of pixels of identical pictures. But we all do it. Back in the day this was an expensive holiday – two weeks of 35 mm films was about 12x36 rolls at about £4 a roll; followed bgy dev and print at about £6 a shot. There was no change out of £125 and you had yet to mount or store them! Today I take that many in a few hours. I shall junk 60plus per cent and store about 10 per cent on a Picasso! Cost? Well zero really since the Canon cost no more today than the Ricoh that did the job back then. Except of clopurse some thieving git has my Canon and I was using a Lumix smaller than my fag packet in 1993 with a wider and longer lens and able to hold 1300 images at 8-12 meg!

No, nothing has changed. Oh, except the prices. Lunch back then would have cost about the same as a coffee today.

DROIT DE SIGNEUR AND OTHER PRIVILEGES

Severac Le Chateau is a town surrounding a huge castle turned palace on a stump of volcanic rock in the middle of a vast valley. The town survives, the castle, its fine rooms and gardens are a ruin. The revolution would be proud. Not that they actually levelled it – time and neglect did the most damage but if ever a chateau represented what La Revolution was about this could be it.

It starts life as a stronghold pf robber barons in the tenth century. Norsemen turned Normans settling down from a life of pillage to a life of villeiny as it were. They get to build a proper castle sometime around 1000 plus and it most definitely commands the countryside. But Normans come and Normans go and sometikme in the 13^th century a Severac comes to hold it. A man of adventure he gets to a Marechal de France but fails to ensure an inheritor; all balls but no balls it would seem. It passes to a scrag end of his family who screw it upo and it finds its way into the hand of clasical French noibility. Who tart it upo a bit. And then some. They builds an astonishing range of rooms ona three-storey basis, angled to catch the sun and centred ona towereed gateway. On end is a baronial hall, the rest – like a mighty ships on the rocks is rooms for family and friends. Mind you, it follow another French poattern we last saw at Chateau D,Onos in Corbieres. Essentially this 200 metres lonbg extravagance is just one room deep. It looks sensational but if built ina conventional form around an atrium or couryards would abe modest in reality. But we doubt the locals saw it that way.

But nobility come and nobility go – mostly in a tumbril around here – and the place falls into ruin sometime in the 18^th century. Ignmofred, plundered and reviled it does not even get historic monument status until 1960 or so. Today it stabilised, ruinous to view and ruinous to suppoirt. But somebody loves it and I have to say it is a cracking castle to visit. Amazing views, fin stone and no one to nag you off the rocks.

Down below is this lovely medieval; town, clutching the apron strings of the bastion above. Fortified, walled, gated – two excellent examples survive – it has escaped the Carcassonne effect but the resultant lack of any significant activity, especially outide the season is sad. Nobody wants the endless souvenir stalls of Carcassonne but a few potteries, artisan craft shops, cafes, epiceries and the like would make the place at least feel alive. But the architecture is wonderful, all towers, and gables, and jetties and pediments and crazy angles. Lovely.

OH NO, NOT AGAIN....

Tarn Gorges, April 19 - We are beginning to wonder if we offended a witch sometime. Janet was driving the interesting A75 that has replaced the torturous N9 from Clermont to Millau. She drives well which is good as motorway or not this is a killer road. 3,000 feet up, constantly climbing or diving and winding endlessly. And since it is a free A Road it is packed with traffic and a multitude of connections.

Which is why losing power in mid overtake is pretty unnerving. Effectively we were doing 70 passing a labouring old Hymer (yes old and Hymer do go together) when the turbo apparently cut out and Janet was coasting in fifth. She got us back onside and the Hymer was so slow we had passed it but it was soon our turn. A 1.9 Turbo Diesel sans turbo is a lot less than a 1.9 diesel. More like a 1 litre and this had 1,500 lbs of caravan on its back. At times we were down to second, 2000 revs and 30 mph. Which would be fine on an N road but this is an Autoroute. It reminded me of our first run this way 18 years ago in a 1.8 Nissan Bluebird auto with a 1200 lb Lynton van on the hook. The N 9 was a two way country road through the mountains. Lovely. But we were only 50ish and loved it!

I decided Janet had done her bit and we switched and laboured our way on, deciding to stop short of Millau and use the ACSI site at Severac le Chateau. Good decision as well after we later saw our choice in Millau – very Butlins!

So once again our day was spent hunting down a VAG dealer to check out the car. BUT, and this is odd, it started a dream on the Tuesday and was running fine. No hint of the problem. My theory of a failed catalytic converter looked unsound and a failed turbo it was not. Well, so far. Millau has a VAG dealership and they took a look. What no warning lights. So not the cat and not the turbo as such. And now running fine. Intermittent? Booked for Friday as I write for diagnostics and report - or fix if we are lucky.

Now comes the problem – do we trust the car or our luck any more? We are deep into France now which is OK since we have enough lingo and knowledge to cope and home is only one country away. But in two weeks we shall be crossing Spain midway down; then Portugal. Do we go on? Friday may decide the fate of this venture. Fix and forget and we go on. No significant finding and we have to be cautious. Major work and we are stuffed for cash anyway in the short term. It will be home and recoup while sorting the insurance claim. Oh yes that is still out there!

Janet took a glass of wine tonight. No surprise there – I took a feast!