1.27 hrs...

...is about the time it took from the medley of phone calls for the nice little recovery man to come and pick me and the yellow peril up. Didn't need to hack off an arm or anything -all very civilised! The only arm action needed was offering various hand signals to irate Italian drivers who were giving me a hard time for taking up road space on a Saturday morning.

As a kid we had a Ford Cortina (Saluki Bronze -SOE 308H - remember it well).It was very unreliable and broke down all the time. In fact...the only time it didn't break down was when it did a trip to Austria, which was nothing short of amazing.

It therefore seems a curious twist of fate that after 15yrs of owning 205's, the first time I should experience a breakdown is in Cortina in Italy...the heart of the Dolomites, and the most expensive place known to mankind.

After lots of fast chat, hand waving and pointing, the nice breakdown man reckoned the issue was with the pomp-uh, and the gist of his chat was...it's bygered and it's easy to fix, but we don't have the parts and it's a saturday, so I hope you've got somewhere to stay cause you aint goin anywhere till monday at the earliest :-(

And that is how I came to have a few days in Cortina.

So -  some top tips for European Breakdown:

1: Have Breakdown Cover (tick);
2: Breakdown where there is a view and it's in the sun (tick);
3: Breakdown where there is full mobile reception (tick);
4: Have the mobile fully charged (tick - a miracle!);
5: Don't even begin to feel smug that you will be put up in some swanky hotel in Cortina - fat chance love!
6: Don't breakdown in a French car in Italy -  the parts are wallet death.
7: When you get separated from your car at the garage, remember to take out your waterproofs (doh).