Pines And Pistons

“101 and climbing…”

Driving from the sunny shores of Rivaz on Lake Geneva, it was getting hot. Not like your average sunny day in the UK, the one where you don’t know if you need suncream (you probably do) and everyone talks about how they can’t believe how hot it is (it isn’t). No, this was hot like melting the tarmac, like boiling leather seats in a car park, hot like 38 degrees and this road wasn’t getting any flatter.

We were driving to Verbier, a world renowned mountain town where the key for it being so epic for mountain biking is the elevation, you see the basis of its appeal and the lack of appeal for Basil. Slowly the gauge was creeping higher and higher at the same speed that we were climbing altitude. We arrived at the camping park to hear our friends roaring Land Rover fan wheezing in the afternoon heat and our Land Rover: silent.

After quickly determining the problem, all three of us jumped on bikes and raced to the nearest garage where luckily, I spoke enough French to find another place that might have the part. We then cycled up to this other garage, UP being the key word, where my French was just about good enough for him to say he didn’t have the part. Our friend took to the most English thing he could think of, saying many words slowly and loudly until bizarrely, and to my annoyance, it worked, (which I was actually very glad about because my French was running out by this point).

“ANY FAN. Ford, Subaru, ANYTHING.” 

The man stopped him, went into the back, and brought out a fan that I’m pretty sure was used as one of the propellers on the Titanic. He laughed and said we could have it for free,  whilst we all cheered and then bombed back to the camping area where Pete got out the saw (that I told him he would never need in the Land Rover recovery box) and quite literally chopped this fan down to fit. The following day we packed down camp, and I drove Basil up 679m to my starting check point for my new role. 

I have never really been someone that can sit around and wait for others while they have fun, anticipating their stories and in jokes about the wonderful time they had. I like to have my own good time too. So when Pete signed up for 3 days of hellish mountain biking, I signed up for volunteering the race. Luckily for me, they had a spare position driving a 4×4 to the checkpoint medics, collecting bikes and injured riders on roads that you would never be allowed to drive without police authorisation. When this offer came through, I could not turn it down. 

The views were incredible and I was fucking terrified, little did I know that these roads would be on dusty, single-track, cliff edges where mistakes were not an option. No barriers for even a false sense of security, the view of Verbier like a miniature railway village off the edge, a drop that went on forever and my hands getting clamier by the second. A morbid thought crossed my mind, well, at least if I die today it’s a pretty cool way to go.

One particular hair raising moment had me on switchbacks doing 3-point turns on roads where even a smart car would struggle to turn, reversing until there was more sky than road in my mirrors, then halting and praying that the brake would hold, turning the wheel and over-revving to the heavens to make sure i DEFINITELY didn’t roll off the end. I was exceedingly happy that the handbrake had been fixed just days before this trip because without this, I would certainly have ended up in a human sized cement mixer plummeting back to the town. 

On arrival at the top, I was greeted by cool wisps of snowy air in the early morning light, and even though unfortunately Basil’s fan gave up just metres from the top, I was in paradise. Mountains beamed at me from all angles and I don’t think I’ve ever been more amazed at where cars can take you, or even where you can take your car. I had a great day, knowing that I could only drive down as to stop the car from overheating, I collected all that I could and cruised back to base. Devastated to tell Pete that the fan had indeed, gone again and he did what all Land Rover owners do, just smiled at this green, mischievous, overgrown puppy we entrusted our life to. The next day I borrowed someone else’s 4×4 and gave the Landy a rest. 

The ending of this story isn’t quite so dramatic. Pete looked at the fan with his friend, they figured the system wasn’t strong enough to support SuperFan ™ and then decided we needed a new relay, terminal connectors, fuse and wiring that was beefy enough to carry the current. We stopped at a strange place, a mix of B&Q and Halfords to gather supplies. This is where Pete found all the essential parts and I found a great little mermaid game where you press a button to shoot air into a tiny box filled with water and plastic hoops, aiming to get the hoops onto small poles. Safe to say that I completed this game faster than it took Pete to find all the correct parts so obviously I must be the more intelligent one.

We drove to a nearby lake where kites soared above, their nests in the pines and I started the coffee brewing while Pete started surgery. 

It was peaceful, everything went well. Marmite on toast fuelled the pit crew and we were back on the road in what felt like no time at all. After two days spent fixing problems, a drive to a turquoise lake felt like a welcome reward. A short paddle board to a line of cliffs later, we threw ourselves into water so impossibly blue it looked more like Thailand than Switzerland, the distant memory of a hot car park in the alps floating around with us.

Basil was cooling off in the shade, held together by a new clutch, a helicopter-rotor fan, cable ties and optimism.

The holiday, somehow, was still just beginning.