First days driving

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Well I got here,……Here being Plasencia. Am currently sitting on the terrazza of the hotel and waiting for the restaurant to open. Before 21.00 hours forget it. Good that I got a good lunch. Will have to change my routine a bit !

The weather is very pleasant and not a cloud in the sky and still about 25 degrees if not more. The hotel is a little bit outside Plasencia so I doubt if I shall go out tonight after a good meal and a beer or two.

The day started out with a quick blast up the back roads and leaving the motorway to my right. This road was featured on " Good Biking Roads " website and it was full of bikers in both directions. The road starts at San juan del puerto and I followed it up to zafra which is about 170 KM. I have to say that if I had to turn back and go home now it would have been worth it just for that road. I pulled into zafra to get a cup of coffee and stretch the legs and only then noticed about 6 Guardia civil on the other side of the road who were busy watching me. Why is it that when a lot of policemen look at you ,it tends to make one nervous ? I was however ok because my bike runs on petrol and they were busy looking for vehicles running on Duty free fuel..ie the wrong color diesel.
Being about 12 am I wanted to start thinking about food and decided to push onto Merida and stop somewhere there for lunch. I took pot luck and just drove along looking for a restaurant that I could stop outside. It did not take long to find a Brasera and I had a very fine lunch of Iberico ham to start and then 4 lamb chops which I do have a soft spot for. A water and a coffee and that sorted out any hunger pains. Modern technology being the way it is I was able to check out hotels within driving distance and picked a hotel in Plasencia which was about 150 Km further up the motorway. Having done all the twisty bits before lunch I felt that with a pleasantly full stomach bait of motorway would do no harm.On went the driving music and with the cruise control set at 120 off we went. The great thing about cruise control is that when the Navi voice warns off radars you just let release the throttle from its comfortable 140 -150 and it automatically goes to the legal 120.

Approaching Plasencia my GPS got a little bit confused because they have a new ring road which was not marked and the machine was a little bit upset that I seemed to be driving through fields and woods ! It did however get me back on track but did not apologize for continually telling me to make a u turn in the middle of a motorway. Do men or do women program these things ? Whoever does it ,maybe it would be nice if it did actually say "sorry about that old chap, got a bit F&%$$·· up there, wont happen again "

Tomorrow is sunday which probably means that all the sunday drivers are going to be out on the road and seeing that the weather is amazing , even more. I am thinking of heading over to Avila in the morning and plan on taking some really back roads and heading up into the mountain range west of Madrid. It is probably about 300 Km or so but because the roads are smaller the time it take will be a lot longer. I might stay a second night around this area but will decide as I go tomorrow. An early start and then breakfast on the road with a late lunch and arriving at a hotel somewhere about 6 or 7 should be ok.

I am still on plan for reaching Vielha in the Pyrenees on Thursday but am keeping an eye on the weather. I did have a very enticing offer from Andy , my brother in law, He will buy me a beer if I drive up to Normandy in France ! He is headed over for a couple of days from the UK with a few friends but unfortunately the dates are not going to match. I have to be in Cadiz on the 05 June.

ok its diner time now and i am off to eat a horse or something like that. Will post foots and the text after dinner….maybe.

Dinner is finished, Cochinilo asado.......perfect !

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