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squiz Member Member#: 6644 Location: Registered: 27-05-2007 Diary Entries: 2882 |
7th March 2020 Hiking - Walking: Ermitage St Germain Wind Direction: Wind Stength: Surf / Sea State: Air Temperature: Sea Temperature: Weather: sunny periods Max Speed: Distance Covered: Saturday 7th March – Relax, breakdown and walk **** Ermitage St Germain – sunny periods. A good night in our lay by high above Lac Annecy on the road to the Col de la Forclaz, a little chilly first thing but the sun gets around eventually. We both did our exercises watching the many paragliders high above but they are not a patch on the soaring eagles:) We didn’t have breakfast until nearly dinnertime before packing the van to go in search of a shop as we especially need water before heading up to explore the Col de Buffy. Sadly, we didn’t make it off the car park, we had just removed the levelling wedges and were about to drive off when I quickly noticed I had no power steering and the battery symbol had come on!!! After consulting the next to useless vehicle handbook we used our usual go to option when we have trouble with the van, ring Neil Hurrell in the UK, after telling him the symptoms he said it was probably the fan belt which could be replaced fairly easily on the road side if you told the recovery people what the problem was so we were not too worried:) Bonnet up and I soon found the broken fan belt, so Neil got it right in one – top man!!! We were lucky it didn’t go when we were on the really steep and windy mountain roads over the last few days!!! The next problem was contacting Saga recovery (RAC cover through them), after several failed attempts ringing the European number due to a fault on their line! we tried the UK number and were put through to France. We then discover that the French don’t repair on the road side and we would have to be taken to a garage:( The problem then being that it is Saturday afternoon and all the garages were closed, they found a garage that could come and get us and store the van all weekend (we could stay in it but only in their car park) but it made more sense to stay where we are and be rescued on Monday, there are defiantly worse places to breakdown! Our only problem now is we are short of water and cake and we have to be careful to eke out the power with the van batteries but nothing major! I ring Neil again just to tell him the situation and ask if it is OK to reverse the van a few metres back to get level and to thank him once again for his help, he said it would be OK. We were soon level and it was time for lunch. There is a Chapel just up the road called the Ermitage St Germain where we have actually stayed the night in the car park before, so we went for a walk with a spare bottle in search of some water! You had to walk along the mountain road through two small tunnels before climbing the steep road to the church again with amazing views of the Lac. Sadly both the taps we found had been disabled for the winter but we had a pleasant wander about, first to the view point with the shrine to Mary with tacky plastic flowers and up a lane to Ponnay to see if we could see the high point where we snow shoed yesterday again with the sky full of paragliders and a solitary hang glider! We went to visit the religious Grotte which was in fact very grotty with Mag refusing to even go in! It was then back to the van to finish of the last of our cake:( Another nice sunset before tucking into a van special of Spam, egg and beans but have no desert!! but I think we will survive!!!! (he ate a whole peanut chocolate bar instead – Mag :) ) Photo Gallery Here |
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