If you read my previous blog about our trip in June to the French Alps, you will know that we came home after two weeks because of the Europe wide heatwave. Very unfortunately, that blogpost was compromised by some issue with wordpress and was deleted. Nigel has explained it in a brief paragraph immediately prior to this. I’m not going to attempt to repeat any of it but I might throw in the odd photo or two. Suffice it to say we went to Samoëns in Haute Savoie in early June to see Richard and Aoife who were on holiday there.
We pottered around after they had left, intending to drive south to northern Spain until September but life in the ‘van became unbearably uncomfortable for us and the canines so we came home to the relative comfort of air con and a pool for a few weeks.
When the heatwave across northern Spain eventually broke, we went north again to temperatures of mostly low to mid twenties in Asturias and Galicia but not before little Poco had 8 teeth out! Visitors had complained of his stinky breath, our sense of smell has not been good since Covid but we decided we should get him looked at! Very common in small dogs according to the vet.
We drove back north at the height of the wildfire season, not actually seeing any fires but we did pass a hazy area near Avila, smelt a hint of smoke and saw various convoys of fire fighting vehicles going in both directions on motorways.
Soon we all became more comfortable and did our usual “thing” of finding places to stop that held interest for us, not too crowded and we followed the weather. We need sunshine to charge our lithium batteries via our solar panels so occasionally when the weather turned stormy we had to travel further to charge them via the alternator or we would not have been able to cook or boil the kettle! But generally we rarely travelled more than 30k a day. We were able to treat the dogs to some lovely beach walks, although Ditto still suffers if we let him do too much, it was wonderful to see them both doing zoomies on the sand.
We briefly met up with some English friends, Martin and Judith who live near us in Murcia and who, like us, were also escaping the heat in their motorhome. They have very similar tastes in places to stay as us so it seems we were following them for several weeks but then we made a concerted effort to catch up with them. We shared an enjoyable afternoon and evening together with a glass or two of red wine and Judith…I still owe you a tin of sweetcorn!
Sadly I got the (not unexpected) news that my sister died on 27th August. There then followed many conversations and head scratching about what to do about the funeral….do we go home so that I can fly over? Do we go home and put the dogs in kennels so we can both fly over? Do I fly on my own from Santiago de Compostella so that Nigel and the dogs can stay cool a bit longer?
In then end, Nigel flabbergasted me one morning by suggesting that we drive up all the way through France, cross by ferry to the UK from Dieppe to Newhaven and drive up to Cambridge which is what we did. Once we knew the date of the funeral we booked our ferries and began our mega journey. As we made our way through northern Spain we sought out a large retail park with no height restrictions for parking so that we could buy some suitable clothes. I drew the line at turning up in tee shirts and shorts which is all we had with us!
It was great to be in France again, even though the reason was an unwelcome one. We stuck mainly to the western coastal route, seeing some devastation caused by the wildfires around the Bordeaux area which was also sad. We stopped at some interesting places we had never been to before and although mountains are always our preference we found some little gems along the way.
The funeral was on 22nd September at a Woodland Burial ground as requested by Janet. Richard, Aoife and Andrew came as well as our cousin Joy and her husband John who I hadn’t seen for many years. I was able to deliver a eulogy for her with just a slight wobble at the end, not telling Nigel I was intending to speak until the morning.
When everyone departed, Nigel and I wandered back up to her grave which was already filled in and sat in the warm sunshine for a while in tranquil contemplation. Then back at the motorhome, we booked a meal at a local gastropub for the evening and sat down with a comforting cuppa. At a minute before 4pm my phone pinged with a text….DFDS were bringing forward our sailing the next day from 5 pm to 11 am. Unable to ring to see if we could defer until the day after, as the office was now closed, we had no alternative but to hurry back to Newhaven straight away. So, gastro pub cancelled we experienced a rush hour journey on the M11, M25 and M23 getting to Newhaven just in time for fish and chips at a pub near the ferry terminal. Not quite the tranquil evening we had been hoping for.
Back in France, we first went west to have a look around Honfleur in Normandy. We had tried to stop here on our way to Dieppe but it was a Saturday and mega busy.
That itch scratched we set off southwards, Nigel putting in 2 long days’ driving in order to spend as little as possible on French diesel! Once through the Somport tunnel under the Central Pyrenees and back into Spain, all we both wanted to do was get home. Nigel picked, as always, some interesting overnight spots that had been on his “want to go” list for some time. We stopped on the way for shopping on our last leg of the journey so that we wouldn’t have to dash straight out in the car again.
Speaking of fires, just after Valencia our Sat Nav warned us of a fire reported on the A35 ahead. We could soon see a plume of smoke. It turned out to be a HGV on fire on the other carriageway causing a massive tailback….I tried and failed to find out anything about it after the event, don’t know if anyone was injured but it looked extremely serious.
And home at last, the pool was green but was soon blue again, the garden jungle has been attacked, fig trees well and truly pruned and the mountain of washing soon diminished. The weather has been unsettled since we’ve been home, we’ve had a civil protection warning of flooding on our phones…a scary noise! But we have been lucky so far…others haven’t and I’ve read of loss of life in floods around Barcelona and Tarragona.
We did have a severe downpour a few weeks ago which resulted in me being unable to cross our ramblas for a few hours after foolishly going out at the wrong time! Our access road is currently being repaired, hopefully more permanently than last time.
I started to write this blog when we got home late September, we’ve been busy and so I’ve only just got round to publishing. Just phone pics here, hopefully a supplementary blog with “proper camera” pics may follow at some point.
And finally….Bye sis!
