Today started with a full cooked breakfast – it’s the only way! One thing we had to deal with before we drove to far was Riley Blue’s electrics; during yesterday’s journey to Land’s End its indicators and horn decided to stop working. A working horn we might not need but indicators we most certainly would; it ‘s a long way from Land’s End to John O’Groats, too far to rely on hand signals!
Yesterday a call to Britannia Rescue, our recovery service, had one of their agents with us inside 20 minutes but he couldn’t solve the problem at the roadside. He’d suggested we call in at his base in St Just this morning but even Gary, the garage’s electrical wizard, was unable to source the required relay at short notice. Fortunately I’d remembered Tim Kelly, a MG specialist, was 30 miles away at St Agnes. Tim reckoned he had a flasher relay that would restore Riley Blue’s indicators to full working order so we diverted via St Agnes. Tim was right, a new electronic relay fixed the indicators and a new fuse was fitted to fix the horn – we were on the road again within half an hour but it was now 2pm and we were still in west Cornwall, not heading north-east through Devon and Somerset.
We rejoined our B-road route and an intense afternoon driving through the bluebell-banked sunken lanes of Cornwall and between the cow parsley verges of Devon and Somerset saw us gradually catching up with our schedule. Because we were concentrating so hard we completely forgot to rig our video camera or to start our tracker log; it wasn’t until we’d passed Tavistock and were climbing on to Dartmoor that we remembered.
That’s all for this evening. It’s past 11pm and there’s a pillow with my name on it.
Riley Blue 