We decided that today we would start heading north again. The drive is around 12 hours and not something I had any intention of doing in one go, or two for that matter. We had a pretty late start really, I wanted to wash my hair which is quite an event and takes a lot of kettle boiling when it’s cold.
As we drove out of the town, Ruby’s rear suspension which had been making some ominous clunking noises seemed to be getting louder. We pulled over to check nothing was loose. It looked fine, so we kept going and it kept clunking. Further down the road, Lee climbed in the back and started moving everything to get access to our engine bay to see if we could find the noise. As I drove over a small bridge on a mountain road with several cars behind me, he removed the engine cover which knocked and turned off the fuel pump switch mid bend. Obviously the engine died immediately and quite inconveniently. Not realising what had happened I rolled us back of the road and then figured out what had happed. Happy that nothing was actually wrong for once, we continued. This time I was listening at the back. There is a truly horrific noise coming from the suspension, masked normally by some very good soundproofing as well as all out stuff, with the cover off it was horrible!
So we pulled over again to have another look. We jacked up the back and checked the wheels and wheel bearings. I had a look underneath, but nothing is visibly wrong. We didn’t have much choice but to pile everything back on top and turn the music up.
We kept driving for about 4 hours, deciding to stop of in the village of Rion on the outskirts of Bordeaux. The goal is to always drive at least 4 hours a day, but to stop of and do something nice to do you don’t just feel like you’re driving non stop.
Rion is a very historic and pretty little place and we parked up on the outskirts and walked around it enjoying some rare sunshine. 
The view into the Main Street through its archway. 
Some pretty pictures around the town. 
We then got our bikes off the van and cycled the short way to the banks of the Garonne. 
Unfortunately there’s no real path so it was a short trip. We ended up with this necessary photo of Ruby before heading on.
We drove around another hour and pulled over in this scenic spot. 
After we cooked a pretty good dinner, I also made brownies using our generator to power up the remoska oven we have… they went pretty well considering the generator kept cutting out. Another thing for the to do list.
The Kombi Chronicles 