Back Early

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Crisis in Spain

We have now arrived home a week early. Having left our cosy wifi enabled campsite in the Alentejo we took one week to get to Bilbao rather than the two planned to allow us to get to a funeral of our brother in law in Devon on Friday 8 April.

But then, as we were travelling down a hill on a motorway in Spain outside Villaviciosa, our rear off tyre decided to shed its tread. This has never happened to us before and it makes a hell of a noise. It wrecked the wheel arch, the underside of the cooker, all the cooking equipment which was dispensed down the motorway, and the back of the fridge. It also trashed the sink drain, the grey water waste pipe and broke the water supply to the van.

Fortunately, we managed to stop on the hard shoulder and call assistance which came and took us to where we could get a new tyre. However, we cannot drive in the rain as the inside would get all wet and we had nothing to cook with. However, we managed ok for the last couple of days. We are lucky, firstly, that we were not injured and, secondly, that we were at the end of the trip.

Now we are looking for a speedy repair. This will be at least a month, we think.

So the end of the trip was a bit of a subdued affair though we had some fine days on entering Spain and we managed to buy good stocks of wine for sharing.

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