Just one day without drama. Is that too much to ask? Just one bloody day!
What now? Missed the boat, missed the train, mischief? No. Flat battery in the car. No big deal. Not until you have to ring up a freecall number that keeps putting you on hold and transferring you from department to department, then drops the call. The talking in French bit didn’t help much.
Fortunately we were only 15 minutes from Caen. We decided that it would be easiest to catch a taxi back into the car hire place, sort out the issue face-to-face and hopefully get underway again. Even more fortunately a couple from England gave us a lift and dropped us off in Caen.
After sorting out some roadside assistance we caught a taxi back to the car and met the Renault mechanic. He didn’t speak a word of English. Through some careful interpretation (I have learnt that “light” in French is “luminaire”) and some demonstration I have also learnt that leaving them on can flatten a battery. Actually I already knew that, what I didn’t know was that on a Renault leaving the lights on Auto is okay, unless you accidentally flick the light switch to high beam, then they don’t turn off.
You guessed it, somewhere along the trip (probably while I’ve been signalling with the wipers or looking for the gear shift in the door well), I’ve bumped the light switch. The lights will be turned off for the duration, even if it’s dark. Safer that way.
Cheers, Steve J.
P.S. We did see some stuff. The day didn’t turn its nose up at us until 3pm.
We started off with a trip to the Museum Normandie, which despite being open every day of the year was closed today. We’ll have another shot at that one in the morning. We were able to have a good wander around the Duke’s Chateau (William the Conqueror- that duke).
After that we headed off to Benouville to see Pegasus Bridge. You will need to do the background research yourself. It was the first objective of D-Day and the subject of a very good book by Stephen Ambrose. It must have been okay as Michelle and Milly gave it the thumbs up and really enjoyed it.
Then over the road for lunch at the Benouville Cafe, which claims to have been the very first building liberated after the invasion. Very nice. Okay, now back to the car and onwards… <refer top>
And that’s where our story ends. We will pick it up again tomorrow. Night folks.