28. Weardale again, and another breakdown

You know the feeling, a glorious sunny friday afternoon, just finished work, and you think to yourself "well lets do it, we'll just throw stuff into the van and be off!". So we did, and ended up at Westgate in Weardale, here in fact, and after a lovely picnic tea ...

we had a lovely few pints at the local pub, sitting right next to the river (saw bats, lots of midgies, trout, dippers, swifts) and it was very very nice!!!. Poor Topsy still doesn't have curtains, since I've hurt me arm I've been unable to finish her off inside, but we managed to stick the old curtains up with gaffa tape, and I had an undisturbed nights sleep. not even Roger getting up to close the sky light for a downpour woke me!!

Then it was off to the moors for breakfast, far too hot to go anywhere but high! (saw no adders but did see lots of rabbits, partridge, grouse chicks, unknown bird of pray, sheep, dragon fly etc)

And then it was time to go down to the river to cool our feet in the water (saw two heron!). Everything was going well at this point, lovely weather, good company, good food, nice cups of tea, what could possibly go wrong?! Well, Topsy, that's what could go wrong, she just didn't start, same symptoms as the time she didn't start a few months ago, in as much as she didn't start. Cue the getting out of the 'complete idiot's guide to vw's' book, going through it step by tedious step, but with no tools apart from a craft knife! We think that the loose battery connection came off in transit, so the battery didn't charge up enough to start Topsy until I'd flattened the damn battery. But in my haste to get away for the weekend I'd left my mobile at home, that would be the mobile with the breakdown folks number in it, , and Roger's phone had very little credit on it... So I eventually got through to my work, and got me boss Carly to go on the internet to find the number for the breakdown folks, she tried but it wasn't there! The only number that was there got through to a recorded message informing me that office hours were monday to friday!!! Arrghh, so now no credit left on Rogers phone, so what else is there to do but walk to the local pub, up a hill, in sweltering temperatures, and panic over a pint and a J20...

we were very hot and very tired but not overly happy!

After a bit of a sit it was inspiration and desperation time, another phone call to work and Carly managed to find Ray's number, he's in the same vw club as me, and I knew that some of the members of that vw club (durham dubbers) are covered for breakdowns by the same company as me, so maybe, just maybe, he could get the number that I so needed... ... after a while he rang the pub back and by some miracle he'd manged to get the number, oh thank goodness!! After a tense phone call to the breakdown folks to see if I was covered, it was a less tense wait for the truck.... The recovery guy, Allan, was fantastic - he got Topsy charged up and running in no time at all, it must be great to be a mechanic!

All in all a lovely weekend, but thanks to Carly, Ray, Nic and Allan, they definitely saved the day!

!! THANK YOU!!

Then it was straight home and off to the pub, where we discovered it was flying ant day, and watched lots of queen ants then smaller drones take off into the the pale dusk skies, ahh!