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Published: April 3rd 2014
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Day 3 and Dad’s over heating issue has slowed us down to 55mph all the way. This morning I tweaked a couple of the head bolts and shove a bottle of radweld crap in to it, which has helped but not solved it. Last night we didn’t make it to Bordeaux as planned and due to a lot of campsites not being open out of season or not on the sat nav, we ended up setting up in a motorway aire. It wasn’t fully built, but it was very clean and very quiet, one benefit of being on a toll road. That was until Dad woke up and decided to slam doors at 4 O’clock in the morning.
As said progress is slow as some of the hills we are now doing 30mph, but as I write this at a service station in Dax, we are now close to crossing over into Spain, which means the pre planned 3 day route is not going to happen. Plus, unfortunately, some of the French roads have been upgraded and had tolls installed, which Tomtom seems to know nothing about, so it’s costing a bit just to get going. But we made the
campsite Fluentes Blanca just before dark, so at least we could setup in day light even if it was a bit windy with the odd spit of rain. In the morning the tents were bone dry to pack away.
Day 4 has been the best to date progress wise, as the weather has turned colder with the odd rain shower. All of which is helping to cool dads engine, meaning we can roll along at about 60 almost everywhere, resulting in a total of 400 miles cleared. Though this wasn’t the aim, but when we stopped at a services for lunch, we entered the coordinates for a campsite at Merida. The destination ended up being a random field out the back of a small industrial town, with the actual campsite being some 40 km back the wrong way. So we looked at the sat nav and chose the next nearest site, which was a further 60km, and again Dads sat nav did its usual and sent us driving round the super tiny back streets of Monestereo. At this point we swapped to my sat nav as it claimed the site was still another 4km away.
At last we
found the campsite Tentudia, which as it turns out is the same site Dave and I used as the first site coming home. Funny how different it looks in day light compared to 9:30pm in the pitch back. Apart from the stray dogs barking here and there, we have had the whole campsite to ourselves, with great facilities to boot.
Day 5 and we woke up to a very cold morning but still dry with a few clouds in the sky. As last night was quite late by the time we went to bed, no one has really rushed to get going. Not that’s too much of an issue, as we only have a further 300km to go to reach the final campsite, where we will meet up with Uncle Ray and Auntie Gillian. Though I have to say I’m not sure I want to. Not because they’re not nice people, they are nice, it’s just that so far on their journey they have been flooded out of one campsite, had torrential rain storms and gusting winds that have snapped a tent pole. None of which we have had (touch wood), we’ll have to bring them the good weather.
Campsite Rio Jara at last! A bit windy but still lovely sunshine, and we have setup all together. Tomorrow we cross over via a different port to last time, as we used Ceuta, we are going to try Tangier-Med as its supposed to be quieter. If there is such a place in Morocco, then we will head for Chechouen as our first campsite.
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