“​You have some oil leaking from the bottom of your car..."

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​Breda-Hamburg

 

Oil wasn’t leaking. It was petrol. And it was gushing.

Milo started with no problems in the morning, however straight away a guy passing by told us we had some oil leaking. I was like, “yeah, we know, we had a little leaking yesterday” and just carried on revving the engine to warm up the car. On his way back from the hotel, he pointed out that we really did have oil leaking. And a lot. I got out the car to have a look, and petrol was literally spraying everywhere. At quite a rate. Time to shut off the car and think about plan B. This car was going nowhere. Or if it was going somewhere, it was getting there whilst spraying half the tank all over the road.

Call it sixth sense, but I hadn’t checked out of the hotel, just in case such an emergency arose. Meg was packed off to McDonalds to get breakfast and I got on Skype to try and find a local garage. Not sure what the chances are but we found an MG specialist in Breda. A town of about 10,000 people (apparently quite high. The MG owners club is the largest car owners club in the world, which means there are specialists all over the place). He was off on holiday at midday, so we quickly got to a petrol station to fill up the tank as we weren’t sure how much petrol was going to be thrown on the road whilst we did the 25km to the garage.

Thankfully, the dude was quite casual about the issue, and showed us the split in the fuel hose/pipe. An hour later, some new plastic tubing (and only 30 euros) and we were on the road. Plus bonus knowledge of a) what the tyre pressure should be and b) what the switches did on the dashboard. One was apparently to adjust the brightness of the dials. It seems we have 2 settings – off, or off.

It’s amazing what difference a piece of plastic piping can do when it doesn’t have a hole in it. We suddenly went from about 150 miles a tank to 300 miles. And with renewed faith & confidence we headed on to Hamburg. We had a quick lunch stop in a Dutch town full of giants on bicycles, and ended up the day in a campsite just outside Hamburg (unfortunately, due to the lost few hours in the morning, and the fact Milo can’t go faster than 100km/60mph, we didn’t get to see Hamburg which is a shame, as meant to be a very cool city).

Our campsite virginity really shone as we had no idea what the process was for staying in these places? I of course instantly asked if there was a caravan we could stay in, but it seems we just drive into a small playing field, and are left to get on with it. Meg un-popped the tent and began cooking food. I un-popped the wine, and began to sit down. I think this distribution of Pink and Blue jobs could work well…

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