Vive la France!

Lay day today at Les Breuils. The weather did a complete U turn and we were all back in jeans and overcoats. It was perfect weather for driving around looking at the WW1 memorials at Verdum.

We had a good day with little trouble finding our way. The town is well worth a visit. It has been recognised as a people with valour honours from many countries. There were 340,000 French soldiers and 320,000 German soldiers killed in the battle of Verdum 1914-1916.

Everyone is kind to us. What a break we had today!

Lang took Dale off looking for a replacement regulator. They couldn't see anything likely looking, but noticed a fellow in overalls working on his own car, and asked him. He knew where to go, but the directions were too complicated so his wife led them to a small truck repairer. They didn't have one of course, but an elderly mechanic was called from the workshop and retrieved a Peugot Bosch regulator which he said was secondhand and could be faulty, so we could have it!

It was fitted on and went like a dream! Other maintenance included topping up the engine oil by 1 1/2 L of oil, replaced the top radiator hose with a better fitting one, tightening up some cross member bolts, and shimmed up the D tent spring in the transfer box hoping it will improve the jumping out of gear problem.

THE OLD MACHINERY MAGAZINE

In a recent edition of TOMM I read an interesting article about the "Allen" sicklemower. Driving through the hilly counties of Italy, Switzerland and now France, I was wondering how they mowed their blocks, until I saw an Allen sicklemower in operation. Then I noticed them standing in fields waiting to continue mowing the next day.

You will have noticed a lack of reference to tractors, trucks and machinery in our blog. We'd seen little which excited us until we pulled up at a servo in Switzerland and noticed Toni Gisler's collection, some Swiss tractors, Fiat, Deuts. I don't want to tell you about the Porsche or the Massey Harris Pony! I didn't have any film to even take a photo. However another convoyer took photos for me.

New European trucks don't excite us, sometimes their axle arrangements are interesting - all lazy axles can be raised up and triaxle trailers can run around on one axle when empty, all on super singles. We've seen a couple of dumpys and a couple of stationarys. There's no heavy vehicles on the roads on Saturdays and Sundays, so you see them sleeping over in lay bys and servos ready to launch at midnight.