Pump and circumstance

First things first… I didn´t end up taking the SJ410. It just wasn´t ready in time… at some point either myself or Greg will get round to updating you all with the story of us frantically trying to put the jeep back together in time.

I didn´t take the KTM either. I decided that it was too fine tuned to deal with large stretches of motorways, and would likely explode before we even reached the ferry at Poole.

With just 2 days to go, myself and Greg were busily scouring Ebay, AutoTrader, GumTree and everywhere else we could think of in order to acquire a suitable vehicle at such short notice. However, we were able to find something suitable in the shape of a 1990 Daihatsu Sportrak. 509 quid sealed the deal on Ebay, and I picked it up from Portsmouth only a few hours later.

The next day I drove it to Pembroke to catch the ferry to Ireland for the launch in Faugheen (more on that later) and on the Monday, after we had been to Hay-on-wye (more on that later) I drove it like a man possessed to get home in time, finish my packing and to get to Poole to meet the rest of the guys to catch the ferry to Cherbourg.

So far things haven´t been too eventful - hypermarche carparks have become the location of choice for en-route maintenance and bodging.

Yesterday, crossing the Pyrenees my water pump decided it had had enough. There was also a small leak in the radiator. Whilst we could fix the leak in the radiator with an egg white (really, we have video evidence), there wasn´t much we could do about the water pump - so it was time to call RAC European breakdown (having a Barclays Additions Plus account is marvellous!).

A few hours later, the mechanic was with us - as far as I can tell in broken Spanish, and a mixture of charades (try doing ´water pump´in a game…) we agreed the water pump had died, and we´re now holed up in a hotel (all on the RAC!) until the garage can replace the pump (hopefully on Monday).

Until then, we´re chilling out planning our route, recharging our batteries (both literally AND figuratively) and washing our stinky smalls.

With luck, we´ll be back on our way on Monday afternoon  - whereupon the live tracking should start moving again. If it doesn´t, it means things have gone horribly wrong, and you can expect another update. Actually, the mechanic has a rather nice Nissan 4×4 in his workshop…