Next day, from Orange we continued driving north, toward our goal for the day, Beaune. But in St. Vallier we began hearing a disturbing clunking noise. We stopped, and examination revealed an overheated rear passenger wheel. We noticed we were just a block from the municipal campground so we pulled in there, hoping to find some recommendations about local garages. The office was closed until 4PM, of course, so we had lunch, and I went for a walk in the direction of several garages Google Maps had shown. Lo and behold, the first I came upon, perhaps a mile away, was an authorized Fiat shop that said camping-cars were welcome. Indeed a few were being worked on. Nobody spoke English, nor I French, so we communicated via Google Translate: "can you have the car here within 40 minutes?" "Oui." "Then our mechanic will look at it." "Oui, magnifique." Long story short is that it took him but a few minutes to get it up on the lift, break it all down, a bit longer to track down parts on the phone, and then inform us "You will spend tonight in the garage." Apparently we were not the first campers to need such help and spend the night there. The shop closed at 7, and, in addition to getting us out of the continuing mistral provided us with electricity and strong WiFi. The garage opened again next morning at 7. By 9:30 we were back on the road to Beaune, with a replaced axle stub and kit, delighted that we'd lost only a few hours of driving, and that the bill was a good bit less than expected.
Magnifique! The name of the garage, in Laveyron, is Garage du Belvedere. Super people!
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| Our campsite for the night of May 14th |
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| The view |
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| Source of clunking noise |
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| Great place |
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| "Your camping-car is in good hands"...indeed! |
1 comment:
Great recommendation!
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