Rolfe
Moderator
- Joined
- Apr 10, 2023
- Messages
- 10,658
- Reaction score
- 12,280
- Points
- 3,660
- Location
- West Linton, Scotland
- Driving
- MG4 SE SR
Several times I moaned about having let my written-off Golf go to Copart without keeping the space saver wheel, because I didn't know it would fit the MG4. Well.
A week ago I decided that since it was a nice day and I'd never been to the Lake District, I'd have a day out there and drive the Wrynose/Hardknott pass road. I had seen a video of someone doing it in a Morgan and thought an EV would handle it very well. I set off in the morning, stopped at Tebay for lunch and a charge, then headed across to Ambleside. It wasn't as nice a day as the forecast had predicted, which disappointed me a little, but I pressed on. Very pretty.
Unfortunately, just before I got to the Cockley Beck bridge, it became a lot less pretty.
I didn't see a pothole, I think it was a sharp stone. Very bad luck. Also, no mobile signal. At all. The SOS button wasn't working. Despite the fact that Google maps was displaying fine on the car's screen through Android Auto.
I saw the roof of a cottage only a couple of hundred yards away and decided to crawl there, as the tyre was probably a write-off anyway. I was actually lucky that it happened near habitation. Nobody in, but a lot of notices about go away, fed up with people seeking help, here are the numbers of the AA, the RAC and a tyre repair company. And if you want to use the phone it will be £5. The farmer turned up about an hour later and was actually quite nice, let me use his phone and I called the RAC as I've been a member since 1986 and had never cancelled as I couldn't get a straight answer from my dealer about what "MG Assist" actually was. I offered to pay for the call but he declined!
I told them I was right outside Cockley Beck Cottage, at the junction of the Wrynose and Hardknott passes. The operator didn't seem interested and wanted the post code, which the farmer told me. You can probably see already where this is going. I told them I was on my own in the middle of nowhere with no mobile signal and a borrowed phone, not sure that was picked up on either. Well, there may have been no mobile signal but the FM radio signal was fine and the car was warm and I had plenty charge so I just settled down with my Kindle.
Three hours later the farmer appeared at the car and said something about getting a message on his phone and maybe I should ring them back. I did, going through all the rigmarole about we're EXCEPTIONALLY busy maybe call back later (which is a permanent fixture), and the lecture about not pissing off our operators or we'll cancel your membership and leave you where you are, to be told that they'd closed the call because I hadn't responded to texts they'd sent - to the farmer's phone. The operator also said that someone had attended but the car was unattended, which was a flat-out lie of course. There was also some muttering about it being in a bad place. It's a narrow road with passing places, but a Tesco van went past me while I was waiting! I blew up a bit at that and the operator said she'd bump the call up the priority list.
I went back out to the car and went on waiting. It was getting dark by then. (The actual puncture had happened at 3 pm.) I then had a stroke of real luck. A holidaymaker in the holiday cottage attached to the farm saw what was going on and brought me a cup of tea and a banana! It got properly dark. I wondered about going back and asking the farmer if I could phone again, but then I saw first his downstairs light go off, then shortly afterwards his upstairs light. It was 10 pm. A bit after that the holidaymaker came back out and invited me into his part of the house. More tea and banana, and he gave me the password to his wifi so my phone started to work. More altercations with the RAC who didn't seem to have a clue what they were doing and proposed several impractical-sounding solutions. I don't remember how often I called them, in between chatting to this really, really nice man and watching TV.
Finally they decided to send a taxi to get me out to a hotel, and they'd collect the car later. It was after 1 am by this time. I said OK, then had a funny feeling about this and said, "do you know where I am?" Oh yes, the guy said, you're at Black Hall. No I'm not, said I, I told you right at the start I was right outside Cockley Beck Cottage. Oh. Later I looked at the OS map. Black Hall is the only other property in the area, about half a mile away, not on the public road but on what looks like a narrow dirt track, apparently an old Roman road. It would also appear to have the same post code as Cockley Beck Cottage.
Yes, the first operator had ignored all I had said about the location of the car, typed the post code into some search function, and picked the property at the top of the alphabetical list. How dumb is that, in a rural area? Or even in an urban area come to that. This was presumably the reason for all the muttering about the car being in a very difficult place to recover from. (But no, I don't think anyone ever went to Black Hall because I'd have seen them pass, and surely they had my car's registration number? The bit about coming out and the car was unattended was still a lie.)
I went back out to wait in the car, it wasn't fair to the holidaymaker to stay there any longer. I then discovered I could still use my phone because I was still within the range of the wifi! The time ticked on past 2 am and I decided nobody was coming. I thanked my lucky stars I was in an EV with plenty of charge and settled down to sleep. At 3 am there was a tap on the window. An absolute HERO of a taxi driver had found me - despite being told by the RAC that he was looking for a black MG4. He had seen those bloody DRLs that won't go off (and I'd have left them on anyway under the circumstances). It was by now pouring with rain.
I locked the car, left the car key on top of the off-side front wheel as arranged, and was driven for about another hour to Barrow-in-Furness, where I had to phone the RAC yet again, because the operator - had only told the taxi driver the post code, not the name of the hotel. It turned out to be the Holiday Inn, who were great and gave me a bed. In the morning they gave me a comb, a toothbrush, toothpaste and a face cloth, also an all-you-can-eat heart-attack-on-a-plate breakfast. About 11.30 I got a call from the taxi firm saying the taxi to take me to the car rental place had broken down but they'd get another one ASAP. Can you tell us what sort of a wheelchair it is? What wheelchair? The RAC had ordered a wheelchair-capable taxi. I explained that I might be in my dotage but I wasn't in a wheelchair yet, send me a rickshaw if you like. Someone turned up in a VW and got me to Kendal before 2 pm, so that was all right.
In Kendal I was handed a petrol Fiat 500 which was supposedly a hybrid, but drove exactly like a laggy, smelly ICE car. Decades of gear shifting kicked back in and I drove the thing back home. I was only allowed it for a day, but because it was now Saturday they said, just take it back to one of the Edinburgh depots on Monday morning. I did that and got the bus home.
That morning I also got a call from the recovery people asking where to deliver Caliban. Since it was obvious the RAC had never had any intention of fixing the puncture, I said to my own garage in the village, and warned Andrew it was coming and to order a new tyre. The plan was to collect the car on Wednesday evening, drive to Kilmarnock where there was another car (or cars) to collect or deliver, then bring it over to me on Thursday morning. I had seen Caliban at a position near Askam-in-Furness that resolved to a vehicle recovery and transport firm on the Saturday afternoon, before he fell pretty soundly asleep, so at least I knew they'd managed to recover him. It was quite fun watching him get to a hotel car park near Fenwick overnight on Wednesday evening, then to first Kilmarnock then Darvel on Thursday morning, then driving the A721 and the A702 home, to pitch up outside Manor Garage. A little later someone moved him into the forecourt.
At about 4 pm on Thursday I got a call from Andrew saying the car was ready, so I walked up to the garage and there he was, absolutely filthy but with four good tyres once again. So I was able to take my friend for her chemotherapy session on Friday morning, and get Caliban dealt with by the hand car wash in Walkerburn on the way home.
For want of any way (or perhaps desire) to try to repair the puncture, the RAC paid for a taxi for me from Cockley Beck to Barrow-in-Furness, a hotel B&B for the night, another taxi from Barrow-in-Furness to Kendal, a hire car for the weekend, and the recovery of the MG4 about 150 miles from the Lake District back home. It's absolutely bonkers. But even if I'd had the space saver, I'd have needed them to put it on. Would anything have been different? Would I still have been left by the side of the road for 12 hours? The taxi driver (who apparently made a habit of this) told me about a young couple who had been stuck for 14 hours before the AA managed to get them out. I think by bringing a tyre to the car.
It made me wonder. I still have the original Conti tyres in my garage. If I'd simply slung one of these in the boot before I set off, would the RAC have been able to send someone out to change the tyre (as opposed to the wheel)? If I try going back up there, should I do that? Don't know how to solve the lack of a mobile signal though.
And that's some of my excuse for not having been around for a bit.
A week ago I decided that since it was a nice day and I'd never been to the Lake District, I'd have a day out there and drive the Wrynose/Hardknott pass road. I had seen a video of someone doing it in a Morgan and thought an EV would handle it very well. I set off in the morning, stopped at Tebay for lunch and a charge, then headed across to Ambleside. It wasn't as nice a day as the forecast had predicted, which disappointed me a little, but I pressed on. Very pretty.
Unfortunately, just before I got to the Cockley Beck bridge, it became a lot less pretty.
I didn't see a pothole, I think it was a sharp stone. Very bad luck. Also, no mobile signal. At all. The SOS button wasn't working. Despite the fact that Google maps was displaying fine on the car's screen through Android Auto.
I saw the roof of a cottage only a couple of hundred yards away and decided to crawl there, as the tyre was probably a write-off anyway. I was actually lucky that it happened near habitation. Nobody in, but a lot of notices about go away, fed up with people seeking help, here are the numbers of the AA, the RAC and a tyre repair company. And if you want to use the phone it will be £5. The farmer turned up about an hour later and was actually quite nice, let me use his phone and I called the RAC as I've been a member since 1986 and had never cancelled as I couldn't get a straight answer from my dealer about what "MG Assist" actually was. I offered to pay for the call but he declined!
I told them I was right outside Cockley Beck Cottage, at the junction of the Wrynose and Hardknott passes. The operator didn't seem interested and wanted the post code, which the farmer told me. You can probably see already where this is going. I told them I was on my own in the middle of nowhere with no mobile signal and a borrowed phone, not sure that was picked up on either. Well, there may have been no mobile signal but the FM radio signal was fine and the car was warm and I had plenty charge so I just settled down with my Kindle.
Three hours later the farmer appeared at the car and said something about getting a message on his phone and maybe I should ring them back. I did, going through all the rigmarole about we're EXCEPTIONALLY busy maybe call back later (which is a permanent fixture), and the lecture about not pissing off our operators or we'll cancel your membership and leave you where you are, to be told that they'd closed the call because I hadn't responded to texts they'd sent - to the farmer's phone. The operator also said that someone had attended but the car was unattended, which was a flat-out lie of course. There was also some muttering about it being in a bad place. It's a narrow road with passing places, but a Tesco van went past me while I was waiting! I blew up a bit at that and the operator said she'd bump the call up the priority list.
I went back out to the car and went on waiting. It was getting dark by then. (The actual puncture had happened at 3 pm.) I then had a stroke of real luck. A holidaymaker in the holiday cottage attached to the farm saw what was going on and brought me a cup of tea and a banana! It got properly dark. I wondered about going back and asking the farmer if I could phone again, but then I saw first his downstairs light go off, then shortly afterwards his upstairs light. It was 10 pm. A bit after that the holidaymaker came back out and invited me into his part of the house. More tea and banana, and he gave me the password to his wifi so my phone started to work. More altercations with the RAC who didn't seem to have a clue what they were doing and proposed several impractical-sounding solutions. I don't remember how often I called them, in between chatting to this really, really nice man and watching TV.
Finally they decided to send a taxi to get me out to a hotel, and they'd collect the car later. It was after 1 am by this time. I said OK, then had a funny feeling about this and said, "do you know where I am?" Oh yes, the guy said, you're at Black Hall. No I'm not, said I, I told you right at the start I was right outside Cockley Beck Cottage. Oh. Later I looked at the OS map. Black Hall is the only other property in the area, about half a mile away, not on the public road but on what looks like a narrow dirt track, apparently an old Roman road. It would also appear to have the same post code as Cockley Beck Cottage.
Yes, the first operator had ignored all I had said about the location of the car, typed the post code into some search function, and picked the property at the top of the alphabetical list. How dumb is that, in a rural area? Or even in an urban area come to that. This was presumably the reason for all the muttering about the car being in a very difficult place to recover from. (But no, I don't think anyone ever went to Black Hall because I'd have seen them pass, and surely they had my car's registration number? The bit about coming out and the car was unattended was still a lie.)
I went back out to wait in the car, it wasn't fair to the holidaymaker to stay there any longer. I then discovered I could still use my phone because I was still within the range of the wifi! The time ticked on past 2 am and I decided nobody was coming. I thanked my lucky stars I was in an EV with plenty of charge and settled down to sleep. At 3 am there was a tap on the window. An absolute HERO of a taxi driver had found me - despite being told by the RAC that he was looking for a black MG4. He had seen those bloody DRLs that won't go off (and I'd have left them on anyway under the circumstances). It was by now pouring with rain.
I locked the car, left the car key on top of the off-side front wheel as arranged, and was driven for about another hour to Barrow-in-Furness, where I had to phone the RAC yet again, because the operator - had only told the taxi driver the post code, not the name of the hotel. It turned out to be the Holiday Inn, who were great and gave me a bed. In the morning they gave me a comb, a toothbrush, toothpaste and a face cloth, also an all-you-can-eat heart-attack-on-a-plate breakfast. About 11.30 I got a call from the taxi firm saying the taxi to take me to the car rental place had broken down but they'd get another one ASAP. Can you tell us what sort of a wheelchair it is? What wheelchair? The RAC had ordered a wheelchair-capable taxi. I explained that I might be in my dotage but I wasn't in a wheelchair yet, send me a rickshaw if you like. Someone turned up in a VW and got me to Kendal before 2 pm, so that was all right.
In Kendal I was handed a petrol Fiat 500 which was supposedly a hybrid, but drove exactly like a laggy, smelly ICE car. Decades of gear shifting kicked back in and I drove the thing back home. I was only allowed it for a day, but because it was now Saturday they said, just take it back to one of the Edinburgh depots on Monday morning. I did that and got the bus home.
That morning I also got a call from the recovery people asking where to deliver Caliban. Since it was obvious the RAC had never had any intention of fixing the puncture, I said to my own garage in the village, and warned Andrew it was coming and to order a new tyre. The plan was to collect the car on Wednesday evening, drive to Kilmarnock where there was another car (or cars) to collect or deliver, then bring it over to me on Thursday morning. I had seen Caliban at a position near Askam-in-Furness that resolved to a vehicle recovery and transport firm on the Saturday afternoon, before he fell pretty soundly asleep, so at least I knew they'd managed to recover him. It was quite fun watching him get to a hotel car park near Fenwick overnight on Wednesday evening, then to first Kilmarnock then Darvel on Thursday morning, then driving the A721 and the A702 home, to pitch up outside Manor Garage. A little later someone moved him into the forecourt.
At about 4 pm on Thursday I got a call from Andrew saying the car was ready, so I walked up to the garage and there he was, absolutely filthy but with four good tyres once again. So I was able to take my friend for her chemotherapy session on Friday morning, and get Caliban dealt with by the hand car wash in Walkerburn on the way home.
For want of any way (or perhaps desire) to try to repair the puncture, the RAC paid for a taxi for me from Cockley Beck to Barrow-in-Furness, a hotel B&B for the night, another taxi from Barrow-in-Furness to Kendal, a hire car for the weekend, and the recovery of the MG4 about 150 miles from the Lake District back home. It's absolutely bonkers. But even if I'd had the space saver, I'd have needed them to put it on. Would anything have been different? Would I still have been left by the side of the road for 12 hours? The taxi driver (who apparently made a habit of this) told me about a young couple who had been stuck for 14 hours before the AA managed to get them out. I think by bringing a tyre to the car.
It made me wonder. I still have the original Conti tyres in my garage. If I'd simply slung one of these in the boot before I set off, would the RAC have been able to send someone out to change the tyre (as opposed to the wheel)? If I try going back up there, should I do that? Don't know how to solve the lack of a mobile signal though.
And that's some of my excuse for not having been around for a bit.
