Too Good To Be True

You may wonder, as you commence reading the introduction of this current ramble, what on earth has any of this got to do with our current road trip 🤔 But for those who are familiar with my year’s of incessant verbal diarrhoea, you will know that, at some point, these introductory ramblings will bear some sort of relevance to the road trip 😉

I was born in Leeds in West Yorkshire, which is the fourth largest Urbanisation in the UK, the large city is built around the River Aire and it also has a fantastic canal, the ‘Leeds & Liverpool’, which, as the name suggests, is a waterway that Links the city of Leeds to the city of Liverpool, and numerous other towns and villages along it’s route, taking in some awesome scenery. Leeds is located in the Eastern foothills of the Pennines and is a place that I will forever call my home, albeit that I have spent very little of my life actually living there. For the last sixty year’s or so I have always, irrespective of all the places that I have lived in the world, supported the great Leeds United football team, although I do have to confess, it has been a somewhat painful experience at times, even more so in recent years 🙄 Over the last couple of years Leeds United have been playing in the league known as the ‘Championship’, which is one level below the top ‘Premiership’ where teams like, Liverpool, Manchester City, Arsenal, Chelsea, Newcastle etc. play their football. Leeds United narrowly missed being promoted to the Premier League last season, so we (as in the royal ‘we’) were going for it again this season and it was currently a three-horse race, although that expression, for either some non-English people, or for those of a non-sporting persuasion it may, and understandably so, create a little bit of confusion 😂

So, to put non-interested parties reading this out of your misery, here follows the relevant bit. Although we now live in Spain, I have still managed to watch all of the televised ‘Live’ Leeds United matches this season and, as the crucial end of the season drew near, we were going to be in the UK right at the end, for the important final 3-4 games, but even so, on this trip I had still managed to see all but the final game. Leeds managed to secure promotion to the top league before this season’s games were fully completed and so, as a consequence we ‘will’ be playing ‘our’ football in the ‘Premier League’ next season 🥳🥳. However, they still had a chance of finishing in first place in their current league and so winning the coveted silver trophy but, it would depend very much on the outcome of this very final game of the season as it was now a very tight ‘two-horse race to the finish line’ 😲 which they needed to win, nothing less would do.

We awoke early on the Saturday morning, our last day at Shazza’s mums before heading to Swindon in Wiltshire, which would be around a four hour drive away, traffic and roadworks permitting 🙏 We were in no great rush and so had planned to leave Shazza’s mums at around 10:30am, “We should get to the hotel, checked-in, and in the room, in time for you to be able to watch Leeds last match of the season” Shazza said. On a normal Saturday, most football matches would kick-off at 3pm, but it at least showed to me that my beloved had taken this very important final match day of the season into consideration for me, “Not today I’m afraid my love, for today all of the final games in the Championship kick off early at 12:30pm” I told her. But I also told her that it didn’t matter, as I could listen to it on the radio in the car on the way down as we were, after all, already promoted, so at the end of the day it didn’t really matter, just as long as we win this last game and win the league cup. It wasn’t as if we could have got up much earlier and headed down to Swindon as we couldn’t check-in to the hotel before 2pm anyway 🤷‍♂️ But I felt that to even have suggested that, would have been rude to Shazza’s mum, and also not fair to Shazza herself, who I am sure wanted to spend a few final hour’s with her mum as they wouldn’t be seeing each other again for a while. However, she was adamant that I should watch the match so, she suggested that we stay at her mums for a little longer, watch the match, and then leave straight after the game, as you may imagine, she got no argument from either me, or her mum 😉

Sporting references now finished and all I have left to say on the matter is that it was a very joyous and jubilant drive down to Wiltshire, I will leave you my reader’s to guess why 🥳🥳🥳🥳

For a Saturday we found all the roads once again pretty much free flowing, yes there were still plenty of red and white roadside decorations with the customary speed limitations, but no delays. After checking-in to our room we were both pretty hungry, with our slightly later departure we had taken the opportunity to have a sandwich before we left Shazza’s mums. We hadn’t needed to re-fuel the car, as we had already done that a day or so before and, somewhat surprisingly, Shazza hadn’t required any ‘comfort breaks’ en-route, so we didn’t make any stops. Fortunately though, there was an ‘eatery’ right outside our hotel so we went and ate straight away and then had a nice relaxing evening watching TV and reading books on our Kindle devices in our room.

Just digressing slightly, I am not an ardent reader of books like Shazza and, unlike her, on the rare occasions when I do, they are always non-fiction and usually either travel related (Motorhome or Yacht travels) or stories about other people going to live in other countries. Even then, if the writing style of the author of such books doesn’t grab my interest within the first chapter, I will put the book down and that is the end of that 🤷‍♂️ I am guessing that is probably very much the same sort of reaction that some may have when reading my rambles, especially the ones that start off talking about football 😂 Anyway, I came across two books, the author had published the original book, then followed it up with a sequel. Why these books had gained my particular interest was because they were an English couple, around the same age group as Shazza and myself, and they had bought a place just up the coast from us on the Costa del Sol, however, they had found it too hot in the Summer and so had decided to move to the Asturias Region, which is on the North Coast of Spain. I started reading the first book on the ferry to England and am now half way through the sequel. Just in case any of you have similar literary tastes, the books are called ‘Northward Bound’ and the author is ‘Alison Stewart’, available from ‘Amazon’ and no, before you ask, I am not on any sort of commission 😁

We had informed our son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren that we had arrived safely at our hotel, and told them that we would see them at around 10:00am the following morning. We had not planned to do anything special, our son was doing a BBQ for lunch, so it was just a matter of going for a walk in the park, letting the girls play on the play equipment and then, just generally spending time with them all at the house. The following day was May Day, a public holiday, we envisaged that the roads would all be busy with holiday traffic but as Portsmouth was only a couple of hour’s drive away we didn’t need to rush off, we didn’t sail until 9:30pm that night, although we would have to check-in forty-five minutes before, so I had initially planned to allow four hours for the journey to cater for any potential delays. Our son was at work though, the disadvantage of working in the retail trade when the holiday shoppers are out looking for bargains in the numerous ‘Sales’, but for retailer’s it can prove to be quite a lucrative period. We checked-out of the hotel and made our way back to the house to have our last day with our daughter-in-law and grandchildren, we took them all out and treated them to lunch before deciding to hit the road a little earlier than originally planned, just as a precaution, for although throughout this whole trip in the UK we have had no problems on the roads with delays, we were conscious that the pesky ‘Dark Forces’ would be lurking somewhere, waiting for an opportunity to ambush us and strike that third blow 😲 We said our farewells, which is always an extended and tearful affair, tears from the Granddaughter’s that is, with their pleas for us to move back to England, so that we can live closer to them and they can see more of us. Of course that would be only for the next couple of year’s before starting ‘senior school’, then friends, boyfriends and other more interesting stuff would be much more exciting than visiting Grandparents, yes they forget that we too were once their age, been there, done that, got the tee-shirt 😉 So me being me, I just told them that we miss them too, but I promised that I would send them even more photo’s of us on a more regular basis 😂

Our route was pretty straightforward, mainly on Motorways and Dual Carriageways but, when we checked our ‘Sat Nav’ as we set off, it announced that it was re-routing us, to avoid road closures on the M4 Motorway, I should have known that it would be ‘Too Good To Be True’ to have a three week trip to the UK without one single problem on the roads 🤷‍♂️ However, we discovered that the ‘Sat Nav’ wasn’t up to date with the road conditions, for it had intended diverting us off the Motorway at the junction before the one we originally intended taking, but within no more than a couple of minutes of joining the Motorway the traffic came to a grinding halt, so well before even the diversion exit we were supposed to take 🤷‍♂️ We crawled inch by inch, stop start, stop start, with the minutes ticking away, but finally got to the slip road off the motorway. The new diversionary route took us through small country villages, along narrow lanes, we were just following the snake of slow moving vehicles who were also following the diversionary route. Eventually, almost an hour later, we were directed on to a main dual Carriageway, but the A4, not the A34 which is what we needed to be on and, if the timing could not have been any more imperfect, we were in an area where we lost our mobile phone signal, so I couldn’t even keep a check on our location on ‘Google Maps’ 😡 Shortly afterwards we saw a sign to come off the A4 and where we could get on to join the A34 Southbound route, we sighed with relief. At this point we were not overly concerned and quite thankful to have had the foresight to allow much more travelling time, thanks to my OCD Buddy 😉 If we hadn’t, we would probably have become more than a little ‘twitchy’ by now, and the ‘Dark Forces’ would have been chuckling away to themselves.

Our relief was only short-lived though, we came off the slip road and up to the roundabout where we should then have joined the Southbound A34, well we would have done had their not been a big red sign announcing ‘Road Closed’ on the exit to the slip road, with yet another diversion sign, but this one took us in the wrong direction altogether, we found ourselves heading Northbound on the A34 in three lanes of stationery traffic going absolutely nowhere !! We finally got some traffic news on one of the radio stations “Multiple Accidents on the M4 East towards London are creating major issues, with tailbacks reported as far as Junction 15 at Swindon, diversionary routes off the M4 are also backlogged with the volume of traffic causing heavy congestion”, it was going to be one of those days 🤷‍♂️

Needless to say, and rather than continuing to give you a blow by blow account, we did ‘finally’ get back on to the route that we needed to be on, and thankfully encountered no further delays for the rest of our journey. We made a stop at a large TESCO Supermarket, refuelled, bought a sandwich and still arrived at the Port with plenty of time to spare 👍 Talk about luck being on our side, as we went through the vehicle security check area, prior to boarding the ferry, the female Border Force official pointed to the car in front of us to pull in to the search area and just waved us passed 👍 Although it would not have been a problem for the authorities at this side, with the goods we were carrying, it would have been a major inconvenience for us if we had been stopped and asked to ‘unload’ the car boot, and then had to re-load it all again.

We didn’t have to wait too long to board our ferry and then we made our way straight to our cabin, settled ourselves in, and put the kettle on. The ferry departed exactly on time at 9:30pm, we ate our sandwich and didn’t leave our cabin again until the following morning. This would be a slightly longer crossing for the return trip, 35 hours as opposed to the 27 hours on the outbound crossing, leaving on the Monday night but not arriving in Santander until 07:00am (08:00am Spanish Time) on the Wednesday morning, which was perfect for us as our long drive home would then all be done in daylight.

We have done this ferry route, and the Bilbao one, many times over the year’s and, depending on which side of the boat our cabin is on, we sometimes catch a glimpse of some Islands off the coast of France, although I never know exactly where we are so cannot identify them on Google Maps, perhaps one of my reader’s may be able to enlighten me from the photograph’s below 🤷‍♂️ On this particular trip we were on the ‘Starboard’ (Right) side as we headed South, so Mainland France was on our ‘Port’ (Left) side, the sea was so calm, it was sunny and the view quite clear so we could see what looked like a Church on the smaller of the two Islands, quite possibly a sanctuary for those who found themselves shipwrecked, but the other looked as though it was inhabited.

On the morning of arrival, because it is early, they wake you up by playing a soft musical tune through the speakers, this allows you to get up, get sorted, grab an early breakfast if you want one, we never do, and then wait until the announcement is made to vacate your cabin. I quite enjoy watching the ferry as it enters the outer harbour and sails serenely past the beaches, houses and shops until it gets into the Inner harbour and docks.

We had arrived in Santander on time, perhaps even a few minutes early and, although there was the usual delay before we finally disembarked the boat we were through the Immigration check-points quite swiftly, and heading towards the ‘Customs’ checks and ‘Search’ area. We approached slowly, giving the officials no excuse for thinking that we were in any hurry to avoid them, there were already several vehicles in the search area and we could see the occupants emptying their car boots, so whether it was because we were driving a Spanish Registered vehicle or not, I do not know, but they payed no heed to us whatsoever and we just drove through 😮‍💨🙏 Outside of the Port area and clear of the city, we headed on to the first of the many ‘Toll Free’ motorways we would take on this journey, it was 08:45am and we were on our way. I anticipated getting home at around 7pm, but that would be very much dependent on any traffic delays, which here in Spain is extremely unlikely and, how many stops we made along the route. With the issue with my eye now no longer an issue, we would both take a share with the driving and I have to say I was more than ready to get back behind the wheel, but Shazza had taken the first stint so I just sat back and enjoyed the views, the car virtually knew its own way home by now anyway and so it wasn’t long before Shazza had set the ‘Cruise Control’, relaxed and enjoyed the almost empty roads. We had a full tank of fuel, so we knew that we could complete over half the journey without having to stop and re-fuel again. The chill though was very noticeable, with the low clouds still lurking in the valleys and on the tops of the forested areas, it was 6 degrees(c) as we climbed up into the mountains, but we knew that it would not be long before the temperature would rise through the mid-teens to the low twenties, the Spanish ‘Works of Fiction’ had forecast the evening temperature at home to still be 22 degrees(c) and sunny at 8pm with sunset not until 10pm 😎 We were prepared and, for the first time in a month, we were back into our shorts and tee-shirts, sheer bliss. Although to be fair, the weather in the UK during our trip has been magnificent but sorry folks, we are taking it back home with us 🤭

We did meet one diversion where we had to leave the motorway, due to re-surfacing work on all three lanes on our side of the motorway, but it was only for around 10km and we were diverted on to a major ‘N’ Road, so it didn’t create any real delay. We stopped briefly on four occasions, just for comfort breaks and once to re-fuel, we both took two stints behind the wheel and we finally pulled into our car park at home at 6:30pm that Wednesday evening. I can neither confirm, nor deny, whether Luis Hamilton, and co-driver, stuck religiously to the national speed limits 🙄 However, this was the quickest time, 9 hours and 45 minutes, with stops, that we have ever completed this journey, it must have had something to do with the new Michelin Sports tyres that I had just had fitted whilst in the UK 😂

Finally, just to finish off this series of rambles, and to what has been very nearly a month of being away from home, the Plumber arrived the following ‘afternoon’, not 10:00am in the morning as arranged, ‘Manana Manana’ and all that 🤷‍♂️ but we do now have a new water boiler and lashings of hot water. We arrived home to discover that our local Reservoir sits at literally just below 100% of its capacity, our Swimming Pool has now been re-opened for use and all drought restrictions in our Province have been lifted so, all’s well that ends well, as the saying goes 😉

Until the next ramble, whenever that may be 🤷‍♂️

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, La Vida Es Buena