Pulled over to refill the washer bottle tonight, and lent down to pull the bonnet release lever. Engine on and headlamps on (dark and I couldn't see a bat).

First thing, the darn lever came off in my hand.. so off to the garage I go next week to get a new one

..but back on topic, I knocked the control lever on the right with my shoulder, the washer's came on briefly (squirting HL and windscreen) then the wipers locked upwards at a 45 degree angle and refused to move. The wipers would not move and the washers wouldn't operate. The engine was running for this period too.

I had to turn off the ignition and restart the engine to get the wipers back to normal position.

Is this wierd locking upwards the "wiper replacement" feature/mode I've never managed to get right or something?

I thought I was going to have to drive home with the darned things locked up.

It should be in the manual Oli.

It's a method of putting the wipers into a position to allow changing the blades etc.

The wipers are also linked into the bonnet switch IIRC so that would have probably interfered too.

The wiper service mode is:

Wiper stalk in OFF position

Ignition on

Ignition off

Dab the wiper stalk down once and let it spring back to off position.

Wipers move to 90 degree angle from rest position.

You say 45 degrees?

Could you have hit the wipers while pulling the lever? they might have made it to the 45 deg position before the bonnet switch opened and killed the wipers?

I had a similar thing where I tried to fire the headlight washers with the bonnet popped thinking F@%K! the wipers have packed up

Yeah I must have hit the control lever when I lent forward.

Still somewhat miffed that the bonnet release lever fell off though. Looks like it was installed incorrectly at some point causing the retention catch to break and the locking parts of the lever to get worn. Ah well that's what services are for.