The Travels & Adventures of Flog-It Removals.

We got out of bed at about 05:15am to the sound of gale force winds and the sight of garden furniture in the pool and thought "Why us?" Yet again we are caught up in weather that is just unknown, 100+mph winds, people killed in Barcelona, trees falling in the roads etc - But to be honest you should be used to this by now with us!! We suffer so that you have somebody to take pity on!! The drive down was in fact on the whole uneventful apart from the odd trip across the lanes or into the hard shoulder and ended with quite a painful arm ache due to having to fight the wheel all day. The only real event being the loss of yet another piece of plastic trim from the rear of the van. The wind must have blown it away from the bodywork at the top and left it fixed by a single screw at the bottom so once I noticed it, out came the tool kit and I had to remove the panel before it fell off all together. It took about eight hours to get from Tamariu to Cox in the Valencia region and once there unloading was just like the loading process in Keswick the week before. Back then we had to load in horizontal rain and the clients had very kindly brought the weather down here with them and we therefore unloaded in the worst winds in memory, though to be fair it was dry. After unloading we drove the 90 minutes north to Denia & the Port Denia Hotel where once again we enjoyed the fantastic hospitality of the staff and enjoyed the entertainment for the evening. I cannot praise this hotel highly enough, if you are ever in the area just pop in for a night, I am sure you will enjoy it. That was it, day one over and done with. Bed time now, more tomorrow I guess.

So the next morning after another full English breakfast we went for a walk around to see what damage had been done in the wind. Quite a lot as it turned out. We saw a parked car under an advertising hoarding, a bar at the port had its wooden terrace area destroyed, a big black bull on a hillside all crumpled on the floor and the amount of uprooted trees was just out of this world, even massive trees that must have been planted years ago were just ripped up complete with roots. We gave it until about 2pm then started the journey back north, during which we saw smoke and flames which was the start of the big weekend blaze near Benidorm. At the time it was really only smoke, just getting started but already you could see the wind was going to whip it up and the smoke would soon be causing trouble for the traffic so we only just timed it right I think. We also saw a couple of fire engines trundling in the direction of the smoke, the drivers obviously not worried about missing the fire, it would still be there when they arrived!!  Nothing else major on the trip, little more wind, little rain and home about 10:00pm. Cushty!!

Appendix 1). Why "Meet the Foca's?" Well on the journey down we saw some smoke and Andrew being the age he is, lately likes to try and swear without actually swearing so we can’t really tell him off. "Look, Foc" he shouts..... Foc being the Catalan word for fire. He then proceeded to impress us with his linguistic ability to juggle and also let us know that a Foca is a seal. Nicky then immediately retorted telling him that would make him a Foca Pup. Not to be outdone, and to finish the argument immediately he said in that case she would be a Mother Foca. Anyway the conversation went rapidly downhill from there so I will go no further other than to take pride in teaching you two new Catalan words today.

Appendix 2). Wind power. How much difference the wind makes to fuel consumption really just struck home. We were only lightly loaded but I know the weight would make some difference but it is hard to believe that the cost of the southbound journey fighting the worst of the winds was 100 Euro in fuel to cover the 650km. Northbound on the other hand, running without the small load saw change from 60 Euros.