Day 13 – Thursday 4th August

Woke up and had breakfast and packed up the van. The intention was to drive the van to the mechanic who we had found on the net but after getting everything packed away I jumped in the drivers seat to leave to find out we had no brakes at all. This meant calling out the breakdown company and waiting for them to pick us and the van up and take it to the mechanic. This took most of the late morning and early afternoon.

Once we had been picked up and dropped off at the mechanic we had a quick chat and looked at the wheel together. The rear left cylinder had completely gone and would need replacing before we could drive again so we jumped into his car and drove down to the parts place. He had informed me that being as the part was not often need in these parts it may take them a few days to get it delievered which would mean we would be stuck in the village of Mouans-Sartoux for the weekend. Luckily after much discussion between him and the parts people he was able to get them to order the part for next day delievery. This was great news the only down side was the cost. In the uk the part cost £13.95 but over here in France it was going to cost 86 euro’s which was come mark up but I was left with little choice.

Obviously with the van being at his house we would now have to find somewhere to stay which ended up being the Etap hotel which was nice enough and not too expensive, although a lot more than we would pay for a campsite.

As we did not want to spend the evening in the hotel we decided we would go out for dinner for Rachel’s birthday, which is tomorrow. We ended up in the old part of Mouans-Sartoux which was lovely. We sat in the square and shared a bottle of wine and some tapas before heading for a lovely pizza at a place on one of the little side streets. To end the night we had a double scoop ice cream and then wondered back to the hotel well and truly stuffed. Was a lovely evening that was miles away from the touristy places we had experienced so far. 

Small French village we had dinner in