Nonweiler : Broken Down

We set sail in the early afternoon heat, waving sweet goodbyes to the poor stranded Dan, feeling my heart drop to the floor with guilt + weepiness. We had a long journey ahead, but we were well equipped with enough delicious snacks and endless views of beauty surrounding us every step of the way. Megan the lifesaver, was steering us homeward bound as we steamed our way through the first two countries, munching + nattering away about anything we fancied. Two hours into the journey ,I received news from Dan that WHAM, the parts had arrived and Cheeques was going to be fixed that evening! At last there was movement in sight as that unfamiliar euphoric emotion, relief, threw it's great arms around me: gasp, my boys wouldn't be stranded for too much longer.

Around midnight, approximately half way through our journey, an alarming sound rang it's red decibels of fear through Meg's van. Oil emergency. German suburbs. No stations open. An hour of us talking to the highway; "Go on, show your sweet illuminated face, dear petrol station, we need you. Real bad" brought us no luck, and terrible repercussions of our very own oil explosion attempting to get into Chamonix started repeating itself on me. So we decided to quit, whilst we were ahead. A charming little spooky isolated and very much deserted and unanimated German town called Nonweiler was our resting place for a spooky while as we waited for the raging rescue lights of Deutch Breakdown. I'll admit, I was quite excited at the prospect of getting to muttle some spluttled grappled together stuttering German phrases and to have a gawp at what was to come. But similarly had a few funny, but desperate images of after all the abandoning of Cheeques, that he'd get to the UK before us after all.

However, the sweet Mr Breakdown Man was a bit baffled by our problem, but soon figured it out, topped us up and followed us down the freeway for a bit to check we were OK. We'd never felt so blissfully content + safe driving a van, with our loyal backup chugging behind us in the pitch black night. But then we were by ourselves, and still had another three countries to drive through. Better crack open the chocolate supplies.