Goodbye 4th gear

I knew it was coming, I thought we might have got a few more miles though, we’re not long out of La Rochelle and I lose 4^th gear. We are just passing ‘Saintes’ so decide to go there and look for a garage. Luckily as soon as we pull off the main road I find a space to pull in to gather our thoughts, unbelievably, I’ve pulled into a mechanic shop car park. I walk into the garage and do my usual ‘Brit abroad’ communication including lots of sign language. I manage to find a very friendly chap who spends a lot of time looking at the van, making phone calls and doing some research on the internet. He tells me he can do the job but also tells me where the Fiat garage is too to see how much they will charge. My guess would be double what he has quoted but decide I will get the quote as well as the second opinion. The diagnosis is the same (a problem in the actual gearbox, not the linkage system as I suspected) and as I thought, twice as much to fix it. So I arrange to deliver the van to be fixed at the original garage but they can’t do it until Wednesday and will need it for a few days, so it looks like an unexpected stop for a week in Saintes. I can think of worse places to be stranded in.

Looking at the engine hoping this will fix the gear crunching problem, its all about positive thinking