Today started well, we packed up and were breakfasted and ready for the off by about 11.

When freckle was loaded, stew started her and noticed that very faintly the battery light was on. We could see that the voltage wasn’t quite what we would have liked on our little meter that plugs in to the cigarette lighter…. A great eBay purchase for about £3.

We waved bye to mum and dad and with our lunch packed up we headed off towards Nantes. Passing the beautiful saint Suzanne and loads of farmers out bailing their hay. We were coming through the village of Craon when we started to hear a pop before we realised it was freckle backfiring. In the later part of the journey I was flicking through the Haines manual and the John muir book how to keep your Vw alive, we were desperately trying to work out what was going on. We thought at this point that we had an issue with some leakage and that there must have been a short circuit. After pulling over and using the dreaded warning triangle of doom, we checked the fuses, stew retraced his steps from yesterday ensuring that there were no dodgy connections and it was all ok. We fou d 1 dodgy but not blown fuse, replaced it and the. Tried to go again. This time it was the starter motor solenoid issue, so we bump started in reverse and got going again. The voltage seemed to drop faster than ever this time, as did the patience of the increasingly bored (understandably so!) children. We called Paul at KFK and chatted through with him the problem , and whilst he desperately wanted to provide us with a solution his fear was that the alternator was gone. Balls. So we had another play and decided to head on and try to find a park to tinker and let the kids run off some steam.

We didn’t get quite that far and stopped again. This time the engine just cut out. We decided enough was enough and called the RAC. The RAC cover we have comes free with our bank account so it’s fair to say my expectations were fairly low. They ascertained he length and dimensions of freckle and that we were now towing a jolly big trailer, for which there was a surcharge of £65 if we needed towing. After input out a plea on Facebook I helpfully got sent details of a uk company based in France renting out t2’s for holidays. I’ll put a link on here to the company when I find them as the chap was so amazingly helpful and offered us any help we needed. He told us of the French version of just Kampers is called serial Kombi if we needed the part. Whilst we were still on the phone to the guy mr batard turned up. Our opinion, as was that of all we spoke to, was they would have no idea what to do and so we at least had a name of somewhere hey could tow us thanks to hire man to do a proper fix. How wrong we were! Mr batard was our knight In shining overalls! He got us going with his battery and we followed him back to his garage, thus avoiding the surcharge. Once we were here I was trying to offer him he part number for an alternAter, but he had other ideas. Within 30 mins he had the alternater on the bench, then Whipped it to his fiends house to recondition it. There he decided that a minor fault they found was not responsible for the problem, and soon discovered the real issue…. Stews tinkering yesterday cleaning the contacts had t quite been finished, leaving a connection dangling down. He fixed it, we gave him some beer and the RAC paid! Result! Thank you mr batard, you blinking rock!

We eventually found a motorway services to sleep in (long story but I’m out of time) and we are settled for the night, hopping that day 14 is an improvement of day 13! It was never that stressful but for a moment I feared our adventure had come to an end! Our adventures continue..