Revelation

Menorca - August 2014

The family summer holiday to Menorca in August 2014 was a memorable one. On a day trip out to a local water park on the edge of the main town - Ciutadella - I climbed the metal steps to the top of the water slide. Reaching the top, I waited my turn and looked out across all the whitewashed houses with their teracotta roof tiles. I was suddenly struck by a vivid - a VERY vivid -  memory of the joy of driving my DS through towns and villages of peeling whitewash, shuttered windows and terracotta roofs in the south of France in 1996 or 1997. I wanted that feeling again!!

Back at our resort and lying on a sunbed by the pool, that yearning wouldn't go away. I REALLY wanted to be out driving my DS again. I began to think and dream.........What if I could get my DS back on the road again? It wasn't as mad as it seemed. Was it? What would it take? I still had all the bits. In fact I also had a good number of spares. Even though I had been without a drivable DS since 1999, I had continued to go to the rallies and collect parts for a few more years - before parenthood meant I no longer had the time or money for such things. My CCC membership lapsed in 2004 I think - the year my son was born.

Over all the years that the car had been laid up at the barn, I was also paying for a lock up garage in Bedford: shortly after returning to Bedford from Winslow, the Council had finally offered me the lock-up I had always wanted. The irony was that it was less than 50 yards from my old house where I used to park the DS outside!

As we were decorating our house, the lock up was quickly filled with housey stuff: old floorboards and window frames, offcuts of timber, an old radiator, a pine bed, louvre doors and old bags of plaster and cement. I'd also squeezed in some DS parts. There wasn't any room in the garage for a DS and the double rent-paying with the barn had long been a source of friction at home - but I'd always refused to give up on the DS and the barn.

Lock Up - 9 September 2014

Returning from holiday I went to the lock up and looked with fresh eyes - seeing once again what I had gradually become blind to: the eaves were stuffed with my leather interior and spare front wings, and spare rear wings hung on the walls like hunting trophies. Four '5J' wheels were stacked in one corner and two bvh gearboxes in another. A Continental Edison 'Hi-Fi' FM radio sat on a shelf and a new, old stock front valance hung on a nail along with a selection of bumpers and the cars air scoop.

What if I could get the DS back to Bedford? I lived on the other side of town to the lock up now, but less than 15 minutes away. Working on it there would be easier than travelling to the barn AND and then I wouldn't have to pay the farmer. That would also help with the cost of DS repairs!

Now back in the UK from Menorca, it was clear that this was no 'holiday romance': the DS bug had hit me hard. I was a man obsessed. I started planning and plotting: drawing up lists of jobs and questions. I set to work on Google and discovered that things had moved on since 2000! There were several well established and organised DS suppliers represented on line. The Citroenclassics site was a real eye-opener. 

Top of the 'to do' list was trying to remember where the farm and car were! Yes - it had been that long! I was too embarrassed to call my old friend Richard and had I had no contact details for the farm, so the first thing I had to do was use Google maps to work out where it was and it's name!

I'd gradually lost touch with my old friend Richard - served badly once I'd moved from Winslow. As Richard also had several Citroens stored at the farm, I had paid for the barn through him on a quarterly basis. Sometimes, for many months on end, it all just slipped my mind and I would get a terse note from Richard telling me he'd had to pay on my behalf, and I owed him six months rent. Had it really been that long since I'd last paid him?.....The years slipped by and our friendship degenerated into a series of payment reminders and queries. Having not seen each other for too many years,  before I could repair my car, I would need to repair a friendship.

I bit the bullet and gave Richard a call. With little contact between us in over a decade he listened cautiously to my plotting but, over several phone calls began to realise that I just might be serious, and started to warm to my plans.  Richard did his best to tell me about the location and condition of my car, but he didn't have a lot of detail. Like me he'd got on with his own life over the years and I can see that, to him, my DS had begun to look like a lost cause. We made tentative arrangement to meet to go to the farm in mid September and try to start the car. 

The bug REALLY had bitten me hard. The days dragged by and I just couldn't wait until mid September to see it again. As my mind struggled endlessly to come up with a workable restoration plan, I realised that I needed to see the car first. I had to know if it really was still in the barn and what condition it was in. If mid September was to be an attempt to start it, what would I need to take with me? A spare distributor? HT leads? LHM?

For the past few years I'd been working in Milton Keynes and was now only 15 minutes from the barn and my DS. On the pretext of assuming responsibilities for paying my barn rent (which was an important step in rebuilding my friendship with Richard), I called the farmer one day to reintroduce myself. On the back of that conversation I used a lunchtime to go over to the farm. The drive through the rolling countryside of Buckinghamshire on that hot summer day was a pleasure and, with my new obsession, I imagined how much more pleasurable it would be if I was driving a DS.........

Remembering how to get to the farm was bad enough but, once I'd arrived, I had to be reminded where the barn and the car were. It had been that long since I was last there. The barn was draughty and gloomy and I entered with a beating heart.  A race car builder and driver had use of one end, building MG track cars from road cars. Other cars and caravans were stored there. In addition to a couple of old tractors and modern cars, a Rolls Royce and and Aston Martin sat under covers and a long glider trailer took up most of one wall.  At least one of these looked like a long-forgotten project and I suppose my DS was no different. My DS sat forlornly sulking in a corner, completely boxed-in, with it's face turned away and with old cushions and blankets draped over the top and odd bits and pieces of other cars dumped on the bonnet. Where had I been all this time?' it seemed to ask accusingly

Rat Damage......

I cleared a few things off and lifted the bonnet. Underneath I could hardly make out any details. Everything was a uniform mouldy black grey colour. The wiring loom was corroding away and rats had gnawed the HT leads as well as holes in the cardboard ventilation tubes. Rat shit covered everything else. Mercifully the inside of the car was unscathed. Clearly not to the rats liking. Apart from some minor gnawing on one of the levers for adjusting the seat backs - which looked more like the work of mice -  there was no shit and there were no rats nests.

Distributor Cap - Early September 2014

I took some reference photos of what remained of the wiring loom and ignition circuit. I stood back and assessed what I was seeing and made a mental note of the spares and replacements to bring next time. This was going to be an uphilll battle and there was no point in starting to get my hopes up if the engine was seized. The decision on how to proceed was going to rest on whether or not the car would start. 

I wanted to stay and tinker, but this barn was no place for me in my collar and tie and it was time to leave. I had to content myself with having achieved my first goal: I had at least found and seen my car!