Car is back!!!!

Yay we have the car back FINALLY. It has been something getting on for 3 months since it went in to the garage. In the end Nissan paid for most of the work - they paid for the parts and we paid the labour which turned out to be quite reasonable and amazingly a lot less than they quoted.

I won't bore you with the ins and outs of it all, but a friend who speaks better French than us was very helpful finding the right phrases to use on the internet which seemed to finally motivate them to do something after weeks and weeks of frustrating promises to get back to us and failure to do so.

Maybe we will get the car back

After 2 months of arguing with Nissan about who is going to pay for a new clutch and flywheel they have finally offered to pay a good part of it. They admit no fault and say they are doing it for customer relations. How a 2 month wait for this decision is good for customer relations I am not sure.

We are not getting to overexcited until the work is actually done. It is going to be great to be able to use the trailer again, so many things are held up for want of it.

Thank goodness for our vry kind friends who are lending us their car!

More snow and collecting our trailer

We have had snow at the house for a few days now, it all looked very pretty this morning. We have not had this much settle on the drive before.

Despite the snow, we got out ok to fetch our new trailer. We will use it to transport the sheep to the abattoir as well as for various DIY type things, such as getting gravel from the quarry to do further work on the drive.
We looked at the tractors longingly, but cost aside, our land is just to steep for a tractor (unless you are semi suicidal french farmer with lifetime of experience behind you)

I have towed things before (boats) but not often. I feel I have just about got used to the giantness of the pickup, along with the rather limited view out the back, so having a trailer will be an interesting new challenge. It didn't cause any bother on the way home and I managed to get it round the bend in the drive ok - I was a bit worried as the car doesn't make it round in one so some reversing on the corner is involved (with steep drop behind).

It has a lid that fits over the top which hopefully should keep the sheep in.

Skiing, snow and driving

There has been quite a bit of snow over the last few days. We went up skiing yesterday, the snow was very nice and fluffy, but the visibility wasn't great. Sometimes you couldn't tell up from down as everything in all directions was white. It was pretty darn cold too at -8°C in the car park and still snowing quite heavily.

The drive down was quite exciting. First we came round a corner to find a snow plough doing both sides of the road with a double plough speeding at us at about 2000 mph, and when I applied the brake to slow down and pull in to the side we just slid. Fortunately not far and the snow plough swerved back on to the other side of the road just in time. I guess they are expert at not plowing people off the road. It would give them a bit of a bad name.
We didn't drive very fast and it was generally fine, but there was a nerve wracking moment when we came round a corner to find a number of stationary cars and the road blocked by a car that had spun across it. When I braked (broke?) the car just slide with the ABS desperately trying to keep grip and failing (we were in 4wd). I managed to steer on to the wrong side of the road to avoid the stopped car and slid past them on the wrong side of the road. They got very het up and were gesturing that we should stay behind them and that they were before us in the queue! I ignored them and went back to trying to stop the car. Having dropped in to 1st we were slowing down, I considered for a moment swerving in to a garden at the side of the road with a big bank of soft looking snow, but decided we were going to stop in time. We did stop, and looked around, Mr Irate French Man was still gesturing angrily. Perhaps he didn't realise how nearly we rammed in to the back of him!

What to do when car is out of control - close your eyes!