Disaster in Abbeville….

We were straight out of the tunnel onto the A16 heading out of Calais and south. Traffic was light and the weather was stunning, I was glad the air con was working.

We made good progress, even detouring to take in some of the nice sights which included stopping at the fantastic Aire Baie de Somme, which is well worth a visit with it’s nature reserve and views over to the coast. Free wireless too…

Several Le Mans Classic goers too, with some cars we had seen before and others that we hadn’t. One large ’66 Lincoln Continental was being attended to underneath by someone in overalls, these weren’t the only breakdowns or bits of trouble. Some had been stuck before leaving the UK.

Then into Abbeville where things started to go wrong…. No, not in the way it looks above. My debit card got eaten and retrieved by three ATMs in two different banks… Getting any cash was proving difficult. And on the way back to the car we noticed a rather large leak.

Thankfully after a fluids check I realised it would have been water collecting in the drains behind the false bulkhead and parking slightly down hill  that way round it had found it’s way out.

After the relief it was an hour to Rouen, except they shut the tunnel and we spent some time in a queue passing a few broken down Cobra replicas , where the Jalopy sailed past (doing 3 mph roughly at that point). The car was getting a little hot and bothered, with the volt meter showing us losing charge, but we were in very slow moving traffic and lots of things were running, like the sat nav and air con. But we made the hotel ok, and squeezed into the narrow entrance to the rear car park and headed and off for an evening in the city.