Well that was a bit of a weekend! Pt1.

Better work in chronological order, I suppose:

Friday night we had work's Christmas party, partly organised by me. We had booked a cruise on the Thames, with Christmas dinner and disco. Unfortunately the "captain" explained that the prop had picked up a tarpaulin on the way back from it's last trip and the river was flowing too fast to get a diver to go in and release it.

Party was OK, ish. I thought the food was basic and the upper deck a bit scruffy. Other than that Mike (CEO) ran a great raffle and prize-giving and I got a present for my part in organising it.

Saturday AM did the radio and then set about loading the Mondeo for our Christmas trip to Essex. We had planned to wait for Tash and go about 5pm. She 'phoned at 4.45 so we went off and picked her up, then went up the A303 towards the M3. About 10 minutes in we started to loose power, and I could hear a lot of "tinkling" noise from the engine. Pulled off the A303 opposite a petrol station, managed to get to the top of the junction before car stalled. Would not start.

We pushed it across the junction and had a look at the engine, nothing obvious. Cranking it just made a chug chug chug noise. Called the RAC. They were very good, and Kevin turned up from Basingstoke in about 30 minutes. He tried the electrics and tried to start it with carb cleaner but it would not go. He then decided the cambelt tensioner had gone and crunched the valves into the piston's, hence the noise. 7-800 quid was his guestimate!



So he offered a tow to the garage or home, we chose home. He hooked me up with a flexible towbar thingy, took Tash and Julie in his van, and left Dan in the car with me. The two was horrid, I had to steer in his tracks and do little else than indicate. It made me feel sick! Got home and dumped the car out the front, swapped over to the Focus and went off to Essex, an hour and a half later.

Well I have now spent two nights worrying what to do with it, and I have brought the bike in to work today so Julie can have the Focus to go Christmas food shopping (hope the boot is big enough!). Not sure what to do with the Mondeo, looks like it's dead!

Will blog the rest of the weekend later.