Friday 4th June Eindhoven to Duisburg

We woke up fairly early this morning, a motorway car park is not exactly the best place to have a sleep in lol It seemed a bit weird waking up to be surrounded by truckers and cars whizzing by on the motorway, yes I know anything would seem fast compared to our camper aka The Tortoise . We left the truck stop at 10am and after some much needed caffeine and breakfast we managed to find our way through Eindhoven. We entered Germany and were cruising along nicely on the autobahn singing along to some music when suddenly a snapping noise was heard, Cass was driving and said “ oh dear we seem to have a problem here “, okay maybe she didn’t quite use those words and that would be the very polite version of translating what she said . Anyhow turned out the clutch cable had broken, we were prepared for the majority of technical hitches but not a broken clutch cable as this is a very rare occurrence for any vehicle but turns out it was our time. While we were sat on the hard shoulder Cass managed to bodgie up a different cable ( that was in between more polite words lol) which would allow us to roll off the autobahn and as luck would have it into a street which had civilisation. We parked on a street that had a mix of industrial buildings and housing and then proceeded on foot to where the sat nav said that there was an auto place so we could buy a new cable. Hmm we had started out on bikes but Beks tyres lasted 50m before they were flat! Emily if you’re reading this thanks for the bike exchange lol! By the time we got to the auto shop (or where we thought we had to be – Fiat) it was 4.10pm on a Friday and in the tradition of all spare parts people in the world they were at the pub and wouldn’t be back until Monday morning! We looked at each other with dread; we didn’t know where we were and at the back of our minds wondered how long and even if we would be able to get hold of a new cable. We decided we needed a drink and tried to look at things with a bright attitude and thought maybe us breaking down was an omen and maybe we had stumbled upon an unknown tourist attraction! so hunted for a supermarket and got some supplies and went back to the camper, the fridge and power points don’t work on the leisure battery ( another minor technical hitch with no thanks to the man who sold it to us) so we set up the generator and had pizza and were busy watching a movie when mr plod knocked on the window – it appears that the generator was a little loud for the area ( it sounds like a plane taking off) we showed him the broken cable and said that we needed the generator on to charge our mobiles to call home. The TV was visible through the window and the volume was loud to counteract the noise from the generator but he let us off and said to have the generator switched off by midnight - At least one piece of good luck that day!