As I sit here in a hotel room in Sevilla, I'm thinking back over what has been a very eventful and stressful 5 days. Last Sunday we left our house in London and headed out on the road. Since we left the UK on the Monday morning we been pulled over and fined by the gendarme, Driven over mountain passes in snow blizzards. Crossed several international boarders. Looking back on it now it has been a lot more of a challenge than I had originally thought, and I have made several mistakes along the way the biggest was overloading the car in the first place. This lead to the first of our problems, We had made a quick coffee stop, and as we were leaving the service area we were pulled over by a couple of Gendarme. After looking in the back and seeing that we were full to the top they took up to a weighbridge and then back to there office. At the office they told us we were 300Kg overloaded and that this would be a 135euro fine. We were allowed to continue but later that night we pulled over by a bin and unloaded a number of the heaver items we had in the back of the van. I'm a little annoyed at myself for having to do this as in hindsight we should have shipped more than we did, but were are now down to a more acceptable weight(I think). Ever since then I have had fits of apoplexy every time I see a police car or a police officer, I am so worried about being pulled over again and still being over weight, But if we do at this point we can just post stuff to home.
Driving across the mountains in Spain was an experience some times we were driving through complete whiteout conditions, for a while we were following the snow plough up the mountain pass. Several times we came to a compete halt for periods of around 30min, other times we were squeezing by with one wheel on the road and the other on snow. Once the snow had passed and we started to come down on to the plains the scenery started to change to a more familiar Spanish style.
I am a little worried about the drive tomorrow as we have to drive to Cadiz to catch the ferry over to Santa Cruz de Tenerife, but the motorcycle Grand Prix is on this weekend at Jerez which is just north of there and there is likely to be large queues on the auto route and a large number of Guardia Civil patrols.
1 comment:
Good speed to you both - it sounds like a massive adventure and like any massive adventure there will be highs and lows!
However in a couple of weeks, you will be in your lovely house starting your new lives and the lows will be forgotten about. Be strong for each other and don't worry about the Guardia Civil - they're just jumped up coppers in silly hats :)
And every time you think it is going badly, think again....you could be on the jubilee line or, worse still, stuck in an office...
Best wishes,
Andy.
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