After a good night in the Hotel Ermitage Bouquet (Rouen is a fantastic city)  we got up to quite a bit of rain and things didn’t look good for camping out at Le Mans.

So we loaded up the car and drove out of Rouen in the direction of Alencon to see what we could do on the way. no point rushing in to the thunderstorm that had been forecast. We got a few miles south and we had to stop to retrieve my sunglasses that I had packed in a bag in the boot. The weather turned out to be fine. Actually it was hot and very bright. So a quick stop at an Aire with other Classic goers and we carried on.

We were making good progress through the Dire Straits collection, in chronological order of course, and good time on the road. The Saab eating up the Autoroute at 80 mph ish…

Alencon was pleasant with a busting market and a rather good boulangerie where we ate.  A rather neat underground car park was used and for an hour and a half they charged just a Euro.

A stop of at a hypermarket was always in the plan and the largest E. Leclerc in the area was sought out. Team Jalopy would definitely look better if they had six packs, so Jim selected something far larger…

And then the rain caught us up, elephants running across the roof of the store were the giveaway and after a slight delay watching the weather we could load up.

Rather than get back on the A28 we detoured off through the villages on the D338, which was pleasant, especially as the sun had come out and everywhere was dry. Things were looking up. A fuel stop in Le Mans, to save doing it on the way back and we joined a queue of traffic at a couple of junctions. With everything running the Saab was getting warm, but not cooking. We were fine in air conditioned comfort until there was quite a bang, the revs rose and we were covered in ice eruption through the vents in the dash. That’s a new one on me as I have never experienced that before….. I quickly hit the air con button and feared that the compressor had gone awol and may have wiped out the serpentine belt….. The power steering still worked so I wound the windows down and elected to have a look later. Turns out there was no problem, but it was commented on by Dave at Cool Car how cold the pipework under the bonnet was getting. Turns out I have an ice making machine…

We arrive without further issue and started to pitch up in the rain. After a pretty rubbish effort Jim took over as the team’s most experienced camper. We had something that could resemble a shelter at least.

I didn’t feel so bad at my lack of camping experience and was inspired by an obvious Jalopy reader displaying their alegiance with their pitch display. Either that or they could get sattelite tv with it….

Simon