I guess I should qualify my remark. It was running and driving ok after this happened but was missing quite a lot. I was just surprised is was not worse.
I just turned it over on the starter but could not feel compression coming from any one cylinder (by putting my hand over the valves), but I could smell the fuel mixture. Also the chain seemed to tighten up a bit on the side that was extremely loose so I am guessing that it was making the timing vary at least enough to allow leakage of compression, but not enough for the valves to hit the pistons. Therefore I think I will try and get a timing chain kit and also a head rebuild kit (as it is better to get the parts if the nearest store is 10,000km away), but will change out only timing chain related stuff and see how it is.
Now the trick is to get my daughter to buy the right parts
Thanks for the input