Pines And Pistons

“I think the clutch is gone”

Sitting on LeShuttle, somewhere between France and home, I found myself reminiscing about the past two weeks.

In this field note, I want to talk about what living at 55mph teaches you, because nothing tests your optimism quite like changing a clutch 48 hours before leaving the country. Let’s rewind to one final camp.

I’d love to say that this camp started like any other, but this night actually started with an open evening for a restaurant, owned by our local butchers. So we had Pimm’s and incredible tasting food-a rarity in rural mid wales, and a very welcome change.

From here we jumped in the trucks and drove up the mountain behind the butchers, all less than 10 minutes from home. Speeding up the track, listening to my current favourite song (Caroline-Kingfsher) I had the feeling it would be a camp to remember.

After coming to the end of the track, there was a… well, what is the opposite of a speed bump? Speed dip I suppose, and at some point on this drive, my partner had gotten out of the truck and hoisted himself onto the back door ladder for a fun, off road, ‘hang out’. This equated to me ejecto seating him into near orbit, while skidding to a halt because who doesn’t love to drive as fast as they can down a dusty dirt track?!

Upon arrival we realised it was a birthday camp for a good friend, and that means cake! This cake however, did not make the trip well, it melted on the way. Since being a pastry chef for a good few years, I took it upon myself to try to help with the icing by whisking it up, which only curdled it, therefore compromising the structural integrity of the desert mountain. The cake was then presented in two halves and stacked (with a stick support in the centre) on the wing of the truck. There is no more cake in this story, but the ending was a huge sticky mess on the bonnet and lots of ridiculous cake eating as though it were a kebab shop meat stack and the dogs jumping up whenever they could. Everyone had sticky paws, including the humans, and greasy mouths. A perfect birthday celebration if you ask me.

This brings me quite nicely onto one of my favourite topics while camping… food.

This evening, someone, at some point, decided that pizza rolls would be happening tonight. I am going to write a recipe here and it really is just too simple.

• Step one, buy a frozen pizza. Any will do, on this occasion, I believe it was Aldi own frozen pizza.
• Step two, let the pizza defrost. Normally this will happen naturally when driving to camp however, I believe 20 minutes should do the trick so maybe set up your chair, have a beer and then move to the next step.
• Roll your pizza up. Roll it like it’s the tightest burrito you ever wanted, roll it like Chamillionaire when he ridin’, roll it like Limp Bizkit in the air raid vehicle, roll it like Adele in the deep, like Proud Mary, or just roll it like Greg’s.
• Wrap the pizza roll in tin foil.
• Place the foil sleeping bag of pizza onto some coals and wait. Turn occasionally.

Here you won’t find fancy reviews like food blogs where they tell you minutes and timings and temperature. Here I will tell you to try it and see; I think ours took 25 minutes, but honestly it was someone else’s job and I was waist deep in cherry flavoured White Claw at this point.

I was very skeptical and thought the whole of the outside would be black and the whole of the inside would be a raw mess. Boy was I wrong.

It was the most perfectly cooked, steamy little BBQ burrito. Wonderfully hot, exactly what you needed after a few drinks and just before a cosy sleep. I am actually sad that I haven’t done this since.

48 hours until departure

After a blissful evening camp just 2 days before our departure, we packed up camp. Folded the tent away, had a large coffee, said goodbye to our friends (ate yet more cake) and started the 10 minute drive home. We are lucky enough to have friends that have found amazing viewpoints on forestry tracks where we can have a sneaky camp just minutes from home, and today we were more than grateful for this. Just minutes from home, driving up a reasonably small incline for Wales, the clutch slipped.

My eyebrows pinched, I looked to my left and I said the words every mechanics wife says “it wasn’t me! I didn’t break it!”

No, I’m just kidding, luckily Pete knew exactly what it was immediately but his face became a forlorn shadow, abandoned by the idea of a relaxing day packing. He knew what had to be done before our trip.

I’ll have to just change the gear box.

And change the gear box he did, he set his alarm for 4am on the Monday, drove to work early, took out the gearbox in 90 minutes and put a new clutch in that day. Incredibly fast work and very awe inspiring for someone like me who has very basic knowledge of a car.

Here is where you might think, wow, that’s great that you have a new clutch for the trip, I bet nothing will go wrong now!

(Insert evil laugh)

The time will come.

Before that, Basil was absolutely perfect the whole drive to Switzerland, a dream, a pleasure… a work of art some might say.

The green Land Rover did not fail. Took the British motorways by storm, the train crossing like a champ, the French tolls with ease… the hill top fort towns with slightly less ease, and the distance all the way to Lake Geneva where he glistened in the car park like an athlete finishing a sprint.

It was here that he did not fail, it was something else that failed him. Basil had done everything we asked of him.

Unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said for one small component hiding under the bonnet…

Glovebox Notes

🎧Listening to: Caroline by Kingfsher

📚 Reading: Bourbon & Proof by Victoria Wilder

🛻 Parked: Rivaz, Switzerland

⏱️ Total miles: 217456

Thanks for reading my blog. I had my first ever like yesterday and I am so grateful that someone out there read this website and decided to like it! Hopefully you might like it too 🙂