Pic of the week 21/4/2024
On Thursday we came back from a fantastic nine days in Italy. In days of old, my weekly blog post would have been a round up of the trip, but not now. Now I “live blog” whilst away and you can find the blog posts from the trip here: http://hap-pea-travels.co.uk/category/italy/
I really did enjoy the holiday: the weather was great, the food fantastic, the trains ran on time, the culture, the views …it was wonderful.
Perhaps the only fly in the ointment was on our last evening when Sophie contacted us to say her car had made “funny noises from the steering column” whilst on the motorway home, accompanied by a strange burning smell. She got home OK – in fact she reported that when she came off the motorway and slowed down, the symptoms went away. Later that evening, she could get the car to start at all, leaving me to do some long distance fault diagnosis. Anyway, following my guidance and direction (disconnect the battery negative terminal, leave for 30 mins, re-connect and try again) the following morning she got the car started, took it for a short test drive: no further problems. I am claiming dad skills to be able to fault diagnose and fix a car from one thousand miles away!
Anyway, she has now lost confidence in the Micra and thinks it only good for the scrapheap (I disagree) so on our return to the UK I had to start hunting for a replacement for her. Perhaps it was the influence of a week in Italy, but I ended up buying a 2014 Fiat 500 with 64K on the clock for £3,500 and picked it up from Shepton yesterday. I must admit it does look good, and is a nice drive. Next Sunday I’m taking it up to Cardiff, and driving the Micra back here; hopefully my blog next week will be about a happy Sophie seeing her new car, and an uneventful return trip back with the Micra (both Sophie & Becky don’t think it’ll make it!) rather than a tale of woe as I break down on the motorway …