Voila la voiture!!

 Finally we're all set up and ready to go!  After much searching, haggling, negotiating and  bargaining, we have bought a Renault Scenic 1.9 Dynamique diesel (all sounds appropriately French doesn't it?!)  We found a garage in Cheltenham called "The French Car Centre", and they have been just great.  For the asking price, we managed to get them to also include a full service, a year's MOT (WOF), a new cam belt, new engine top mount (now I really sound like I know what I'm talking about!) fix the AC fan, new steering linkage arms, new brake discs on the rear and new brake pads all round, wheel alignment, new low beam headlight bulb and new wiper blades!  Admittedly we had bought the car and ended up taking it back to them twice as we discovered various deficiencies, but they happily did everything that was required with no questions.  We're now very happy with our car, and hope she performs well in her home country!
There was a moment that might not have ended up so well but with calmness and a strong desire to live a little longer, fear was overcome and normality was restored.  This memorable moment occurred during the test drive of Le Renault.  While coming down the M5 on-ramp I decided we'd better see how much acceleration this diesel beast had so I planted the boot in order to get past a truck that was also on the on-ramp.  Having not had too much experience with on-ramps in the UK I soon found that this particular on-ramp was short and before I knew it the truck was merging with the traffic and we were pushed out into the middle lane with traffic bearing down on us at pace.  In summary the acceleration is terrible but the brakes work incredibly well.  Phew!! 
When we opened the boot of the car there was a surprise - proper Renault roof rack bars!  Fantastic.  So off to a cycle shop in Cheltenham where we got our hands on a twin set of Thule bike racks.  Things are going well.  We will just slot those bars onto the Renault and clamp the Thule holders on and it'll be easy peasy.  That solves how we'll carry the bikes.  Yeah right - more on that later.  
Second purchase, as you will see on the roof - the bikes!  In pole position at the front of the photo is Lew's bike: a 29'er extra large sparklingly white enormous contraption, bought from Decathlon, the Warehouse equivalent for sports goods in Europe.  For 350 GBP (NZ$700) its certainly not going to get him into the next Olympic team, but will hopefully get him to the boulangerie for the croissants each morning.  Hiding behind this behemoth is my bike, very kindly donated by Becky and Steve, from their basement collection of retired bikes!  It's a  Marin, extremely comfortable, and speedy up the hills, with many miles left in her, so I am very grateful to Becky for passing her on for new adventures.

 A trip to Sheffield was required to obtain the bikes, and spend a couple of days with Becky and Steve.  I went to University in Sheffield, and always love going back to the Peak District.  We had a couple or walks around Bradwell where they live, and it was lovely to be back amongst the dry stone walls and small fields again.  Amazing country for walking - in between the showers!  The rain has really set in during the last week, and several areas in south-west England are very badly flooded - reminds us of Nelson last December.
Back to the roof rack saga.  So here we are at Steve & Becky's with a bit of time to spare, so I thought 'let's put the roof and bike racks on'.  This won't take long. On the Renault there are 4 little "hatch covers" on the roof that flip up so you can insert the roof bar lugs.  Easy - just flip those up and somehow they'll slot in.  Steve and I peered inside and wondered how the hell does this work?  After a bit of fiddling around and Steve looking at a YouTube video we figured out that we needed 4 x M6 x 20mm long bolts - ideally allen capped heads that would screw inside the bolts under the hatch covers.  Ok we can do that.  So off to Bakewell (famous for Bakewell tarts - bloody awful and nothing as wonderful as treacle tart).  We figured there must be an engineering place in town that would look after all these farmers but no.  Only a farm shop but they had M6 bolts with ordinary square bolt heads.  Well that should do.  I took one of these bolts from the car roof and over lunch it became obvious that the holes inside these bolts were full of rust and rubbish and the M6 bolt wasn't going anywhere.  So back to the farm shop where I'd earlier spotted a metric tap and die set.  Bought that for 8 GBP and that did the job.
Meanwhile it was pissing down with rain and dark but I was determined and stubborn enough that we would get at least one of these roof rack bars attached.  Fortunately Steve had enough tools.  So with a torch between my teeth, raincoat and initially putting the bar on back to front there was success.  Jean and the others had rightly stayed inside drinking wine and eating Christmas pudding.  The bikes did stay on all the way back to Clevedon and we now have 4x M6 stainless allen head bolts but no tools!!

Back to The French Car Centre for one of our many visits, we wandered down the road while we were waiting for some work to be done, and found the Whole Foods Store.  Basically an upmarket supermarket that originated in America, with the emphasis on local and unusual produce, very well set out to encourage spending lots of money!  The photo above is in the spice section, where you could buy however much you wanted, spooning it into a bag to be weighed - a bit like a posh Bin-Inn, but maybe  less hygienic?!  Amazing cheese and meat counters, with very knowledgeable staff.  However, the best part was the tastings - we worked our way steadily through fruit, cheese, mince pies, yogurt, mulled wine and chorizo, plus a particularly stunning trifle,  thus saving ourself a small fortune on actually buying our lunch!  Bargain!

And so we come to Christmas, which is only two sleeps away.  Just got back from  James and Helen's house, where we decided that seeing as James is a born and bred Wales supporter,  their angel needed to show her true colours and support the rugby world champions.

Tomorrow will be the final trip to Tescos, to do battle with the hordes of trolley-pushers squeezing just one more turkey/Christmas pud/brussel sprout into their trolleys to the sounds of tuneful supermarket carols courtesy of Bing Crosby.  It certainly won't be a white Christmas this year, more like a soggy one.  Roll on the south of France....

HAPPY CHRISTMAS!!