Comely Comillas.

Arrived in Comillas late Sunday evening. Rocked up at a campsite. They wanted €25 ' not paying that ' came the cry, so we found the smartest street we could with the poshest houses and parked there. Not as easy as that sounds, when you've got 22ft of German design its no mean feat reverse parking on a corner in the dark. 'Swing it round ' says the Lady R. Hmm. In the end I found a handy kerb and abandoned her there. Turns out we made a good choice and now we're hanging with the rich folk.

Comillas is lovely,  a couple of Gaudi buildings,  a lovely beach, a port, free WiFi, clean toilets 🚻. Nothing to moan about. We've decided to stay two nights.

 Man walks his geese in the beach (yes,really).

 Cemetery,  they're just dying to get in.

 Angel of the North (of Comillas)

Angel again.

And relax...

It takes a while to chill out when you're usually running around at 100mph.

On Wed me and the girls did a long drive, some of it on motorway. Fifi did us proud,  there were times when me managed to overtake..with a little gentle urging and some revs, once we even hit 70mph, sliding along downhill in the vortex of a large lorry. Kerchinga.

Betty's been a good girl,  the Lady R less so. Wed night we arrived in La Clotte,  a small village of some 300 people. Using the Lady R's amazing sense of direction it took us only thirty five minutes to visit the village's nooks and crannies, searching for the right house. Three sweaty girls arrived..eventually to a warm and sunny welcome from the lovelies.

Some time and a few drinks later and one of us went to bed ' early', gorging on sweetcorn and salad cream sandwiches on the way whilst the other danced into the night singing things which cannot be written here and had to be walked home. Quiet night then. Betty made some new friends too.

The next day we partook in the luxurious activity of showering. Oh,  Bliss. BLISS. Probably as much for those around us.

Thursday was a good day. We packed loads in and barely managed to offend anybody.

Coco steals the bone.

.

Betty fetches the stick.

Hugo discovers the chalk.

 Marika delivers the tour

 Becky empties the toilet.

 Malcolm cooks the chicken.

Pascal delivers the vegetables.



Mission Control

Our little secret:

When meeting this happy travelling band people usually remark upon our organisational skills, attention to detail and ability to forward plan. Anyone who saw the Lady R and I sitting, with fingers crossed, on Tuesday morning awaiting the results of Fifi's MOT would stand in awe of our foresight and meticulosity (yes, I just made that up).

The fact that we started the trip on Monday am with a Peugeot 107 and finished Monday pm with a camper van is neither here nor there because we have a confession to make...

It is an irrefutable fact that every NASA space crew has a team of scientists to offer expert advice, each Formula 1 team has a pitstop crew, every Tour De France equip has a back up staff. We stand side by side with these greats, with our expansive one man support system. We have Mission Control.

Now on discovering their other half was disappearing for six weeks with a girl friend and her dog, some boyfriends would have labelled themselves 'Mr Abandoned' and stayed at home in a sulk. Douglas did not (much). Instead he has moulded himself into our version of expert scientist.

The future of this camper van is in his hands..

Rule Brittania

After being stuck on the M20 for two hours on Tuesday,  we arrived at the Eurotunnel terminal. Late. It was OK,  they stuck us on the 03.27 one instead. While we wanted, we slept.

Awoke at 02.30, a little bleary eyed to the alarm. Got up and drove onto the Chunnel,  felt quite proud of myself in van.

Betty admired my parking.

Once on board Lady R dismounted to have a little wander round,  take a couple of photos and have a puff on her efag. Then we noticed the rules :

1. No walking between cars

2. No flash photography 

3. No smoking

Ahem. 

With our 100% unblemished success rate at rule following, we kept pretty quiet for the remainder of the journey.  

Glad we weren't the only ones rule breaking...the British 'sorry' came soon enough: 'We apologise for the late running of this service, this was due to immigrants running around the terminal.' 

Seriously. 

Disembarkation went well and we drove off (at 5.30am) to find a place to stay. Our attempts at park-ups went as follows :

Place 1, 5.30am: Madam,  please move along. It is forbidden to park here as someone has broken the barrier and we will now fix it. 

Place 2, 9.30am: Madam, if you park here you will be fined 200€

Place 3, 2pm: Madam,  please reverse your vehicle,  I need to cut the grass. 

Basically we spent the day getting in everyone's way.  

Betty got grumpy because she wanted to sit on the front seat but Lady R had first dibs. I told Betty to get down. Betty growled. 

 Black Betty.

Then in more general flouting of les regles the journey was broken by a spot of tyre and hay bale burning en route 🔥

We circumnavigated and continued on our way.

Disco inferno.

Let's see what tomorrow brings.

Palatial.

So, adventure 2015:

Travels in Fifi, the 1993 Hymer vehicle which the Lady Rebecca and I are taking on tour.

It didn't start smoothly... after some passport shenanigans on Monday and traffic issues Tuesday, Betty and I arrived in Wootton yesterday evening.

This morning we visited Blenheim Palace.

This contrasts, to some degree to our Palace on Wheels.

Our Palace.

So we're off. Eurotunnel 9pm tonight.