No go!

Day 13: Gutted

This morning was all about making our preparations for going away on our mini holiday. We should, of course, have been leaving first thing in the morning, to make the most of the short amount of time we had, but with the car not being ready yet we were resigned to a later start. We had, however, received an email from the car dealer last night which said "we need to test the car, you can collect it tomorrow morning" - so we needed to give them a call to clarify, and were hopeful that we would actually have the car a little earlier than the 5-6pm we had initally thought. Anyway, the first challenge of the day was that last night's incredible storm seemed to have knocked out our mobile signal. This meant we had no way (at all) of contacting anybody (at all). There was only one thing for it but to cycle down the road until we reached a point at which we picked up signal. However, first things first, we spent the early part of the morning moving pots that would need watering up from the vegetable terraces to the patio, to make it easier for Sue, who had kindly agreed to do some watering as well as cat feeding and geese feeding, refreshing the water in the geese's pond, cleaning out and refreshing the cat litter tray and generally getting things into shape to leave later in the day. We waved goodbye to our apartment guests, Keith and Jacqui, mid-morning. Once again, it felt sad to see our guests go - on every occasion so far we have got to know and really like our guests and it's always sad to see them leave. Jacqui and Keith had been particularly kind and patient with us and we hope they enjoyed their stay.

Once all of our tasks had been completed, we decided we would both cycle down the road - if Stuart went on his own he wouldn't have any way of letting me know what he'd found out and what was happening. So we packed a rucksack with mobile phones and a tablet PC (just in case we ended up having to go as far as somewhere with an internet connection) and set off on our bikes. We got as far as Frateschi's before we picked up a mobile signal, so we pulled over and Stuart called the car dealer. They said they were just talking with the mechanic and would call back, so we decided to stop at the cafe and have a coffee while we waited for their call. No sooner had we sat down than the phone rang. With utter disbelief I heard Stuart say "TOMORROW afternoon????" and when he put the phone down, his face said it all. We weren't going to get our car back until tomorrow, which meant we weren't going to go on holiday. The mechanic had apparently decided to replace the cam belt despite us asking him not to (so that we could get the car back on time) - but we would be charged the 'special price' of €100. We're not stupid enough to ignore the fact that the cam belt needs replacing (we would have taken it to our own choice of mechanic to look at), but are still suspicious that this wasn't picked up on when the mechanic had the car (for a week) 2 weeks ago, and wonder why it wasn't noticed this time until Friday, by which time they'd had the car for 10 days already, and to specifically go against our instructions (and therefore mean we can't have the car to go away) was beyond belief.

With heavy hearts, we decided to cycle further into town to go and deliver the news to Chris and Sue in person - they'd been on standby to take us to the garage to collect the car today and preparing themselves to come and do cat/geese/plant attending duties while we were away, so we needed to let them know they were relieved of all duties. We arrived to find both Chris and Sue in, and they listened to our sorry tale with sympathetic ears.

After a coffee with Chris and Sue, use of their internet and supportive words of encouragement, we got back on our bikes to start the climb up the hill home for some lunch and to see what we could salvage of the day. We stopped off at Amanda's to buy some cheese, some cured meats and some wine, before tackling the steepest part of the climb back to the house. We're getting pretty used to it these days!

Once home, we laid out our spread of food and attempted to feel the holiday spirit, but it was no use, we both felt deflated, tired and numb. In the end, Stuart headed upstairs for a siesta while I went into the office to do some work.

We spent the evening sitting out on our patio in a much more bearable temperature than of late - while the morning had still been hot and humid, even after last night's storm, the temperature had gradually dropped a little over the course of the afternoon, leaving us with a pleasant mid 20sC.