Deal

So, I picked up the visitors and we headed east so that they could see the fleshpots of Thanet. Along the Thanet Way we had rain of biblical proportions, the kind that can lead to fishy tales, it was that heavy I slowed down slightly. Through Margate and Cliftonville and we stopped at Captain Digby's for a coffee. The weather was kind enough to allow us to sit outside with the views over Kingsgate Bay. Then through Broadstairs and another deluge as we went into Ramsgate so we didn't stop but carried on to Deal for a nice salad for lunch (extras for a shot). We tried to get Liam to buy some rock for his children but he was unmoved. Despite the weather we could see Abroad and I waved at Veronica. Then back to Manston so that they could see the roads along which HMG think they can send HGVs from parking at the airfield down to Dover. We visited the Spitfire and Hurricane memorial and then I took them back to Newington where they are staying.

They are at a place which is down an unmade track and has a key-code entry gate. After dropping them off I headed back to the gate. The keypad is set too far back to reach so I opened the window and the door to reach the pad. Plugged in the numbers and away I went. As I followed the track I noticed a grinding noise but assumed that it was because of the track surface. Then out on to the side street where there was still a grinding noise so I guessed that there was a stone between the disc and brake pad and I decided to get onto the main road where I could get up a bit of speed and then brake to dislodge it. I tried this a couple of times and there was then a bang under the car and the grinding noise became appreciably worse. The car was still performing as well as it usually does - it's a diesel Focus with 140k miles on the clock rather than a Testarossa so you can estimate the performance range I'm talking about. I was rapidly running down the list of things it might be while I looked for somewhere to pull over to check whether the exhaust had fallen off. My mechanical skills extend to checking whether the exhaust (or anything else obvious) has fallen off and then calling a recovery service. I suppose I might have opened the bonnet but there is a noisy, dirty lump of metal and plastic under there and I'm not one of the half-dozen people alive who can look at it and make sense of all the gubbins. Then I spotted it.

Next to the driver's door there was a small but sturdy branch. It had clearly been rubbing against something, the road. What must have happened was that when I closed the door after keying in the number the thin end of the branch had become trapped. The bang had been when I'd picked up the pace and it had bounced up under the chassis and then changed how much was dragging along hence the louder noise. Sure enough, when I pulled away the noise was gone and the car was back to being a growly diesel rather than a grinding, growly diesel. Therefore I has done mechanicals and fixed the problem so I could turn down the radio (I always turn it up to cover any inconvenient mechanical noises) - my time-served, diesel fitter father would have been proud of me :-)