It’s been four weeks now since our last outing in Lulu, to Salisbury (see Lulu goes to Salisbury- When Marley Meets Alex!) and she has been feeling slightly neglected.
It hasn’t been an uneventful four weeks mind you, and Lulu’s neglect was about to change.
The Asthmatic C-Max
A couple of weeks ago, on our weekly pilgrimage to one of the German brand supermarkets in our neck of the woods, Kev’s car decided to splutter, wheeze and lose power. It’s only a 9 mile trip into Ammanford to the supermarket so we carefully carried on the journey, and drove through it. Once warmed up the car didn’t seem too bad but had little ‘grunt’ or , to be technical, no oomph!
It was possibly due, so Kev said, to the fact that in five years of ownership the car has only had one oil change. Apart from pads and discs for the MOT and occasional new shoes that was it!!
It has cost us very little to run over the five years and, even when we bought the car, it was advertised on the dealers website for £8500 but on the forecourt at £11999. Guess which price we ended up paying?! So we figured that if the car cost us a couple of hundred quid on a full service, it was long overdue and worth spending.
The car was duly booked in for a full service with the guys at Station Motors, Llandeilo for the following Thursday. Over two weeks later and the C-Max still hasn’t come back from said garage. It seems that she was a lot sicker than she let on!
£££££££££’s
We have sourced a new turbo vacuum pump from Germany and when that didn’t cure the problem, a new turbo from Day’s in Swansea. This was duly dropped into the garage on Friday afternoon by Kev and hopefully we should get the car back on Monday or Tuesday while being alleviated of some £1300!!
At least Lulu has been getting a daily eighteen mile run as Kev has been using her as his steed for the past fortnight. His lunchbreaks are currently spent away from the constantly shrilling phones.
Stretched out on Lulu’s bench seat while listening to his Audible book of ‘The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes’, it’s all he can do to avoid complete snoozeville!!
Kev’s crappy automobile fortnight did not end with the C-Max when one of the boys came back into the office after lunch and proclaimed ‘looks like you’ve got a flat Kev!!’ After thanking that particular ray of sunshine, Kev went out for a look……….
Sure enough, Lulu was listing decisively towards starboard! A quick trip to Marc’s Motors confirmed the tyre was hiding a nail (well she has been parked outside a builders merchants for the past two weeks). A puncture repair was administered and £18.00 sucked out of Kev’s wallet.
Here we all go again!
While our car problems have been ongoing, we along with the rest of Wales have been ‘enjoying’ a two week period of ‘Fire-break’ lockdown. Oh deep joy! Thanks for that!
All was not doom, gloom and treadmill use. Our lockdown here is to finish on November 9th and our break at Minehead C&MC is on the 13th, but then……….
‘Sorry, what was that Boris?’……………………….
‘A four week lockdown in England from the 6th?’……………………
‘Excellent, thanks very much!’
Go west young man, go west!
With our booking now duly cancelled, firstly by the club and then by us, Kev then set about finding somewhere to go, but where to?
Come Monday 9th, the ‘Firebreak’ lockdown in Wales will be lifted and so will any travel restrictions within the Principality. So the whole of Wales will be our oyster.
We don’t want to go too far though. As we both have wangled Friday off work, we can shop in the morning and if we limit ourselves to 60 – 90 minutes of driving we can be in Pembrokeshire or deep on the Gower peninsular and on a site by about 1PM.
We emailed four C&MC CL sites to check for vacancies for the weekend of the 13th. Two came back to us as not reopening in 2020 (I hope they recover to reopen for next season) and the other two confirmed that they did indeed have vacant pitches.
So we have duly booked ourselves onto Woody Kiln Farm, Milford Haven.
We are so looking forward to another weekend away in Lulu – our last before the festive season. We then have the long drag of the run up to Christmas, our annual mind numbing stock-take in work and then our week long break in Lulu, over New Year in Norfolk. Just as long as Covid behaves itself between now and then.
Weekend fettling
Having watched John (https://www.youtube.com/johnmandyontour) do this small enhancement to the front end of their Burstner, we thought that we could do the same to Lulu’s rather tatty and discoloured front grill. So about three hours of washing, scrubbing, drying, sanding, cleaning, priming and spraying with a matt black Plastikote paint followed. We have to admit it has smartened Lulu’s front end up no end. What do you think of the before and after photos?
