It's my Peugeot and I'll cry if I want to

LT

1 July  10pm Lyon

Friday marked a bit of a change in the general mood and feel of our trip… car trouble.  Spending another morning chilling out at home and watching a video, we then decided to (after 2pm when it was reopening after lunch!) head to a local chateau to have a look (my thing), then, as a trade, go back to the pool we had not been able to get to on Thursday, in time for the 4.30pm opening for general public (kids’ thing).  Once again it was super super hot, so we were all looking forward to the swim.

On starting the car, several warnings and alarms came up on the dashboard all at once – engine fault, handbrake fault, ESP fault. The car was still running ok and our first thought was that maybe the heat was affecting the computer or something, and we headed off to the chateau, about 10km away.  When we arrived the alarms were still showing, so we decided to go back to the house to find the number to call for Peugeot assistance, just in case.  The number was free to call from a landline (which we didn’t have at the house), so we parked down by the Tourism Office to find out where the nearest public phone was.  Up the street about 150m.  We wandered up.  Unfortunately it was not working.  So we returned (now sweating like mad) to the Tourism Office to ask if we could call from there.  The car was still driveable, in fact not showing any particular symptons aside from the error messages, so our instructions were to drive it to the nearest Peugeot agent, about 10km away.  Through some communication difficulties and navigation issues, we didn’t exactly take a direct route (crazy laugh) but we did finally arrive at the garage at a little before 5pm (on a Friday afternoon).  By this time the car was running a bit rough, and making a bit of noise. The mechanics were quick to come and have a look, but their initial look with the computer didn’t tell them much, and also quite quickly the car started making very bad noises until finally it wouldn’t start at all.  All very bad.  And by now it was about 5.30 (no chateau, no swim, just grumpy, hot people).  The garage let us know that they would have a good look at the car next time they were open (Monday!) and let us know from there.  They suggested that we had put the wrong fuel in (it’s a diesel engine), and they sniffed the fuel tank etc.  Peter was pretty sure he’d got it right, but was beginning to doubt himself.  The problem was, if it was the wrong fuel, the insurance would be voided and we would have to pay for the repairs ourselves.   Peugeot arranged us a taxi home, told us we wouldn’t be able to go on to Normandy on Sunday as planned as we had to wait for the car to be repaired, and they could provide either accommodation for us to wait, or a replacement car, up to 900Euro.  We took the car option, since St-Gengoux is a very small town, and not well connected by public transport to anywhere.

Friday was a pretty dark day all in all.  When we arrived back at the house we looked for the receipt from the fuel, unfortunately it was only the credit card receipt not the till receipt, so we were none the wiser. 

Saturday morning brought a call from Peugeot, letting us know that they had arranged a replacement car for us for a couple of days, from Le Creusot, about 30km away. They also arranged a taxi to take us there, except they didn’t mention we had 5 people, so we ended up taking the taxi with 4 people across the back seat. Again it was a hot day and the driver was a little erratic and kept saying how tired he was and how he hadn’t had any days off for a while. But we arrived safely and took possession of our really really awesome and cool new car.  I’ll try to attach photos with this blog or immediately following so you can have a laugh like we did.  Not only is it the least stylish car you could ever imagine, it’s also a pale pastel  blue/green colour like a granny would have (sorry any grannies reading this).  It is also quite gutless and doesn’t have a GPS.  On the upside, it does start, has great air conditioning, comfortable seats and is, surprisingly, a lot nicer to drive than the Peugeot.

We decided to try to take a break from worrying about the car and took the children to a “theme park” in Le Creusot.  It’s probably fair to say that the pictures on the brochure maximise its appeal to an incredible degree.  It was, hmm, perhaps a little bit lame, but it was good value, there weren’t many queues, and if you wanted to do a ride twice you could basically just stay on because often there was nobody waiting.  The kids actually really enjoyed it, blew off a bit of steam, rode the good rides until they were tired of them, bought themselves oversized slushies, and basically finally got to have some fun after a couple of fairly frustrating days driving around and failing to find a swimming pool.

On the way home we took a detour via Chalon where we had bought the fuel on Wednesday.   The layout confirmed in Peter’s mind that he had bought the right fuel, and after some discussion the man in the shop was able to look up in the computer and provide us the till receipt confirming that we had in fact bought diesel.  Woohoo!!! Never has a till receipt been so gratefully received.  Which leaves the question of what crazy thing has happened to the car, and how long it might take to fix.

We celebrated our ‘last’ night in St-G by having a yummy dinner at a restaurant taking in the local delicacies of snails and frogs legs (Peter and Caelan respectively).   All I can say is “RESPECT”.  I did try both, but have to say I just couldn’t get my head around it, and was happy to stick with my salad and beef skewer. 

There were the most amazing thunderstorms from that evening and all through the night – huge flashes of lightning, and thunder that rumbled for what seemed like minutes at a time.  The storm also brought the rain, buckets and buckets of it.

After tea we went back to the house to tidy up and decide what we would do the next day, as Sunday was our checkout day for our house, and we couldn’t go too far as we would have to return for the car once fixed.  We made the decision to head to Lyon for a couple of days – there is a really good theme park nearby, and it is only 100km or so back to St-Gengoux.  Once we hear something about the car (hopefully on Monday), then we’ll decide what to do next. Unfortunately our accommodation in Normandy, where we are NOT, has been booked and paid for, but it’s much too far to have to come back for the car.

We have had several comments from English people we’ve met about how difficult it is to get things done in France – it is absolutely true, and we’re having to admit that it’s a little frustrating.  Getting the internet set up was a real drama and is very expensive. We have to buy ‘internet recharge’ coupons from the news-store or dairy, and these are separate from an ordinary ‘phone and text recharge’, and several of the local operators are not aware of the existence of the internet recharge coupons – so obviously you can’t buy them from there .  You then have to call (not even text) a free number and muddle your way through a recorded menu (in French) in order to enter the number, which then doesn’t activate immediately anyway (actually, you technically can text, but it costs you a text to do this, and if you don’t have any text credit, then you can’t text to top it up!) Then you can only use it on a mobile phone anyway, not tethered to a computer.  And it doesn’t make the GPS on Peter’s phone work either – only allows web browsing , nothing else.  In the first place it takes someone with a computing or telecommunication degree to set it up when you first buy the sim as the default settings don’t work – took visits to several shops to find an expert to get it going. Crazy backward place, this! 

The toll roads are great too, the sign as you approach says “Credit card = Easy Toll”.  Great! we said as we didn’t have many coins on hand.  Unfortunately if your card has a chip (which all cards issued in NZ in the last 5 years have), the machine can’t read it.  J  So you then really annoy all the people queued up behind you while you wait for the attendant to come over and sort you out.  “Credit card = Don’t queue behind me”