June 2009 (1)
Hello Senor and Senoras, Well, we have just travelled through the most unattractive area of Spain!!!(actually the worst area I have ever seen!)
Almeria was miles and miles of plastic poly tunnels,from the tops of the mountains to the edge of the sea,ugly,dusty and totally yuk!!! We couldn't wait to get to the other side of the area.
We stayed first at a campsite that we had been told was really good,Cabo de Gata, which I really quickly renamed Crapo de Gata!! Unfriendly campsite staff,FLIES!! everywhere,as soon as you stepped out of the camper you were covered in flies!! horrid. The nearest town was a 40 min. bike ride and had 2 cafes and no supermarket. Believe it or not there were two Brit couples who live there permanently!! WHY!!!????? Well they say one mans meat is another mans poison.
The next site was a huge improvement thankfully.We have realised that the campsite fees have doubled since crossing the border from Portugal on all the Spanish sites!!( The budget has gone out of the window this month!)
We have now crossed into the county of Murcia, staying in a nice town called Aguilas,lovely marina and beach, good shops!!
Tomorrow we leave for one of the most popular campsites for the snow birds to overwinter.(That is Brits who hide away in the south of Spain for sun,sangria and sex!!)
La Manga has lovely big pitches, so we hope we can pop on to a pitch without taking any bits of fence or trees with us!!
We hope it will be a site we might want to spend time on in the winter months, we then will be on to good old Benidorm! Very good also we hear for the winter months.
Good news today, my lovely God daughter Anna safely delivered a baby girl last Saturday. Daisy weighed in at a whopping 9lb 8ozs!! 14 days late!! and a c-section in the end. Those of you who know Anna will not be surprised that there was no way that size baby was ever going to appear without a c-section !!
The weather is really hot,97f most days, even Ken has been known to retreat to the shade over the last day or two!!!
Hope you are all well and happy,Thank you to all of you that have sent us your great e-mails,(the internet costs three times as much here too!! (Costa rip of!!)
June 2009 (2)
Disaster!!! The traveling Tilbury's have come to a shuddering halt!! Someone is paying us back for being less than complimentary about Almeria, and for crowing about the good weather we have been having!!
There we were happily heading for La Manga when sudden loss of power and nasty black smoke billowing out of the exhaust!! Hurriedly exiting at the next junction,we pulled up at the toll booth(safely out of the way thank goodness!) and rang the RAC recovery. They were excellent and assured us that we would be recovered in approx. 1 hour. Some chance!! 3 hours later a flat bed (toy town sized!) truck duly arrived.
We watched in horror as the lone man winched our 8.5 meters of camper on to it,he at one point had the back resting on the tarmac!!! I couldn't watch as with lumps of wood he raised the back up just high enough to winch it on ,with Ken in the cab controlling the brakes!! Luckily, no apparent damage was done to the back of our van.
The toll booth staff would not let him go on the motorway!! Not sure why but the lorry had our camper overhanging the back by about 8ft. We then climbed into the truck and set off on a 40 mile journey through the winding roads mountainous roads.The truck was really difficult for him to steer as all the weight was on the back.
We were taken to Cartagena, a large city with a commercial Mercedes garage, on arrival he couldn't get the camper off the back!! at last he found a ramp in the garage forecourt which raised the back high enough to unload the camper.(Only grounding it once this time) Needless to say I had covered my face at this point too scared to look!!!
The RAC were brilliant, ringing us every 40 mins. until they knew we were safely rescued.
We were going to stay in the garage car park with the van until (Sods law!!) they told us today is a bank holiday and we would not be able to get out as the security gates are locked until Wednesday!! This also meant only a cursory look at the camper could be done. The mechanic did much shaking of his head and sucking of teeth (as they do!!) and pronounced it very sick!!! Lots of black smoke etc billowing from underneath!! Next stop a hotel was booked for us just down the road, and that's were we still are as we speak.
Tomorrow they plan to pull bits off the ruddy van and tell us the bad news. (worst instance new engine!!!)
The insurance will pay for us to stay in the hotel for 6 nights then we will have to decide what we will do next.
So we are desperately hoping parts can be obtained quickly!! (May have to come from Germany so we aren't very hopeful of a speedy job). The parts and labour are down to us to pay for obviously, so we will be having a whip round later!!!!
Good news, free internet at the hotel!! clean room, and a cheap bar attached to the hotel, so we are going to drown our sorrows later!! Thanks to those off you who we sent texts to for your kind messages, offers of caravans etc!!!
Well the bar is open until midnight, Ken is out of the shower and chomping at the bit to go and have a beer so will close for now!!! Lots of love the most decidedly NOT travelling Tilbury's!!!!!!!
June 2009 (3)
Well the news is finally in,and it couldn't be worse!!!
New engine needed,hopefully will be delivered today from Madrid. They hope to have it back in the van by Wednesday at the latest, but we will not bank on that!!
Huge hole in one of the pistons!! now huge hole in bank account!!! and we are seriously pistoned off!!!
I could have bought a very nice new Nissan Micra and had change over!!!
Well ce la vie!! move on Jacqui!!!
Thanks for all the lovely texts and e-mails you have sent,helped to cheer us up!! We will stay in the hotel now until the work is done and then set off to finish our reccee of Spain. Will keep you all updated, Need to get this show back on the road!!!
June 2009 (4)
Good news at last. We are to be back on the road again to-morrow morning, this afternoon the garage testing vehicle and setting up the UCU. We shall be lighter in the pocket but happier in the heart. To be fair, the Mercedes garage has been brilliant although we were buggered by the language barrier.
We hopefully will make it to La manga by tomorrow afternoon, it will be so nice to have our own space back.
The fridge will be minging as we had to empty it out and close it up!! I plan to use Ken's toothbrush to get the really mouldy bits off!! Thanks to you all for all the messages of support over the last week !!
July 2009
Bonjour mon amis,
We have come up against the odd problem accessing the net since arriving back in France!! We naively assumed that we could buy a Vodaphone sim card and away we would go, as per Portugal and Spain!! --Wrong the crafty devils lock it into the phone and we couldn't connect to the net!! I now will have to use the credit up in calls.
We now have a sim from Orange France and they have assured us it should work, we will give it a go later. We have at present locked on to someone's signal, so I want to get this round robin out asap!!
Since we last spoke we have returned to France, visiting the medieval city of Carcassonne, wonderful 12 century walled city. We managed to squeeze in to a space underneath the walls of the old city. We sat at 11pm at night on the 14th (Bastille day) in our chairs in the car park and watched the best fireworks display we have ever seen!! They set them off from the walls of the castle above us,fantastic!! Following this was live groups performing in the 3 squares all set up free by the council.
We arrived in the Lot area last night, we have found heaven!!! This is a small private campsite on the banks of the river, mine host owns the little restaurant (wonderful food!!) You can swim in the river, hire a canoe (as we will be doing when I have sent this) Electricity,washing machines, showers etc all for 6.80 a night!!! I think it will be impossible to get Ken to move until Monday at the earliest !!
Well will close now and hope we will be able to access any replies o.k. Apologies if we cant reply speedily, we will see how the sim goes later!!!
July 2009 (2)
Dear all,
We had the best time at the "site from heaven", Canoed on the river Lot, sailed past the Queen of Denmark's summer chateaux !! wonderful. The restaurant on the site was wonderful, we couldn't resist it on the Saturday night.
We had, moulles for moi, Ken had a salad of duck breast,followed by entrecote steak in a pepper sauce,(hope you are salivating!!) then a goats cheese savory with walnut oil, to die for!!! then a raspberry and cream dessert!!! absolutely delicious.
The staff were all lovely and spoke about two words of anglais, so we did a lot of franglais!!!
We have landed on a Brit aire tonight in the Limoges area of France.(just above the Dordogne) it is owned by two
Brits. they live on site in their camper, very peaceful, clean and in a lovely area.
We hoped we had cracked the internet problem today, we revisited the vodaphone shop and complained that we couldn't access the net from my mobile, the nice man fiddled around with his computer and up came the net on my mobile!! Ken all excited put the sim in our dongle as soon as we landed here!!! no bloody go!! now we are not sure if we are in a poor reception area or if the buggers have somehow blocked use in a dongle!!
The good news is that this site has free Wi Fi ! so we will be e- mailing like idiots for the next day or two in case we end up in the wilderness again!! Obviously if you need us for any urgent reason the mobile is still up and running!!!
Well will send this off now as we hope to hear from those of you not on your hols already!!!
July 2009 (3)
We just want to drop you all a quick line to say thanks to you all for recent e-mails!!
At present we are camped out in a Macdonalds,the only easy place to get Wi Fi !
We are heading towards Le Mans, hopefully staying on an aire in the Medieval town of Bourges.
Just left a lovely site on a lake in a nice town called Chateaxroux. Wonderful facilities at the council restaurant next door to the site. Live music at the weekends in the day and at night!! As If our council would do that!!!
May be a while before we can access the net again, so take care out there and will be in touch when we can,
August 2009
Hello to you all from a wet and soggy campsite on the banks of the Loire !!!
We have had a great two weeks . The last site was next to a large lake and forest, really gorgeous. The town down the road was called Aubigny sur Nere, medieval, with a large number of houses still standing.
The town has very strong links with the Stuart clan from Scotland. In the 12th century the Stuarts helped the town fight against the English and the town still has a wonderfully preserved castle which was Robert Stuarts home
We still are in awe of the cleanliness and care that is taken with all the public areas in every town and village that we pass through Flowers are hung everywhere, no litter is left anywhere, such pride is shown, we could learn a lot from their example. ( mind you we feel that their councils must have a huge budget!!)
We are at present in a site on the edge of the river Loire, we sit and look at the river gently flowing by, total bliss!!
Ken took me on one of his Shackleton bike rides yesterday, (I am such a lucky girl!!) We were supposedly off to a Chateaux about 15 miles away, but when we found ourselves up to our necks in sand and at the end of a track that went nowhere we had to throw in the towel and struggle back!!
Heavy wet stuff came out of the sky last night, all night actually, other campers told us its called rain!! we vaguely remember it !! not nice you can tell we are heading home!!
Hope to get a day or two to explore this are a bit more.
We have access to the net in the bar area here so if you want to speech make it by return as Ken and his Dongle are still not on speaking terms!!!
