Our new life in spain

Our journey begins sailing at 4.30.pm from Plymouth to Santander . Driving our car I was first on board & we had arranged to meet in our cabin only one problem Phil driving our hired van!!! (another story ) had the ticket which had the card key for the room, anyway my luck was in as a very kind French gentleman kindly opened up the cabin for me.

Once Phil eventually arrived on board we set about exploring the boat, it was huge good thing there were lifts everywhere even some ‘see through’ ones. I had been very worried about the journey across as I don’t travel very well on boats but as it was I needn’t have worried as we had the smoothest crossing possible.

We disembarked about 2pm with no problems and started our long drive south. Phil took the lead as it was easier for him to set the speed with the van.

The weather was good all be it windy and although it was motorway all the way the wind did cause a few problems for the van on the very mountainous roads and viaducts in northern Spain. We had a couple of coffee stops and refuelled before arriving early evening north of Madrid. We decided to carry on and get round Madrid before stopping for the night. We had got talking on one of our coffee stops to a couple who frequently drove down to southern Spain and they had advised us the best way to get past Madrid ,good thing they did as although seemed to be the long way round it was quite straightforward although at one point I thought we were going to end up in Valencia, but that’s Spanish road signs for you.

Once past Madrid we looked for a suitable place to stop I think we tried to come off the motorway 3 times to get to the services only to end up going nowhere and having to turn round and carry on back on the motorway. I was getting very tired by now so overtook the van (our signal that I wanted to stop) and pulled off at the next junction. This took us to a roundabout for the new toll road and a couple of unmade roads. On one of these we stopped and settled to sleep in our driving seats. It was a good thing we did stop as the heavens opened and the wind roared but we managed to doze on and off for about 5 hours. Feeling a lot better we set off again and pulled in to the next ‘services’ we came to a bar/restaurant and had a lovely Spanish cup of coffee the only other clients that early in the morning were a couple of Guardia Civil having a beer.

We set off once again with the end in sight and made good progress through Jaen and Granada and finally getting to Motril and on familiar roads. We finally arrived at our new home at 11.30 am Tues.