Long And Winding Roads

We pulled out from our car park at 07:20am, now normally my OCD Buddy would be in a state of high anxiety at this point, after all, we had scheduled ourselves to depart promptly at 07:00am, but even he appeared to be in holiday mode and was quite chillaxed about the twenty minute delay. It was daylight, the sun was up, although it was still low in the sky, necessitating the need to wear sunglasses even at that early hour of the morning 😎 but it was already 12 degrees(c), so at least we had a good dry start to our long drive. The ‘Works of Fiction’ though, forecasted that we would encounter the start of the wet stuff before we even reached Madrid, some six hours drive away and to be honest, we would be spending a lot more time driving at higher altitudes, so I guess we would be very much closer to any threatening rain clouds 😉 It made me remember that, although you only really think of the more popular mountainous areas in Spain as being the ‘Sierra Nevada’, Picos de Europa or the Pyrenees, the rest of Spain, North to South, has very many more mountainous regions and, as the bulk of our journey would primarily be inland, we would be travelling through a great deal of them, so we would just have to wait and see how long it would be before the sunglasses had to be removed.

I had elected to do the first stint at the wheel, which would allow Shazza to tuck into her pre-prepared healthy home-made breakfast of Natural Oats, Blueberries, Greek Yoghurt, Nuts and Honey, when her stomach clock told her the time was right, which actually turned out to be only around thirty minutes after being on the road 😂 As she is not one for taking photographs, there will be no images of the landscapes for the first three hour’s or so of the journey, but regular reader’s of these rambles will have seen them many times previously anyway. To be completely honest with you, my own initial thought, before even commencing this journey, was that it would probably be quite a long and boring road trip even for us, as we had seen it all before, very many times. However, that proved to be a totally wrong assumption on my part, as the landscapes were still just equally as awesome as they had previously been. I often say in my rambles that the landscape views, whether they be in our own local area, or on our wider travels, never get boring and this trip was already proving that to be the case. However, once I got to have my turn in the navigator’s seat my clicker finger would once again be working overtime, so take that as a pre-warning of things to come, by way of photographs, a little later in this ramble 😂

Both our local Spanish media, and the European Weekly News publication, had both warned of a high ‘Guardia Civil’ Police presence all over Spain, which actually commenced the day before our travels, and would continue until after the Easter Holiday traffic rush, with lots more random stops, checking for valid vehicle documentation, physical checks of vehicle serviceability and, in some circumstances, breathalyser checks, although it sounded more likely that such checks would be more evident on all major routes heading ‘South’ towards the very popular Coastal tourist hot-spots, rather than on the cooler Northern routes, where most tourists tend to avoid at this time of year unless they enjoy winter sports. I didn’t have any particular concerns, due to the fact that we are both quite anal about our vehicle documentation being up to date, and the serviceable condition of our vehicle, as for the breathalyser checks though, Mmmmmmmmm 🤔 I did have to wonder how much alcohol there was in Shazza’s mouthwash ? I always tend to abide by the varying speed limits and we would be well on our way to Madrid, before my very own little ‘Luis Hamilton’ got anywhere near the accelerator pedal 😂 The other points of interest en-route, other than the wonderful landscapes that surrounded us, were noting the ‘Diesel’ fuel prices along our route, apart from the really cheap local suppliers, which we tend to stay away from, ever since our second fuel contamination incident whilst we were travelling in the ‘Little Fokker’, our last Motorhome, several year’s ago. We tend to stick now to using the more popular brands, Repsol, Cepsa, Shell or BP, and we noted that they were all selling Diesel at a very similar price, varying very slightly from €1.85 per litre (£1.61) to €1.88 (£1.63) even at the Motorway Service Stations, although that was still €0.30cents per litre more than before the fuel crisis, and that price at the pump was ‘allegedly’ with the 11% IVA tax discount from the Government, although the media has reported lots of fuel companies profiteering by putting up the prices, but not taking off the Government subsidy 😲 It will be interesting to see what the comparative prices are like in both the UK and France, although it wouldn’t really matter, if you need fuel then you pay the price, whatever it is 🤷‍♂️

After being at the wheel for a little over three and a half hours, and still being a little over 200Km South of Madrid, whilst I would have been quite happy to have kept driving, we both needed a ‘Comfort Break’, so we elected to stop at the next available services, have a coffee, take the opportunity to top up the fuel, even though we didn’t really need to as we could have got well beyond Madrid before actually needing to do so, but in the current fuel climate we aired on the side of caution, and that was when we also took the opportunity to change seating arrangements.

You will note two main things from the following photographs, these being taken whilst still South of Madrid, the beautiful bright blue sky, with the occasional wispy white clouds and also how relatively quiet the traffic was on the roads, this is quite normal here in Spain and is what makes it such a pleasurable country to drive in, away from the major cities. However, we had expected to see much more traffic on the Southbound carriageways as this weekend was supposed to be the start of the great Easter getaway period 🤷‍♂️ To be completely transparent with you, yes we saw two major tailbacks on the Southbound carriageways, each stretching back several kilometres, but these were due to accidents and not due to just the sheer volume of traffic, it made us glad to be heading North, but still a bit cautious, as we still had to get around Madrid on the Ring Road 🙄

We of course saw quite a few traditional Spanish Windmills along the way, which always reminds me of the legendary story of ‘Don Quixote’, but we also saw, very many more, of the more modern Windmills, which, although now being essential modern day necessities, for providing ‘fossil free’ energy requirements, unlike the older versions which were for the production of flour, but these modern one’s are not as scenic as the older ones.

We were pretty much still on schedule when we reached the Southern outskirts of Madrid, we would be heading East on to the Ring Road around the city, which would then swing us back around to the Northern side of the city, passing close to the ‘Adolfo Suarez Madrid-Barajas Airport’, which is the primary International airport serving the city. With it being a Saturday, usually a very busy shopping day, and being on one of the main routes to the Airport, we had anticipated the traffic to be extremely busy and hectic, much like the M25 route going around the Western side of London and serving as the main route to Heathrow Airport, and commonly joked about as being one of the largest car parks in Europe, as the three and four lanes of traffic are regularly at a standstill, but we were pleasantly surprised, although it wasn’t anywhere near as traffic free as our journey had been thus far, under the circumstances it was very much quieter than even we had anticipated, we encountered no hold-ups and when we saw the constant flow of aircraft coming in to land, we knew that we were very close to our exit on to the A1 motorway that would take us North, almost all the way to Bilbao.

Just to the North of Madrid, going through one of the outer suburbs we saw a sign for a ‘Burger King’ right at one of the main exit junctions, with easy access to get back on to the Motorway. We were both hungry now, and Shazza had had a fair stint at the wheel. We don’t usually eat in ‘Fast Food’ establishments very often, but when you are hungry and want just a short stop, and ‘Comfort Break’, then they do provide a useful service. To be honest, I don’t usually enjoy these sort of establishments as more often than not the ‘French Fries and Burgers’ are generally only Luke warm at best. We had to do battle with the new, well at least to us, modern way of ordering our food selections, on a machine which just kept providing lots of different screens, what type of Burger, Standard, Large, Jumbo ? Did we want a ‘Combo’ ? Standard Fries, Large Fries ? Extra Cheese, Bacon ? What sort of Sauces ? What drink selection, then the list of Small or Large ? We had to do this for each of our individual choices, before then going through the payment options, Apple Pay ? Card Payment ? Or Pay Cash at the counter ? Whatever happened to ‘Fast Service’, like going to the spotty faced youth at the cash register, pointing to the large neon menu board above their heads, ordering, paying, getting your food and drink, finding a table, eating and leaving 🤷‍♂️ We could have gone in to a standard restaurant, eaten a three-course meal and still have left the establishment quicker than this allegedly modern day ‘Fast Food’ establishment ! However, the girl at the cash register was so friendly and helpful to this grumpy old geriatric standing in front of her, “Are you taking it away or Eating In ?” she asked, “Eating in” I replied. Then she gave me a number thing to put on our table and told me that she would bring our order to us when it was ready. We were not waiting very long, just a few minutes, and when it arrived the Fries were hot and so was the Burger, the longest part of the whole process was ordering at the bloody machine, but I suppose that youngsters, probably the age of our granddaughter’s, with their lightening fast gaming fingers and thumbs, can probably do all of this technology stuff in seconds 🙄 I suppose the one consolation was that the young girl hadn’t offered to help me to my seat 😂 and, by the way, neither was she spotty faced.

I was quite surprised when, on finishing our meal and leaving the establishment, Shazza announced that she was happy to keep driving, although I knew that she would prefer to be occupied at the wheel, rather than be bored sat in the Navigator’s seat, especially as their was nothing to Navigate along these long mile after mile stretches of motorway. For me, well it meant I could keep my clicker finger active for a bit longer 😁 It wasn’t long before we were back into the mountains, there was still no sign of the wet stuff, although we noted that the white clouds were getting thicker the further North we travelled.

The external temperature dropped significantly, at the highest altitude it dropped as low as 5 degrees(c) and we had to put the car heater on 🥶 The scenery changed too, there was much more lush green pastures, thick green forests, a tell tale sign that this area experiences a lot more of the wet stuff than we do down South. The higher we climbed the more the mountains became barren craggy rock faces and, rather than the roads cutting through the valleys and between the peaks, we were now encountering more and more tunnels that cut straight through them, and then, the first spots of rain appeared on the windscreen. But we were not downbeat, we had covered virtually 80% of our journey in beautiful sunshine, much more than we had anticipated given the forecasts provided by you know who 🙄 We made one more stop for a ‘Comfort Break’ and Coffee stop, we changed driving positions so as to give Shazza a break, she would take over again just before we reached the outskirts of Bilbao. With the impediment in my right eye, Shazza was very much better better at manoeuvring her way through busy city streets, I was better at navigating and guiding her through those streets, letting her concentrate on the traffic, bus lanes, traffic lights, pedestrian crossings etc. and I could give her advance notifications on how far in front each turning was, which lane to be in, and this actually generally works out quite well for us.

As we entered the city streets, it was quite busy, the shops don’t close in Spain until 8pm, but we still had daylight and the rain had stopped, thank you to whoever was responsible for pressing that particular ‘off switch’ 🙏 We pulled into the Hotel’s underground car parking area and were lucky to immediately find a space, it looked very busy and so luck was certainly on our side and although the parking space was a tight fit, we were able to park sideways, near a wall and away from other cars, so hopefully we would return to it in three days time with no unwanted dents or scratches 🙄 I had guesstimated a twelve hour journey, start to finish, including associated stops, so we expected to arrive at 19:20pm, as we had departed twenty minutes later than originally scheduled, our watches said 18:55pm, so well done to my little ‘Luis Hamilton’ who, in all fairness, had done the bulk of the drive that day, although I did do a total of around four and a half hours over two stints 😉

By the time we had checked-in at reception and got to our lovely big room on the 6th floor, we were both too tired to want to go back out into the city, just to find somewhere to eat, to be honest, we were still quite full from our burger lunches, but then again we had just been sitting in a car so had no chance to work any of it off, so we just wanted to get settled into our room and relax with a nice hot cuppa. Dependent on whether the ‘Works of Fiction’ got the next two days forecasts right or wrong, would dictate just how much sightseeing we would be able to do over those next couple of days, we both prayed that they would come true to form, and get it wrong, as the weather outlook for both days was not very good, two full days of the wet stuff ☔️🌧️🙁

We cannot control the weather, but we would be quite disappointed if we could not get to do some sightseeing whilst we were here, so we would just have to wait to see what tomorrow brings. So, until the next ramble…………………

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, La Vida Es Buena