The End of the Road ?

We have had some amazing views over the last 2 weeks or so. Stunning natural beauty and even some superb man-made sights. Places that it really was a pleasure to get the chairs out and gaze at the view for a moment, enjoying a bite to eat and contemplating life.... However this wasn't one of those views. I guess as housing estates go, I've seen worse. Addis Ababa for example. The rough end of Serbia. The slums of Bangalore in India. We had definitely seen nicer parts of Copenhagen though and after 4 hours the appeal of this particular street was wearing thin. Time for another terse call to the 'recovery firm' who were so far failing to live up to their name. I amused myself on their company Facebook page letting them know what I thought of their service. 

Jezebel had started the morning sounding like a 40-a-day smoker and a few miles further on sounded like she had a terminal case of pneumonia. I had tried fiddling and cleaning the spark plugs. She still wasn't playing ball. 

Well, I guess nothing for it but call for some roadside assistance. At least it wasn't raining. 

The thunderstorm and torrential rain was quite a sight. 

Well, I'm sure it would have been. We somehow managed to amuse young Lucas in between the infuriating calls to Drive 24/7. 

Finally a Danish mechanic showed up. Danes struggle with some English words and sounds. 'V' causes them some issues. I made him repeat 'valve' a few times, mainly for my own amusement. It had taken him a little while to diagnose this as being the problem, he had even called for a colleague. I'm not sure if the colleague was more knowledgeable about VW engines or just better at pronouncing 'valve' but he did more of the talking once the diagnosis was made. 

So, Jezebel needed to be taken to a garage. I wondered briefly if it was going to be Mike from Marsh Road Garage. It wasn't. 

We had a budget of £40 a head for a hotel for the night, according to Drive 24/7. We've looked it up since, their policy says £50 a head. The recovery driver dropped us off at a hotel he recommended, the Scandia. Their cheapest option was a suite for 5 for £260. I think we shall be quibbling this with Drive 24/7. 

The garage, so we were told, started work at 6-30, they had been told what the issue was and would be on it first thing. Meanwhile, the rest of the teams were 3 hours ahead near the German border. 

I phoned the garage at 7-30. No answer. Or at 8. At 8-30 I was told they were just about to look at it. At 9-30 I was told again they were just about to look at it. I set off to walk to the garage, about 4 miles away. I called the garage again and got a stroppy reply that they would call me when it was fixed. 

On arrival the van had at least moved. The mechanic spoke pretty good English, including 'valve', much to my disappointment. Not good news though. The engine needed to be taken out, it was going to take a long time, the garage was shutting for the weekend in under 2 hours and they couldn't start it until Monday. 

Back to Drive 24/7 to give them the good news. Their offer was to fly me back to Copenhagen some time next week once she was fixed. I pointed out this would probably require 3 days that I didn't have. I would prefer recovery as they state in their paperwork. 652 miles to Dunkirk. This would apparently cost more than their upper limit on cost per breakdown. They might consider this if we paid a share of the costs.... So, for £1000 they would dump us on a ferry 200 miles from home.... I questioned why they called themselves a European Recovery operation if they couldn't recover vehicles from Europe. 

I took some advice from the mechanic. Is she able to run ? What damage can be caused if I did ? Do we know exactly what the problem was ? What is that Swedish make of car over there ? (Well I had to check to see how he pronounced 'Volvo'). I even took some advice from Jason who had sold me Jezebel in the first place. 

So, she can run on 3 cylinders. She won't be healthy. You'll need to check the oil regularly (where is Sean when I need him ?) and it's possible you mighty do more harm to the engine. Well, I think she's been running on 3 cylinders for a fair bit of the trip...

A quick call to Drive 24/7. If we set off driving without the repair, would we be covered ? Bearing in mind at the very least there would be less miles to recover us and just possibly no recovery costs at all if we did somehow make it back on 3 cylinders to England. No. They weren't interested. They would not assist if we broke down again between Copenhagen and home. 

Call me wild and reckless if you like, I'm usually up for a challenge. An 800 mile run for home on 3 cylinders, with no recovery back up (well, let's face it, we didn't have much support from them before). Sod it, let's do it. To hell with Drive 24/7. I screwed the two missing spark plugs back in, fired her up and drove her out of the yard. 

Strangely she was running as smoothly as she had in days. Jo wanted to drive as we took the route with the lowest mileage  and ran down to Rodby for the ferry to Germany. 

So, 537 miles to Dunkirk. We are avoiding hills (easily done in Denmark and Holland) and we are riding our luck. Will we make it ? I shall let you know in the next blog.