What's French for throttle?

So, we are off again in our little yellow bread bin. This trip will be just a fortnight this time and, subsequently, I wasn’t planning on documenting it – but then we started getting into a couple of scrapes on Day One so, hey, why not eh? The plan is to head across France to the Alps via a couple of wine regions (Champagne on the way, Burgundy on the way back). Simple, right?

We were about half an hour outside Dover, on our way to catch the ferry, when the accelerator pedal went slack and we lost all power. On a dual carriageway. After a panicked phone call to someone who knows more about engines than we do, I was directed to look in the engine bay to see if the throttle cable might have become detached. We quickly unpacked the back of the van and gained access to the engine (for the uninitiated, the engine lives in the boot). Sure enough, the throttle cable was detached and lying slack on the hot engine block. Luckily, and somewhat precariously, resting next to the cable was what is technically referred to as the “cylindrical bolt thing” that should be holding it in place. I’d been instructed to insert the cable end into the “cylindrical bolt thing” and tighten it up using an alan key. Miraculously, I’d heard of an alan key and, even more miraculously, I had a set with me so I tightened the “cbt” as best I could, successfully started the engine and set off with the smugness of someone who has just worked out how to re-attach a throttle cable.

By this time, we’d missed our ferry. Cue the following interaction at the ferry port:

“Sorry we’re late. Please can you put us on the next one?”

“Yes, but it’s going to Calais not Dunkirk.”

“Calais in France?”

“Yes.”

“Get us on it.”

Our new ferry reached Calais without serious incident (unless you count overcooked sausage and undercooked bacon as serious) and we disembarked onto French soil with glee in our hearts and poorly-cooked breakfast in our stomachs. About 10 minutes outside Calais the throttle went again.

“Don’t panic,” I shouted, “I know what to do!”

I leapt out of the van, donned the obligatory high-vis jacket, deployed the (also obligatory) warning triangle and set about fixing the throttle cable. Unfortunately, it appeared that our alan key and the “cylindrical bolt thing” had fallen out with each other somewhere mid-Channel and were now refusing to co-operate. We were stuck. We decided to phone for assistance and then spent quite a while trying to describe the issue to someone who couldn’t even work out which road we were on. As we tried to describe our surroundings, it dawned on us that the area was very reminiscent of the recently-cleared refugee camp we’d seen on the news. We then started to notice small groups of refugee-looking guys watching us from the dunes. After about an hour, much to our relief, a police car arrived and three genuinely friendly police officers ask us why we’ve chosen to park on this particular stretch of motorway. Our French vocabulary doesn’t quite extend to engine components so it’s frustratingly difficult (for all concerned) to explain what is wrong. I end up showing him the “cylindrical bolt thing”, pointing to where it should live and demonstrating how useless my alan key is. He laughs, tells me his brother used to have a van like this and then asks if that is all that is preventing us leaving. Embarrassed, I nod. He kindly phones a local garage and says he’ll wait with us until they come.

 Our kindly copper then proceeds to tell us that we have stopped in what was quite a dangerous area up until a few months ago. He points out the remnants of smoke bombs littering the verge, smoke bombs they’d had to use to disperse some of the refugees who had been attacking passing traffic and leaving trees in the road to stop trucks. Now, he tells us, there are just a few refugees still around trying to sneak on to trucks etc. Right on cue, a 10-car transporter pulls in to the hard shoulder behind us and an angry Latvian truck driver jumps out of the cab and starts shouting at the cars on the back. A cheeky refugee emerges from one of the cars and skulks away sheepishly. Our police escort watches all this unfold, gives approximately zero fucks, shrugs and says “See!”.

About five minutes later, an elderly Lithuanian couple pull in to hard shoulder to ask the officers for directions! The police take far more umbrage at this flagrant flouting of motorway rules and shout at them to go away with all haste. Finally, a flatbed truck arrives to scoop us up off the hard shoulder, we bid farewell to our uniformed saviours and are taken to a local garage. The mechanic doesn’t understand the word “throttle” or my explanation about imperial and metric alan keys so I just show him the afflicted part. He shrugs, disappears into the workshop and starts working away on a grinder in a shower of sparks. He comes back with a small bolt of the correct calibre to the one that we can’t do up and tightens it with a spanner. As far as I’m concerned, this man is some sort of magician. Just to cement his legendary status, he then says he’ll only charge us for recovering us off the motorway but not the “magic” bolt! I resist the urge to hug him, pay up and off we finally trundle.

Let’s hope we don’t run into any more police on this trip…