Tue, 17 Jun 2003

author Tim	location Fishguard, Pembrokeshire, Wales
posted 22:23 BST 18/06/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/UK/England/South England/South England 2 ( all photos )

More Yeovil ( 1 photo )
Having Tuesday morning to kill, we walked back in to Yeovil to see if it was any more exciting in daylight. There were markets, and the beautiful church and gardens in the middle made a great place to sun-bake (we almost have tans again!), but in truth we ran out of things to do fairly rapidly. Or, more truthfully, Yeovil ran out.
Struggling by now, we found an Internet cafe where I attempted to explain to a local how I wanted to plug my laptop in to his network. Three "experts" later and I just took the cable and did it myself. That's where the last update came from.
Down the hill to Weatherspoons (one of the big chain pubs here, but they're actually very good), we sat and did some puzzles and read for a while until we got a phone call that Rosie was ready! How over-joyed we were!
It was further walk back to the mechanic that we had thought, but we arrived, sweating yet looking forward to getting back on the road.
We did so, but luck was not on our side. Sure, the clutch was fantastic (from how well it works now, it must have been half way gone when we bought it), but by about twenty miles out of town, I was having a lot of trouble getting it in to gear - at one traffic lights I had to start in third as nothing else would go in!
Clearly this could not go on, so we once again pulled off the road (we had abandoned the prospect of the Eden Project and Cornwall by this time and were heading straight North) into another, smaller than Yeovil town called Midsomer Norton. I just managed to get into a side road, but it wouldn't go into reverse, so Liz had to push!
"At least we will be able to see a town that isn't Yeovil", I spoke way too soon. It was agreed with the insurance people that going back to the mechanic who already knew what had been done was probably the best bet, but there was little chance of me driving it this time. So, we waited around for a (different) mechaninc, who took a quick look before loading Rosie onto a flat-bed tow-truck, bound for none other than our favourite town Yeovil. Joy was us.
Through the twenty miles of winding (beautiful, it must be said) countryside, holding our breath as we just made it under a low bridge, we sat in the back of the tow truck looking behind us at Rosie's big VW badge. "At least we will save on fuel".
Opting to camp in the grounds of the mechanic (we weren't desperate enough to go back to the Preston Hotel, even if we didn't have to pay for it), we cooked our first meal in the van and had a great night reading and relaxing - what we had long-imagined our trip had been like. Except it was in an industrial estate carpark outside a mechanics in the back-streets of possibly the most boring town in England.

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