A triple whammy within a mile.

[Gearoidmuar]

A friend of mine had 9 punctures in a morning on a bike tour. He and his wife had followed a different route to me and my wife but we met at lunchtime. He was beside himself, which meant 5 for lunch, rather than four!
I took his tyre off. Could find nothing, so I began to flex the carcass (sounds like a good name for a dance) and a little wire popped out. A wire from the tyre itself had broken and it protruded under load. I covered it with a canvas patch and he had no more punctures on that trip.
[How to say nein to a nine-puncture wire].
On another occasion my lady wife and I, her gentleman husband, had 4 punctures including a ruined tyre on three wheels in short order between Applecross and Loch Torridon in Scotland. I had a spare tyre (in fact two. One was on me at the time) and tubes so all got fixed and I was paranoid until i'd later bought more spares. In fact we got no touring puncture for years afterwards.

[mig]

any chance that the bike had fallen onto the drive side sometime before the ride and that there was existing damage to the three components before you set off?

[Gearoidmuar]

any chance that the bike had fallen onto the drive side sometime before the ride and that there was existing damage to the three components before you set off?

Good question. No, at least not recently but I doubt that anything could get at the front mech except a big rock. I think it just snapped due to a metallic fault. Metal fatigue.

[Gearoidmuar]

I fixed the lot. New front changer, left wire and housing, chain and cassette, spoke etc. Took me ages. Had to learn nuances of latest generation derailleurs. They're very complicated but all the screws have allen key heads. About time. The left lever has two positions and two trim positions. The Orbea Terra aluminium bike has internal cabling but at the bottom of the down tube there's a hatch so it's easy to change the cable housing.