Q-School 2009

La Manga Qualifying School

December 2009

I first realised I’d under-researched the winter climate in southern Spain when I locked up the eight dead-bolts of my friend’s Costa Del Sol villa and turned around to see it was snowing.

As soon as I disembarked the plane the day before I started worrying how the only pair of trainers I brought with me was going to hold up for the week and being cautious to keep them as dry as possible for as long as possible, I inadvertently ran through a two-foot deep, freezing cold puddle. 

I planted the Ford Ka rental car in first and set off waiting for it to warm up enough to dry off my sodden feet on the 40-minute journey to La Manga Club.

The road out of the new complex is, as most of Spain has been for 40years, a building site and unlike in the developed world where they build the roads first to enable vehicles the faintest hope of getting to the site without falling on their side, Spain hasn’t quite figured that process out. Even though the complex is over 30 years old, the road still hasn’t been quite finished. ‘Mañana’ I suspect is the key word here.

So de-misting as I go down this obstacle course of a road back to the relative plane of the highway, It’s pretty bumpy and just as I’m trying to put on the seat belt, plug the iPod in and choose a song – all at once, naturally, I’m a man after all – I enter a huge lake of agua and the front right corner dips into a chasm and a massive bump-crash-bang-wallop shortly follows. 

It was hard to tell if I’d done any damage as the surface water was throwing the poor little Ka all over the shop but once I hit a ‘dry’ patch I realised that not only had I blown the front tyre but it was pretty much hanging off the rim.

I attempted to negotiate the weaving beast to the nearest petrol station to change the wheel under the confines of the canopy but the grinding of steel was overpowering the sound of Rage Against The Machine’s Christmas Number One, which was rather irritating. Knowing there was only one option, I pulled over and contemplated a fairly horrible forthcoming half-hour

I donned the golfing waterproofs but still concerned about my poor trainers potentially getting even wetter than an otter's pocket, I slipped on the trusty flip-flops and headed out into the dark, dank yonder.

It was atrocious. The rain was coming down so hard I had to duck as a Persian Blue and a German Shepherd nearly clocked me on the back of the head. I evaluated the damage - not much to look at really – one rusty tin wheel with a flat spot where I’d tried to continue with no rubber. The tyre was a hundred yards back in several pieces and the fresh, imitation brushed steel wheel trim had long since disappeared into the chasm below and will no doubt end up on some adolescent boy’s bedroom wall somewhere in darkest Villamartin come summertime.

I flipped open the boot and lifted up the carpet only to find the spare wheel was under the car and not in the warmth of the interior. I eventually found where Ford had decided to put the jack - it was on the inside but behind a wing nut that wouldn’t budge. Not one for carrying mole-grips everywhere I go, I knew I only had the strength of my rapidly numbing fingers to get this thing free. Twisting it with everything I had, it finally snapped free sending my knuckles into the sharp plastic of the rear light console splitting the blue cracked skin like a hot knife through butter. That didn’t help. Anyway, the jack was free and thankfully the men in brown coats at Ford had thought of attaching the brace to the jack itself – things were looking up.

Even Galvin Green couldn’t keep me dry and my shorts – I hadn’t envisaged Spain being this inclement, you understand - were soaking by this point and frosting up a little around the edges. 

Crouching down, I undid the wheel nuts and cranked up the front corner of the car. As I was releasing the welded-on nuts I looked down to see a rapid torrent of water flowing over my naked feet. They were so numb I couldn’t really feel them. I let out a huge belly guffaw and carried on removing the nuts and laying them on the ground only to watch them head off down the torrent like a white water raft. I ran after them as fast as you can in flip flops with numb feet and dived on them before they reached the open drain.

Peeling myself out of the gutter I was now pretty much wet through and the funny side of it all was wearing thin.

A jacked up the car enough for the wheel to spin freely and went to get the spare wheel. What a palaver. To release it I had to get the brace out I’d thrown in the freezing river and undo in quarter turns a connecting bolt under the car. This meant going down on all fours, just what I fancied. Laying my nobbly knees into the fast-flowing arctic water I let out a further chortle and, unsure whether to laugh or cry, got on with it.

It did occur to me that in the warm confines of the car (I’d left the thing running for future comfort) I had the telephone number of the breakdown company and would have gone through all of this at the touch of a button. Unfortunately, time was the key and I had to be at the club in half an hour, it was 40 minutes away and I only had three wheels…

This connecting rod was longer than one of Vijay Singh’s drivers, I swear. It turned and turned and turned and still, it wouldn’t release the wheel below. I got so cold I had to go and sit in the car for a minute with my shaking hands firmly clamping the hot air outlets on the dash.

Feeling relatively restored I took a deep breath and ventured back out there. I may be using a touch of poetic licence here but I can’t begin to tell you how horrendous it was out there.

The last time I had to endure such a horrible experience was a few years ago in Andorra...

After 15 hours driving through the beautiful French countryside with its smooth, straight roads, we hit the outer limits of our country of destination and the snow turned up. The climb into the mountains should have given us a hint of what might be coming up and perhaps the fact we were going on a snowboarding holiday but hey – we were British and on holiday – not the sharpest combination.

We found out the hard way that the 3.2-litre rear-wheel drive Jaguar XJ6 was going to be about as much good getting up the icy mountain roads as playing golf without a ball until we installed snow chains.

Neither of us had even contemplated this being a necessity so we bought them at ‘Brit on holiday rate’ from some money-grabbing French cochon who saw our wallets coming a mile away and I went about getting them on the car.

By the time we thought we’d actually need them rather than put them on ‘cause everyone else had them on – again typical British stubbornness – we were at 10,000 feet on a deserted mountain path going the wrong way. My co-pilot, Tim is good at many things but putting on snow chains at 8,000 feet in -17degrees is not one of them. As he sat in the temperate climes of the leather heated seat interior of the '94 Jag drinking Bière 33 and wailing the occasional word of encouragement out the millimetre of window he bravely opened, I was out inappropriately dressed trying to install the world’s most complicated Pyrenean motoring accessory.

It was so cold I had to run into the car every couple of minutes not only to warm my hands up on the dash vents but to change the music – the last thing I needed when being faced with the conditions I was working in was to hear a muffled Craig David talking about how much jiggy-jiggy he was having that week…

It was very dark by this stage and I was not only cold but regardless of how many beers Tim passed me out through the smallest opening of the rear door he could manage, the funny side was beginning to subside. At 10pm I finally clipped the second chain on and secured it. Climbing back into the oven again Tim asked me what the hell I’d been doing out there for the last hour and a half… friends…

So there I am turning and turning this infernal bolt and then it finally drops releasing several kilos of rubber and steel straight south onto the metatarsals of my frozen right foot. Could’ve done without that. Daring to look down I thought the whole appendage might have just snapped off – it was frozen enough to. I wouldn’t have felt it if it had.

Yanking the wheel free I ran around the front and whipped the old wheel off before grabbing the new one to put it on. To make matters worse I couldn’t line up the bolts because I’d left the engine running and whenever I let go of the hub it turned slightly – only slowly but annoying enough for me to hurl the wheel in the river and yank open the door to turn the engine off.

Silence ensued. I banged the new wheel into place, my numb hands tightened up the bolts as best they could and I hurled the tools in the boot with some gusto before driving away as fast as I could hoping to warm up the interior enough to thaw me out. I was close to frostbite I reckon. Freezing cold, shaking, shivering, wet through, black and blue and bleeding from my right foot and both knuckles.

I arrived at La Manga club some half an hour later marginally more alive only to be told the weather was so bad they cancelled the day’s play.

Triffic.

Chris Keeping