Well there I was. Wondering if I should try and find my way back to Boris. However after pushing her along to a slight slope on the road out of the carpark, I managed to push the car and bump it in 2nd gear, it caught nice and easy. At least I think it was 2nd. After this I noted to always stop on a hill, or better just leave it running. The latter was made easier at least by the ignition key being removeable while the engine was still running. Boris had thought of everything.
So, I got off the little back roads and onto the autoroute,
enfin. Taking her up to some speed for the first time, through the gears on the on-ramp was another memorable moment, although I was surprised that she was so quiet, with a holy Ansa exhaust. I should have enjoyed the peace. But, we got into a rhythm, and the car drove well - and I began to need to remember Boris's words about
billets d'exces vitesse. She was, like all Porsches I have driven, not really happy to bimble, endlessly keen to press on. Only the front cigarette lighter had power, so the sat nav and phone took it in turns to charge. The miles passed, and there were lots of these
and these
..but I remembered to not add up the fuel and tolls, as this would of course break one of the golden rules of car purchase-related man maths.
The medallion incidentally is a St Christopher purchased at a French flea market, and this proved to be a vital investment. But, despite this divine insurance, the progress did not last long (no! you gasp) because of a fire. Noooooo!, you gasp.
Luckily, it was the tinder dry
Cote d'Azur trees that were on fire, not the 928: but the smoke from the forest fire across the autoroute had resulted in an all time classic monster French tailback. This was good in some ways, as the temperature gauge showed that the car could handle being stationary in heat. However, this was making me even later for my family - and worse, whilst in the middle lane, I fluffed a gearchange and stalled it. I was on the slight upward grade of a dip. I had an Eastern European truck right behind me and traffic either side. I jumped out, managed somehow to roll the car back enough to get it across the slow lane between two cars, and on to the hard shoulder, where she became lodged against the the Armco. After a significant desperate uphill push, I got it forward off the barrier and ready to roll backward to try and bump start in reverse. I had one chance until the dip bottomed out, with my next option being recruiting people from the traffic to try and push me I guess. Or, perhaps just run screaming into the woods, and never be seen again. On the first bump, it didn't catch and was rolling to a halt. I made a desperate 2nd hit off the clutch, and to my considerable surprise she roared into life. I was careful with gearshifts after that.
So, the exhaust didn't fall off until Carcassonne, which is good. I only noticed when I was rolling backwards to make a bump after a fuel stop, and heard the unmistakeable noise of a 2.5 inch diameter pipe scraping on asphalt. Again, Boris came to the rescue: I forgot to mention that when I was checking out back at
casa Boris, I had wobbled the coil wire at the distributor as it looked loose, and at this the male part of the connector just crumbled. So we fixed it on with a length of thick insulated single core electrical wire around the distributor body. Boris had handed me the remaining length of wire, which I had chucked in the back. And it was this wire I used to suspend the broken exhaust off the rear axle, so that at least it wasn't scraping the floor. It was approximately in line with the central silencer, but despite this the car now sounded like a mastercraft speedboat. Which was pretty cool, for a while anyway.
And once again, onwards, towards Toulouse and in to the setting sun. What next, I thought as I drove, what next? Well, nothing really. She kept going, strong and true. I got to Toulouse and deployed the lights as night fell, which lead to the realisation that they were clearly set to read signs on overhead gantries: pointing up, rather than forward. So I drove the last section in the dark on the fog lights and side lights, which are yellow, and which just added to the mounting Hunter S Thomson feel to the whole trip. And at last we were rumbling along the holiday home track, back to the bosom of my family, after midnight, but so, so relieved. I crept in to bed and slept well for the first time in 10 days.
The next day, I inspected my quarry from the previous day's adventure. Not bad from a distance.
I spent the next couple days being holiday Dad again, whilst also trying to figure out the starting issue, and tying up the exhaust properly, i.e. with an old leather belt I found in an outbuilding, and more electrical wire. I planned our break for the border too: To Calais, through the Chunnel to Folkstone. I had to choose a journey to book. Calais was about 9 hours drive, so I booked a 5pm train.
Apart from the peripherique around Paris, the roads should be pretty good. I was hoping to get half way up the UK to stay overnight with my Mum in North Lancs. And so leaving at 7am, the plan was to drive the shonky old 928 up France and half of the UK in a day, to get to Lancashire before midnight. What a muppet.
