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| Poppies growing wild evrywhere. |
Life on the road has its ups and
downs and today was a bit of a glitch. After saying goodbye to Phil and Paul
who were heading north, we set off south. Really love this part of the country
with its hills and valleys and vast areas of fruit growing. Before we got into
Sisteron I noticed a new area that had a lot of “box” type stores and saw a
very large hardware store. Ian had an idea for making a ramp for the wheels of
his bike to make it easier to get into the back garage, so drove in. It really
was a great Bunnings type store and we spent quite some time and got all the
bits he needed.
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| Brico-Depot - just like Bunnings! |
Back to the van but it wouldn’t
start, just like it had been doing previously. Drat, we thought it had been
fixed. Previously after about 6 to 8 attempts it would start, but this time
there was nothing. Finally, after about 30 attempts it started by which time we
were starting to think what our next move would be to get assistance.
Decided that we really needed to
get to the bottom of this issue as didn’t want it causing grief all holidays.
Checked on the GPS and it was a 3 hour drive back to Mercedes at Valence. As
they had tried to fix it on Monday we felt that was our best option, and the
quickest way back was to retrace our route.
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| Passing back through villages that we stopped at a few days ago. |
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| Interesting architecture to fit the roads. |
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Recycling is really big in France and everywhere are these sort of bins.
No plastic bags anywhere. |
Ian kept the motor running for
the whole trip, including a quick lunch stop and we pulled into Valence at 3pm.
Colette who had looked after us just shook his head when he saw us come in.
After some discussion and scratching of heads they told us that they couldn’t
work on it until Monday. Decided to head 25 minutes back to this nice spot on
the river where we were last Sunday and wait it out, and we have their number
if we can’t start Ruakiw!. Murphy’s law, when we went back to the van to head
off, it started first time and hasn’t missed a beat since.
There are many roadside stalls
through this fruit growing area and we pulled into one just out of Tournon, I
bought cherries and apricots which had a very red skin, and they were the
nicest we have every eaten. Guess they were tree ripened and the flavour was
just so good. Life could be a lot worse as we have time to use our bikes and
look around the town over the next few days, and will try to get an appointment
for a haircut.
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| The tastiest apricots I have every eaten. |
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| ...and really good cherries. |
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The storm was threatening all afternoon, but never arrived,
although it cooled the air. |
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