I had a bit of gear moment myself this weekend. Heading to Lyon to watch the Rugby and decided to route via Guernsey in th twin for fuel. Crappy weather on Friday so airways IMC, get to Ortac and doing the de-ice check and I see in the mirror on the engine the nose wheel start to appear and then ice up. I tried to cycle the gear a couple of times and nothing was happening.
I had to fly the ILS down to about 1000ft before getting visual at the same time as dropping the gear manually and rocking the aircraft to get the gear to lock. Finally managed to get 3 greens and do a fly past of the tower before landing. It turns out the bushes in the motor that powers the hydraulics had burnt out!
I thought I was going to have a bad day. ASG at Guernsey fixed the problem over the weekend in Stirling fashion (what a fantastic bunch of guys!) and I used the forced stay to Christmas shop! There are few better places to be stuck than Guernsey!!