We don’t want to leave, but there are also good reasons for wanting to be back in the UK.
CasaBo is already etched deep into our hearts, and it is a wrench to leave what is going to be our most exciting project to date. But the fact is that, until Mission Control is built, we would only be in the way of the team of workers and project manager now on site, so it is good to be having a break.
I’m looking forward to going back to the UK to see family and friends, but especially because my daughter is getting married in October. In addition to all of this I am honoured to have been included in “the crew” for the latest Infinite Possibilities Certification conference at the end of September, so I’ve got some preparation to do, and Kimberley has a couple of months of work on. These are heady times indeed.
The long drive awaits. There is no easy way to drive 1,200 miles, except one mile at a time. So that is what we do. Another journey of baby steps. We head east from Monsanto in Portugal to the border of Spain which is only about 25 kilometres from CasaBo. First is the town Ciudad Rodrigo, Spain which I first came across whilst reading one of my favourite books written by Barnard Cornwell, based on the exploits of Richard Sharpe. It does not disappoint and dominates the land around.
We then skirt round Salamanca and Burgos and head to our overnight stop in Irun near the border between Spain and France. I am still trying to find a good overnight stop around the border. It is getting late, and we are getting hungry, so we start looking online for somewhere to eat. Deciding that Dominos Pizza takeaway will do, we order online to collect on our route. Location of Dominos entered into the satnav, we continue our journey. Collection is booked for 8.10pm.
Right on time at 8.05pm, we enter this large and beautiful town with a large river going through it. The problem is it’s teeming with cars and people out for the evening, so we can’t park anywhere near the Dominos we drive past. We drive around for about 15 minutes looking for somewhere, having had a long tiring day of driving and getting hungrier by the minute, when Kimberley discovers that the Dominos address entered into the satnav was wrong. Oh. We are in San Sebastian and our pizza is sitting ready in a branch 20 kilometres away in Irun. The good news is that we have now found San Sebastian and it is going to be well worth a longer visit in the future.
We finally get to the right Dominos branch in Irun at 8.45pm and pick up our once hot pizza. We are so tired at this stage that even cold pizza will do very nicely. We have found a service area that costs €15 with electricity and waste thrown in. It will suffice for tonight, but we would not spend the money on it in the future having had far better overnight spots for free before.
We get up early and set off again. We have decided to avoid the toll roads which tally up to a cost of around €125 all in. This will add a few extra hours of driving time but is definitely a more interesting route. Well today that started off feeling like a bit of an error. It seems to take an eternity to get out of the area, past Biarritz, and Bordeaux is a traffic stop-start nightmare. I fear that Bordeaux can only be avoided by going by boat to Spain, and that is not going to happen whilst I am in charge of route planning.
Then, just like magic, the traffic disappears, and we are on beautiful French roads pootling along by vast fields of sunflowers and corn, patisseries and boulangeries and all things lovely about French life. The windows are open, the breeze is blowing through, and the day just passes with mile upon mile of enjoyable driving.
We arrive in Rouen 888 kilometres and numerous hours later, have an American diner dinner (I know what you’re thinking, but we just needed some feel good nosh fast) and find the most fantastic free parking spot in the little village of Cleres.
Last into the parking area and first out in the morning, we only have a couple of hours left before we reach the Eurotunnel terminal at Calais. The roads are relatively clear, and we get there a couple of hours early on the off chance that they put us on an earlier train. This works and before you know it, here we are back in England with grey skies and a temperature we have become unused to. This is going to take a bit of adjusting to.