After waking up having a big breki, shower and appropriately refilling and emptying peggy we left Kenora happy. Heading for the Manitoba stampede that is held in Morris, just south of Winnipeg. We had decided to see if it would be possible to have a wedding at the stampede, maybe even on horse back! We had literally just turned off the highway to head south towards Morris when….. nothing…. no bang, no crack, no boom. Peggys engine just stopped.Lisa pulled over to the side of the road calmly. If you call calmly flapping like a chicken been chased by a 1000 wolves who have not eaten for a year! Bearing in mind Peggy was just rolling forward slowly to a stop I have never seen anything like it.

So once stopped we debated what to do. Jump out and stare under the bonnet
with gormless looks on our faces, call recovery again or walk to the next town! Deciding to do all of the above and in that order we jumped out and popped the bonnet. That done we flagged a passing car down and asked if they knew how far the next town was. “Just down the road, about a mile” we where informed (so not all bad).

I called the road side recovery and got ‘Kim’ the bain of my life for the next 40 minutes. It took 15 minutes for me to explain to Kim that we had broken down, I was then asked what was it that I wanted! Kim then asked what the zip code was for my location, I calmly reitterated my story that we where on a slip road and didnt have a post code.Her response…’Please hold’. 10 minutes later Kim comes back on the line ‘I am going to try and locate you’. I still have no idea where she went for 10 minutes. My bets would have been to go and locate her brain but sadly it wasnt to be the case.

I finally taught Kim how to read a map and she, realising with a eurika moment we where in Canada not America. I was then asked ‘why are you in canada’?!!! Anther please hold whilst Kim went off to locate a recovery company. ‘I have found a recovery company in Quebec or Nova Scotia’. Amazingly calm (as lisa was flapping round the van again doing an even better impression of a chicken than before.. now squawking ‘let me speak to her! Now!’) I told Kim that Quebec was around 2000 miles away and didnt think that would be suitable. ‘Please hold’. At this point I looked at the phone, the battery flashing red and the phone call had lasted 42 minutes at international rates. Kim returned ‘I am struggling to confirm recovery at this time please hold’. I gave up and told Kim I would leave her with it. the call had already cost the $30 credit we had put onto the phone the day before!

Popping the bonnet again I decided to take the battery out of the back of the van and try to jump peggy off that. Bed up, bench unscrewed, battery cover unscrewed, battery clamp un bolted, all with a swiss army knife, and as easy as that the battery was out. I noticed that there was some water in the battery well and guessed it was from our previous leak. Round to the front and realising that I didnt have the tools to get the front battery out I shoved and pushed until the now upside down battery was far enough in to reach the terminals. It was at this point I realised it wasnt water in the rear battery well but clearly from the burning down my arms aided by the 110’f heat was in fact battery acid. Ignoring it I asked Lisa to turn the engine, Peggy started first turn…. ‘Get in!’ I shouted. As soon as I put the battery down to get cleaned up the engine stopped instantly. My heart dropped mainly because my brain and very limited knowledge of engines was screaming (in kim’s voice) New Alternator…. New Alternator …. New Alternator …. Burning arms. I grabbed some of the cheap dried out handy wipes and proceeded to clean my burning arms with Lisa being a great help telling me off for hanging the battery upside down in the first place. Just at that moment a recovery truck pulled up, a guy jumped out and said ‘I am looking for a dodge caravan have you seen it?’ Clearly he was a blood relative of Kims.

We got loaded up and headed into town, as we had been informed just down the road. 32 miles later we got dropped at Canadian tire in Steinbach.
Straight into reception and we where told it should be no problem, they would slip peggy in and get us back on the road asap…. 3 hours later nothing had happened, we sat in the van in the car park roasting in the 100’heat. I popped back in to be told they couldnt look peggy until tommorrow! Nice to see that they have adopted the same mechanic service ethos as in the UK! We settled in with a big bowl of noodles, curled up in bed and stuck a movie on nestled in the corner of the carpark. Apart from a few gun shots at midnight and the local cruise crew performing a wheel spinning competition at 2am we had a great nights sleep.

The next morning Peggy was in the garage and we went off to treat ourselves to breakfast. 9…10..11…12…1…2pm I decided to ask what was going on. Alyssa our ever so friendly service assistant replied ‘Nice blog by the way’…. was I being built up for some wild news. Yes. ‘We replaced the Alternator and then we found the battery router block and we are not sure what’s exactly wrong’ I was told. OK, so what now. The mechanic came out who was 3 years younger than Peggy and kindly offered an explantion whilst slipping in that peggy was old, damn old. Basically the Alternator had been replaced and it didnt need to be. But my luck being as tough as it is stood the test.

The leaky battery I mentioned that had burnt my arms, turned out to be 3 days inside its 36 month warranty and got exchanged for free. Alyssa kindly offered to discount the labour and parts and discounted a battery charger from $50 to $20. We ended up with a new alternator, new battery, battery charger, service, oil top up and 7 hours labour for $220 (£150). Bargain!! We quickly paid up and got on the road before anyone had chance to question the deal of the century!

So finally after what felt like a week of waiting, we were back on the road and luckily just in time to catch the last day of the Manitoba stampede. Another day full of adventure out if the way!!

See what happens next in our wedding travel adventure!