Road trip - what a disaster!

Sue looks into the distance awaiting the arrival of the man from the RAC.

Have you discovered Facebook's Market Place yet? It is a sort of cross between eBay and Gumtree. It is the free selling section of Facebook. People list all sorts of things and usually price them. There is no sophisticated checkout, and most items are intended to be bought locally and collected. I searched the site for fishing gear and found all sorts of things, but the prices are insane. A couple of weeks ago there was an old X3 Preston seat box for £30.00. It sold within minutes of it being listed. I discovered a notifications sign-up, so I signed up for fishing alerts.

While I was sitting at the dinner table the other night the phone bleeped, and it was a notification of a listing for an X5 box that was of similar design to my X3. This time it was the princely sum of £20.00. I indicated I was interested. I got a message back to say somebody had got there first and was coming to see it the next day. Thinking that was the end of that I dismissed it and got on with life for the following twenty-four hours.

Ding! The phone went again, this time it was the seller saying the person who had said they were coming to have a look had not turned up and was I still interested? Yes! It turned out there were several other bits for sale, and I asked for a price for the lot. A price was given, and a haggle was done. I ended up buying the box, an 11.5m margin pole, a Carp-Porter box trolley, a rod pod, a huge umbrella with side skirts that zip on and a lot of other smaller stuff. I will show some of the bits as I/we get around to using them. I say "we" because the box now an X3, as I have upgraded my box by swapping over the drawer sections and will been given to the other bloke, along with the 11.5m pole and various bits of tackle.

That aside, the drawback of buying this way is the fact that it has to be collected. A small price to pay if, as this lot was, the lot is a bargain. Listed as 'local' it was actually in Welwyn Garden City. That is fifty miles from us, but it is all easy road and should be no trouble, mid-morning.

How wrong can I be!

The traffic getting there was just one hold up after another, and our sat-nav sent us off down a blind alley where we had to turn around in a space barely wider then the van is long. During this operation, I heard a hissing noise but took no notice as everything felt okay and the noise had stopped. Assuming the noise wad emanating from a remote source, we carried on to our destination using Sue's phone's built-in directions app. We arrived at the destination at 15:00, we had left London at 11:30. After collecting the fishing gear, and loading it into the back of the van, we noticed the rear, near-side, the tyre was looking a bit soft. No worries, I'll change it. Not that simple on a big van, sitting on a gentle slope. The picture at the head of this blog is of the spare, after being fitted... Before you say I should have checked it, I did, and I made sure it had plenty of air in it by pumping it up to 60psi.

The spare was softer than the tyre I had taken off. Nothing for it, with five wheels of which only three were serviceable, I had to call the RAC. Well, the bloke was great, helpful and willing try a few things to see what he could do. The problem turned out to be perished valves on both wheels. The Guy from the RAC took the original wheel and tyre away to have a new valve fitted at a local tyre specialist, and within half an hour we were on our way home.

Back home, it was time to have a cool off and inspect what we had collected. The box was in a far better condition than it looked in the photograph (Makes a change!) and although the seat is a bit tired, it is perfectly serviceable. I will write another blog about the box upgrade and the making of another box for the other bloke.

Just pleased to be home and a shout out for the RAC, without whom we would still be in Welwyn Garden City.

Ralph.