24 Hours from Tebay

This is going to be a long post... 

This felt like the longest day, in fact the rescue and recovery took just over 24 hours, but the story starts well before this 

All went well on our drive to the lake district on holiday until we decided to stop at Tebay services which has an excellent farm shop attached so sells high quality products which we thought would be a great way to start our holiday. 

So we pulled off the M6 and into the services and the trouble started when Katy cut out as we were driving in on the approach road. She cut out... we were lucky to be able to coast into one of the first available parking spaces. I though we may have inadvertently run out of Diesel because the fuel gauge has been faulty, but we had filled up before setting out and the known range was a lot more than the 250 miles or so we had driven (it's about 350 on a tank full). 

To be on the safe side I went to the garage and got 10 litres at motorway prices (ouch!) and put that in, but she still would not fire up.

I had some spares, but wasn't sure so the next thing was to bring in an expert who could help me if one of those would be useful. 

The rest of this tale will be told through the medium of song and pictures (  Apologies to Burt Bacharach / Hal David / Gene Pitney for butchering the obvious song ... ) and at the end are a whole bunch of thank you's to the people who helped us along the way

Dearest Katy I had to write to say that I wasn't driving you back

Cause something happened to you while we were driving on hols

And you're not the same anymore

Oh we took 24 hours from Tebay

Ah only one hour away from our Hols 

We saw a welcoming sight and stopped to pick up some grub

And that is when it happened

As we pulled in outside of a services

You stopped your engine from running

I bought some Diesel to feed you but you still didn't start

Oh we took 24 hours from Tebay

Ah only one hour away from our Hols 

Lowes took us from Tebay to Lymm where we stayed

Via a stop on the M6 hard shoulder 

Oh we took 24 hours from Tebay

Ah only one hour away from our Hols 

Oh the breakdown truck stopped

And night time turned into day and we were still on our way

2 Hours sleep and the next truck

Picked us up and we went on

Via another stop for 4 hours at strensham

Oh we took 24 hours from Tebay

Ah only one hour away from our Hols 

I hate to do this to you

But you'll need some bits that are new

What can I do

We were so glad to be back home again

Now the pictures and some real information 

We stopped about 4:30 

Michael from Furness identified that our injector pump was not running at all despite having power and fuel delivered from the electric fuel pump. That's not a roadside fix so a recovery was going to be needed. Given we needed a larger than average lift, he called for a truck which was about an hour and a half away

It had got dark by the time that John from Lowe's turned up and took us onboard his truck (which we have to say was the nicest of the event so thanks for that Lowes).  

Soon we were off with a plan to meet another truck at Strensham services about 2:30 am. 

However A couple of hours into the journey disaster nearly struck for us all!

John had to deal with a front tyre blow out at speed on the M6 at just after midnight and it was only through his excellent driving and the lucky situation that the motorway was so empty that he was able to bring the truck (about 12 ton with us fully laden on board). it was the drivers front wheel so as the enormous bang happened we started drifting right before he managed to lose enough speed to get it back under control and back to the hard shoulder 

We had stopped on the side just between the off-slip and on-slip of Junction 21 and I can now say from personal experience that than goodness it was not one of those awful smart motorways because the way some people came past I do not think that they would have missed us if we had actually been in a carriageway and we would not have been able to drive along to a refuge area because the tyre was hanging right off the wheel according to John (who rightly was insisting we got out and stayed safely on the verge over the crash barrier

We stopped there for about 4 1/2 hours which was no fault of Lowes there was simply no mobile tyre service willing and able to come to us so Lowes had to dispatch another of their team (Matty) who got out of bed and came to our rescue. Along with John he bravely changed the wheel with live traffic running very fast and often very close where they failed to see the problem and pull out (I mean there were only 2 trucks with full sets of warning lights flashing reflecting off a brightly painted land Rover which is in desert not motorway camouflage hmmm...)

If you don't believe how visible it was try the "Disco Katy" video out ! 

They finally managed to get us back on the road and it was just a short ride to the Lymm truck stop at a bit over 5am where they unloaded us in the car park and loaded one van on the other to save one of them driving home. 

Of course all the plans had been abandoned at this point with no booked pick up time available so our plan was to get some sleep. We did manage to get a couple of hours before we were awoken with the news that we would be picked up again in an hour and off to Strensham as had been originally planned 

An hour later as planned, Barry from BRS  was our next transport I can't say a lot about that part of the journey because I know I kept nodding off ... 

At Strensham he said we needed to be parked in a spot where a truck could easily get to the front of us so we were left in the lorry park where we made quite a comical sight, and the number of trucks that tried lining up for that parking spot before seeing us was substantial, but no-one seemed to get annoyed with us (sorry about the quality of this picture)

Sadly due to a miscommunication our next savour (Nathan) wasn't called immediately, but after another few hours delay we were incredibly glad to see him and his truck who were to be the last on the relay. 

We finally arrived at Steve's workshop (which was our agreed drop off point) a little after 5:30 

As I said many thanks to all who helped us from Furness, Lowes, BRS and Caldicot, but most of all our thanks to John from Lowes because we even got a text the next day to see if we had got home safely ... Excellent service !