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I'd get in touch with Nightingale's & ask about them fitting your cams as they build the engines to order & don't have them on the shelf ready to go so it's no extra effort on their part
"Best car I have owned - handled superbly on B roads."
As for footwell water - most likely to be one (or more) of the scuttle drains being blocked. Mine had it coming into the drivers footwell last year after the centre one was blocked. Easy to access and clean out if you have a wiper arm puller.
As many have experienced before, it's quite common to get water ingress in the footwells at this time of year - with the scuttle drains usually being the prime suspect. I checked on mine today having recently had a damp patch on both sides at the front. That was making me suspicious that it was...
It's easy to get disheartened when small issues start to pile up and make the car 'feel' worse than it is.
Your initial list reads to me as:
1) Niggly misfire you've spent time chasing, which is now really annoying and the primary thing to get fixed
2) A coolant leak over weeks which you're now worried is a head gasket and would mean it's maybe not worth fixing but its much more likely an elderly hose, reservoir cap or anything else given the leakage rate. You could most likely ignore this for months or years
3) A rust patch on one sill, which on a 196k clio is pretty light really, most will need arches, sills or jacking points even if they don't look like it yet and repairs are fairly simple.
4) Other minor issues which add to the pile but are of no real consequence and probably won't bother you once you fix the big ones.
So the real question is what's causing the misfire and how quickly that can be fixed to put the smile back on your face and motivate tackling the other things!
I had a similar sounding situation with an intermittent starting fault, which after all but declaring the car scrap, turned out to be a failing relay.
Car started detonating and throwing out puffs of white smoke - in time with one of the cylinders stroking.
I suspect the head gasket has breached between two of the cylinders. I didn't want to risk further damage by attempting to get it to a garage for a compression test.
Unfortunately, it is my only car and needed daily, so it has been sold complete to an ex Renault tech who will strip and rebuild as a project.
Likely replacement will be an LSD equipped MK8 Fiesta ST.
The cup was one hell of a car and i'm glad i had the experience - i found this forum invaluable during my ownership.