The Best Made Plans...

...Of Mice And Men (or a catalogue of errors)

One of our team pets, Evo (with pink ear muffs)

We've also pick up the first DW team zebra, Ellie-

Ellie on her bike

Anyway, I better explain the title of this entry. Everything was laid out in a nice simple fashion. All I had to do was drive from Wokingham in Berkshire down to Devon and then Richard and I, with the GT Condor, would drive to Devizes Wharf and meet up to paddle with Michael from Cortisone/Beajolais, who had driven down from Scotland, and paddle the Bruce Tunnel and Crofton Flight. I had missed out paddling my K1 at Longridge due to red boards, high water and not enough people! Thanks to Alan for babysitting my Epsilon for a long time.

I left after a Boxing Day meal and headed to Devon. However, I got as far along the M4 as the A34 junction when my Saab started to produce James Bond smoke screens and the temperature guage went off the scale. I got to the services and found one of my hoses had split- not good! I called the teamGT logistics manager and teamGT mechanic, Mark. I also called my breakdown. The breakdown mechanic put radiator tape and a couple of cable ties on the hose.

This worked fine until I got past the Bath junction and the temperature went sky rocket once more. I phoned the breakdown once again. This time the mechanic looked at the problem, because the repair was on a bend it would never have been as good as on a straight piece. So he chopped off the split section attached a new piece (of old hose) to the engine block and then put the original, smaller diameter hose inside this new one so they overlapped by 10-12cm and secured it with a jubilee clip.

I got home at 03:45. I have texted Richard to phone me at 08:00. We met up at Exeter services off the M5 at about 10:00. I pointed out that although I had e-mailed Michael I didn't have a phone number for him. However, Richard phoned his uncle who live 200m from the start of the DW. He walked down to the Wharf and explained our problems to Michael. The canal was frozen anyway.

            

The problem with frozen canals was also in Exeter. We looked at several option and eventually gave up and went back to Richard's! We did speak to Michael on the phone that evening.

Today we looked at the sea at Dawlish. As we've both see Titanic we decided it was a very bad idea and headed North to paddle on the Tone in Taunton. This was  a good session followed by a sauna and spa.

So over all not what we wanted but not the disaster I could have been.

My Epsilon is now happy as it fits in my car park on top of the car which is still working, anyone want to but a Saab 900S- 1 careful lady owner (and 7 really bad ones!)

Tom