We have recently had the reminder for our annual RAC subscription which set Paul off with his umm-ing and ah-ing about whether it was worth staying with them or trying to find cheaper breakdown cover. We originally joined the RAC when we were accosted by the sales chap in the car park of a motorway services on the M11. At the time we couldn’t really afford it; even with the 20% reduction I got for being a member of my professional union; but the chap took pity on us and cleverly worked out a deal whereby both of us plus Paul’s dad; who was with us at the time; could join as a single family and split the cost between us. We kept that arrangement right up until the death of my father in law after which we kept it on ourselves. A few years later when we joined the camping club we also took advantage of their unique partnership with the RAC and added their Arrivals package, which has been a godsend on several occasions so we can’t say we haven’t had our money’s worth out of the RAC who, over the last thirty years, have come to our rescue on an almost annual basis.
If I have a nemesis it is the mechanical or physical failings of motorised vehicles; if it isn’t conking out it’s falling off; especially when travelling to and from holiday destinations. My nemesis has hounded me since early childhood. When I was small my mother drove an old Morris Eight which, every August, was packed to the gunwales with holiday gear. My sister and I would be threaded into the back atop the piles of bedding crammed into the footwells and spread along the seat. We always travelled overnight so this arrangement seemed the most convenient and comfortable way for two young children to travel. It also meant that we remained comfortable and warm in those early hours when an insidious chill creeps into the air, making your bones ache. And that is the time that the aforementioned mechanical failure generally happened. Always when we were several hours into a journey, too far from home to turn and limp back and too far from our destination to continue on. Which meant that if Dad couldn’t fix it at the roadside we had a long wait whilst he went to find a telephone box to call the AA; no mobile phones in those days! My earliest memories are of holidays punctuated with breakdowns, either on the way or returning home.
As we got older our parents swapped the old Morris for a Bedford Dormobile. Well, I think it was more of a works van which they fitted out, after a fashion, as a campervan; which were all the rage in the sixties thanks to The Beachboys; so we could go camping. This, coupled with a huge, pale blue, homemade tent set us up for years of fun holidays. As always, we travelled over night so any mechanical failings still occurred when there was no help to be had. I remember, on one such occasion, being towed to a local garage where we were left to sleep in the van until the mechanic came to work in the morning. I will always remember the smell of motor oil and being completely entranced by the three legged dog wandering around all night.
Over the years my parents changed old cars for newer models; never new, they couldn’t afford that; but always needing some mechanical work. To be fair, I think Dad quite enjoyed his Saturdays tinkering with the engines and I have to admit, I enjoyed helping him. I learnt quite a bit about maintaining an engine, and could at least identify most parts by the time I was ten. The annual breakdown soon became a feature of every holiday throughout my childhood. The NSU in the middle of France, our first ever holiday abroad; another Dormobile after a late flight home from Benidorm, the list went on even after I’d left home. It was such a regular occurrence that it became a standing joke amongst family and friends. Interestingly, in my early teens, we seemed to have the same luck with the outboard engine on our canal cruiser. Every bloody holiday!
At sixteen I bought a car of my own, for the grand sum of £63. A little old Fiat 500, the original shape, light blue in colour, with a fold back sunroof, doors which shed rust every time they were shut and an engine that sounded like a lawnmower but I loved it. I learnt to drive in that little car and it was one of only two cars I have ever owned that didn’t let me down. My next car was a Morris Traveller and it’s mechanical failings were more than likely my fault since I ignored the flashing orange light on the dashboard for weeks, well, it did go out when I was doing 90mph down the motorway so it couldn’t be anything serious! However, by the time I decided something wasn’t quite right, the knocking from the big ends could be heard from two villages away. The subsequent seizing of the engine did lead me to Paul though so something positive did come out of it.
I have come to the conclusion that it must be hereditary since, over our 40+ years together, my nemesis has continued to blight our cars. It started on our honeymoon. We had borrowed my parents Dormobile to spend a week around Whitby. We knew the vehicle had a few problems but it was all we could afford to do. With the Dormobile it wasn’t so much breaking down as things falling off. The first was the passenger door. For those who aren’t familiar with the old Bedford Dormobiles, they had sliding doors which are slotted into a runner at the top. This particular runner had lost the bit that prevented to door from sliding off the end, so if you weren’t careful you found yourself standing like a muppet trying not to drop the door; as happened to Paul when I threw a bottle of milk at him through the van after an argument over a kite. The second was the propensity for the gear lever to come off at the most inopportune moments, such as when we were dropping down into Scarborough. Fortunately we were in a traffic jam so were going really slowly when the it came off as Paul was changing gear. Thankfully he managed to slot it back into place before he needed it again. And finally, on our way home at the end of our honeymoon the long, dry spell of weather broke. The heavens opened and we found ourselves driving through a torrential downpour. On went the windscreen wipers and with the first sweep of the windscreen the driver’s side wiper flew off. We stopped and retrieved it but couldn’t fix it back in place as it had completely snapped. So Paul had to drive with his door open and use the wiper in one hand to try and clear the windscreen until we found somewhere safe to stop until the storm passed.
A few years later, ever the optimists, we took my parents old transit van off their hands and set about fitting it out to suit our needs.That same transit ended up having not one but two engines replaced. I had, in a fit of pique, gone down to my parents near Mansfield. Paul had come to fetch me home, in the transit. We had only just got onto the motorway, a few minutes from my parents, when we heard a strange metallic rattling. Then everything cut out as the engine seized. We pulled over onto the hard shoulder where I waited as Paul went to find a phone box to call my parents.
We managed to tow the van back to theirs where we left it until the following week when we returned with Paul’s dad to put the new engine in. We set of home with his dad following us. All I said was “wouldn’t it be funny if…..” Right before the new engine blew, almost in the same spot as the week before. Needless to say, we didn’t keep the van long after that and my reputation for being a witch was confirmed. Next was a gorgeous old Wolsley in which we set off on holiday only to manage a couple of miles before it started to cough, splutter and lose power, forcing us to turn back and transfer everything into Mothers camper van for the holiday. Which was not immune from mishaps. We were driving down a steep descent from The Old Man of Coniston, along a single track road full of hairpin bends, when the clutch cable snapped. Mother pulled up and handed over the driving to Paul who managed to get us safely down into Coniston where he did a temporary repair with a brake cable he nicked from an old, discarded pushbike he found at the back of a deserted garage. She never did replace it.
The one mishap many remember is my mother’s Fiat 126. At the time she and Dad were spending longer and longer over-wintering in Spain with friends. To ensure the car was kept in good condition I was added to their insurance and because of it’s age and value they dropped it to Third Party. A few weeks later, the week before Christmas, Paul was away in Lincoln taking an exam so I had all five girls in the car, driving them to a dance class. Thankfully I was going slowly through the notorious double bend out of the village when I hit a patch of mud and leaves on the wet road and started to skid. I did everything I had been told you should do. Unfortunately the lay of the road meant that although I had brought the car under control I was now sideways across both carriageways. Which was when the other two cars slammed into me. I remember wondering why the battery was above me and why was one of the girls trying to get back into the car.
Once out and surveying the damage it was obvious the car was a write-off. The front wheels were turned inwards and the car was a good two feet shorter than it should be. Later that night I had to phone Spain to inform Mother that she no longer had a car. Which, I think, pre-empted their move to Spain since they drove home in a Spanish car that year.
There followed a string of cars starting with a beautiful old Triumph, then a Volvo; in perfect condition until I stripped the side trim away when I misjudged the turn into our gates and later had to break into when I lost the keys whilst away with the girls and my parents; and an Opel Manta which wouldn’t go above 50mph until we discovered the accelerator pedal was disappearing through a hole in the floor. Through all my mechanical misfortunes Paul had Dottie The Datsun which kept us going until we swapped it for a Range Rover with an horrendous wheel wobble at anything over 55mph, which we discovered on the long drive down to the south of Spain.
During my three years training I had a run of clapped out vehicles from a Mini Metro MG; which we later discovered to be two half cars welded together; an aged Ford Escort which died on me in the middle of nowhere resulting in my first trip on the back of a recovery truck and a Capri with a peeling vinyl roof, whilst Paul had a lovely Mk3 Cortina estate which towed my mothers old caravan to Wales on our first “proper” holiday for a few years. The following year we became the proud owners of old touring caravan we’d picked up for peanuts. It was that old it had bay windows! And it was heavy. We hooked it up to the Cortina and headed off to Scotland. We had picked out a rather nice site near Loch Lomond but when we got to within a few miles we found the access was up a 1:3 incline with a very sharp bend halfway up. The engine was revving, the clutch was slipping, we could smell the hot oil and the burning rubber. There was no way that car was going to pull that caravan to the top. We gave up and had to reverse all the way back down. The Cortina did recover and lasted another year with no problems as long as we didn’t try towing anything.
A year later, we had planned driving through France and Luxembourg to Germany with both sets of parents in tow. By now the girls were growing up and we needed a car with enough space to get them and all our gear in and Paul didn’t trust the faithful Cortina enough to drive that distance. He perused the for sale ads in the papers, we trawled around the cheaper end of the car sales pitches but not even our regular goto place had anything. We were getting desperate. Then, two days before our holiday, we were off to look at a Volvo. He’d been fancying one ever since his dad had bought one. It was an estate with little dickie seats in the back. Perfect for our youngest two. And on this occasion the problem arose with his dads car, and it wasn’t a mechanical failure but a minor inconvenience thanks to our second daughter and nephew.
That Volvo did us proud for a couple of years until we swapped in for a fairly new Ford Sierra. Which had quite a poor holiday history. The first long haul drive was to be Paul and myself driving down to the Costa Del Sol and back whilst Mother and Dad had our two youngest; the older three being young adults were doing their own thing by this time. I was at work when he came to inform me that the holiday was off as he’d just had a prang in the car and it looked to be a write-off. Fortunately our insurance covered us for a hire car whilst ours was being repaired so off we went. But my nemesis came too. On our return journey we stopped over in Paris for a couple of nights. We left our motel and we’re heading for the motorway when we took a wrong turning and ended up at the freight entrance to Orly Airport. It was a sort of one way loop with slip-roads on and off the motorway and traffic lights to control the flow into the terminal. As we tried to get ourselves back in the direction we needed to be a small van shot out of a slip-road straight into the side of our hire car. Fortunately there wasn’t much damage to either vehicle but we did get a crash course in filling out French accident forms.
Our next holiday in the Sierra was to the French Alps with our two youngest. We had decided to cut our stay in the Alps a few days short and take them for a couple of days in Paris. As were were speeding up the motorway I periodically felt something bumping under my feet. At first I said nothing, it could be the road surface and Paul hadn’t mentioned anything, but it kept happening and as it was now more persistent I spoke up. For the next few miles we were both telling the girls to be quiet whilst we tried to work out where the noise was coming from. We pulled into an Aire where Paul discovered the noise we had been hearing was the starter motor hitting the floor of the car as it bounced off the road surface; we had been dragging it along for miles barely hanging on by it’s cable. He managed a quick roadside repair and we continued on our way. The starter motor was never the same again and on our journey home we had to bump start the car before driving onto the eurotunnel train hoping no-one would notice and not let us on.
My next car, the second car which never let me down, was a virulent green Morris Minor, known as Gilbert Grape. He ended up being a nice merlot purple. It kept going through rain and snow when all other cars were left stranded. It’s ultimate downfall were the drum brakes.Towards the end I was having to use my gears more and more to slow me down and then the handbrake to stop. The handbrake cable began to stretch until I was pulling the handbrake up past my shoulder to get it to engage the brake. Soon the easiest way to stop was to slow down and steer the car into the curb. The end came one day as I was driving up a narrow lane, a route I used every working day. Nearing the top, just before a sharp left hand bend, I came to the end of a queue of cars. I managed to stop going forwards but the brakes were just not holding and I started to roll backwards. I steered into the grass verge where the wheels rested against a stone wall. To move off again I pulled off about the best ever hill start I’ve ever done. It did make me realise that, after several years of excellent service, it was time to retire the car.
Our next big holiday was to Italy. Along with our two youngest our second daughter and her boyfriend decided they wanted to come as well. This was another of those occasions when we bought a new car days before our trip. This was an Audi 100 Estate with a dickie seat in the back. It was, however far smaller than the Volvo and the girls were considerably larger. To be fair, we had no mechanical issues and it served us well until a motorcyclist ran into the back of it whilst Paul was driving to work, twisting the chassis.
I’ve also found that my nemesis is transferrable to cars other than ours. For our first trip to Disneyland Paris we were driving Paul’s sister’s MPV since she and her son were joining us. We were catching the teatime ferry and we’d even booked a hotel in Calais for the night so we could get a nice early start the next day. We were just past Cambridge when the van started to lose power. No matter what Paul did it just kept getting slower and slower until we eventually pulled up on the hard shoulder, next to an SOS phone. We had a car full of very disappointed children as it looked like our Disney trip was finished before we’d even started. It seemed like hours before the RAC arrived. Then there was the umm-ing and ah-ing before deciding to call the recovery truck. As luck would have it our RAC cover was for onward travel which meant we could have a hire car to continue our journey, which the RAC kindly arranged. Except when we were dropped off at the hire place at Stanstead Airport the hire car turned out to be a Smart car. For SIX of us!
Because it couldn’t be sorted at the little office there we all had to troop over to the main office in the airport where, for a fee, we were given a brand new, rather luxurious, top of the range, bells and whistles SAAB. And no-one said anything about the extra person. We had a lovely time in Disneyland.
In 2005 we bought a 33foot RV which caused us a couple of headaches over the years. We got stuck up narrow roads; once near Cheddar Gorge whilst towing a motorbike on a trailer and necessitating a now legendary 30+ point turn in an eight foot lane. We got into stand-offs with tour busses and lost various bits along the “excellent” roads around Ireland. We lost an exterior locker cover turning out of a friends farm in Llangollen but the most notable was our 2006 Normandy Invasion when we were unfortunate enough to fall victim to tyre trouble on both journeys. Going out we had a huge bleb on one of the rear tyres and barely made it onto the ferry and on the return trip another tyre developed an even bigger bleb resulting in a long wait on the hard shoulder of the M20 followed by a never ending drive in the uncomfortable cab of a low-loader listening to the most whinging driver ever. The RV finally blew a gasket and died in 2009 as we were heading to Whitby for a week, after which Paul lost all heart with it and soon sold it to a bloke who collects tanks.
At the same time we were enjoying the RV our daily car was a very nice, top of the range SAAB we’d picked up at a good price. It had electric everything. I drove that car to work and back everyday for a couple of years. It even withstood being rear-ended by a consultant in his Porsche Cayenne in the hospital car park. However, in 2011 it too decided to give up the ghost. We were towing our caravan to Whitby and had just gone past Scarborough when Paul said he thought something was amiss. We kept on going but he was getting more and more concerned. We just made it to our campsite before the car decided enough was enough. Which is why the caravan ended up on a seasonal pitch that year. The big problem was that we were booked to go to France a few weeks later so the race was on to find a car in time. Once again we dropped on an excellent find. We were looking for a little car to get me to and from work and I had a hankering; now we didn’t have to cart kids everywhere; for a little sports car. It was whilst looking for something I liked that we found our bargain. A Kia Sedona 8-seater and all ready for towing. That car lasted us for years and took us, hassle free, on countless holidays. It was a sad day when it had to go.
I did get my sports car though, a Mazda MX5 which I enjoyed driving enormously. I took my sister for a tour round the North York Moors, We went all over in that little car. Then, in 2013 I proposed a road trip to France. To keep costs down we were going to camp so everything was packed to into the Mazda like a Chinese puzzle. She survived everything we threw at her until that fateful day as we were driving round Paris when; due to the extreme heat and slow moving traffic on the clogged peripherique; she started to overheat, eventually giving a last gasp before coasting to a halt on the hard shoulder 100m from the slip road into an Aire. Eight hours later we said our goodbyes to her as we left her in a dodgy backstreet compound to await repatriation. And my bad luck didn’t end there as I got a French speeding ticket whilst continuing our homeward journey in a hire car. The Mazda arrived home in the back of a container lorry a few weeks later, never to run again.
Our last few cars have been relatively trouble free. A Megane which only let me down the once on a trip to Rochester, resulting in another trip on a recovery truck, and which went on to serve our daughter for a further couple of years. The S reg Honda CRV aka The Black Poiyl never let me down; even when a council bin lorry reversed into it leaving a huge gash in the passenger side front wing; our daughter took that one off our hands as well to replace the Megane and is using it to this day. We then had a Honda Stepwagon for a short while, only one minor prang, before ending up with my Kia 7-seater; because we do still cart kids around; and the T4 camper conversion. I may be tempting fate but maybe, just maybe, my nemesis has got fed up and gone to pester someone else.
