Marilyn and David's Wedding Anniversaries.

Eighth, in September 2010, on the Jaguar Enthusiasts' Club

trip to Croatia in the 1976 Daimler Avon-Stevens Convertible.

Saturday 18^th September dawned very grey and wet. The drive off the island and towards Slovenia was extremely wet. We reached the Slovenian border without event, but that was where our troubles started. We joined a long queue, in the torrential rain, to get out of Croatia. We discovered that the car definitely wasn’t water tight when stationary in such heavy rain. The car isn’t normally used in the rain and until Monchengladbach I had no idea that we might have a problem. We passed through the border into no mans land and were just about to join the queue for the border post into Slovenia when the engine died on us. With the assistance of a very helpful lorry drive, we were able to push the car into the parking area beside the road. 

I waited for while, hoping for a lull in the rain. As it was getting as wet inside the car as out, I suppose that I needn’t have bothered! Anyway, I checked everything out that I could and we then left the car for about thirty minutes. I was able to restart and everything seemed to be working correctly. We went through the border into Slovenia and the car seemed to be running beautifully. However, when we reached the first town, Ilistrica Bistrica, we hit more traffic and the engine died again right on a road junction. I managed to get the engine running again quite a few times, but it died as soon as I let the revs drop to engage drive.

David and Lesley Lindsay stopped to assist (Daimler double six series 3 saloon). David has had a V12 coupé since 1985, so is far more knowledgeable than me and was able to check everything out. Eventually, we admitted defeat and were able to push the car off the road into a parking slot. Many thanks David. The rain was still unrelenting and we had broken out the swimming towels to try to mop up the torrents of water leaking into the car. The only option now was to call the rescue service. We tried to let Simon Cronin (the trip organiser) know what had happened without luck. I was able to get through to the rescue number, but throughout our entire ordeal, no-one was able to contact us on either of our mobiles. Apparently the telecoms system was badly flooded and the border was closed later also due to serious flooding.

Trying to resolve the problem in the monsoon rain and  the serious flooding in Slovenia.

Within just over an hour the car was loaded onto a rescue lorry and we were on our way to a very friendly Slovenian garage ( http://www.avto-martincic.si/ ). It was still raining the proverbial and I was soaked. This was the first time in all the tens of thousands of miles abroad in a classic car that I have ever had to be rescued. It was a very enlightening experience and I am extremely grateful to the wonderful souls who arranged our repatriation (Footman James and AXA Assistance). The car was unloaded and pushed under cover and I then spent some time on the ‘phone “being organised”. We were driven to Ljubljana (just over an hour north) by the garage owner, where we spent a very pleasant night in a four star hotel just off the motorway, were booked on the first available Flight out the following evening and arrived at Stansted at 19.30 on Sunday evening.

A hire car was waiting for us at the airport for us to drive the 267 miles home to North Devon. The final sting in the tail was that we were stuck on the M25 for three hours! I had not expected that so late on a Sunday evening. We finally arrived home at 02.30 on Monday morning. A wonderful holiday, but with a real twist at the end.

The car finally arrived home on Thursday 7^th October on a huge trailer behind a large car transporter. Very fortunately, I was able to get the engine running for long enough to get up our very steep and narrow drive and into the garage. I still have no idea what caused our “failure to proceed”, so we now need to have the car collected by the specialist and restored to health again. The car is now drying out in her dehumidified home after the Slovenian floods. It was fantastic having all our luggage home as well!