Team 96 Italian Job 2017

Up before the birds, and departed at 4.15 am on a cold very dark Wednesday morning. All went well - car behaved superbly and arrived in good time for ferry, which departed slightly early, and we disembarked at Calais at 9.55am local time. Everything went downhill from there !! We had wrongly programmed the Sat Nav, which was determined to avoid any Motorways, and we saw areas of France which not many people are unfortunate enough to experience. You must make allowance for our age - we eventually realised our error and finally began to eat up the miles UNTIL, after about 100 miles, we were caught up in a massive traffic jam. The car began to seriously overheat and conked out after being forced to crawl along for about 40 minutes. We pulled off into the coned off roadworks, waited about 30 minutes for the car to cool down, and then bravely resumed the journey. Everything went smoothly for the next couple of hours until our LPG ran out and we switched to petrol, only to discover that the petrol pump had seized up !! Good boys - high viz jackets on, warning triangle set up, hid behind the barrier, and called Breakdown Recovery Service, because it was too dangerous to work on the car with lorries flashing by at great speed. Breakdown Company refused to undertake recovery from a Motorway and insisted that we involve the emergency services - we did explain that we were two elderly men in serious danger, but to no avail. Eventually the Police arranged for a service vehicle and breakdown recovery truck to come to our aid and they agreed to block and cone off the road to protect us while we fitted a new petrol pump. The breakdown recovery guy was very impressed with the speed and dexterity with which we completed a satisfactory repair - fortunately he was unaware that we were well practiced at this procedure and this was the third petrol pump we had fitted in the previous 24 hours!! We finally arrived in Metz at about 9pm, booked into our Hotel and went out for a well earned meal. Tomorrow is a new day !!