Our Spanish house

We finally got the keys late Wednesday evening as both the estate agent and owner insisted on showing us where everything was, including all the fruit trees (orange, lime, plums, pear, apple, persimmon, nectarine, olives and a couple of grape vines).

After a quick trip to the supermarket for essentials, including a fan, we collapsed into bed, exhausted but glad to be here. On Thursday we had a run to IKEA for the basics such as plates, glasses, cutlery, pans and a load of other household stuff, and a bigger fan. It has been so hot here that the fans weren't enough, so Friday saw us purchasing a small air conditioner for the master bedroom upstairs where it's a lot warmer. We also had to buy a sofa as the owner took their's with them, and it got delivered today. We haven't missed it as we've been living outside on the terrace and enjoying the cooler evenings, so I guess the sofa won't see much use until the autumn

It will probably take another few days to finish unpacking and finding homes for everything. There is also a growing list of items that we need to buy here as we didn't want to remove them from London. Luckily for us there are a number of Chinese 'tat' shops within walking distance (although the first visit will be in the truck as initially, we need more stuff than we can carry) that have everything, and more, all at half the price of the bigger stores.

Mark has dismantled the pikey box and Tigger II is now back to normal and camouflaged under the orange tree. Mark has also started working on the camper - so much for having a rest for the month of August. I wondered how long it was going to take before he started to 'play' with his new toys :-)

Bienvenido a España

After 4 days on the road we, Tigger II and the pikey box made it to Spain in one piece. Hooray and much relief.

I had been concerned about the box getting wet and the plywood falling apart ('coz I is cheap and only bought lightweight non-marine ply), it blowing apart on the road at speed, wind getting in the holes in the front where some long stuff was sticking out and blowing the doors off the back, it going sideways at a roundabout as there was quite a bit of weight up high as it was completely full, or it otherwise failing and leaving a trail of debris through France and the Pyrenees, or getting pulled over by the rozzers to be told in foreign that I am not allowed to do such things on vehicles on their roads. As it turned out the journey was quite uneventful.

We did stick to the back roads mostly and tried to cruise control at 90kph which everything seemed happy at, although France does seem to have grown a huge amount of roundabouts at every imaginable junction on the non-toll roads which are interesting in a vehicle with weight up high. I guess in many ways its good practise for building Campalot - it will be larger and heavier still, but probably the centre of gravity will be a little lower.

We tried to follow parts of the route we used to take when i was a kid and the family drove down every 2 years, initially in a VW camper that was the same 1965 vintage as me, and later in a Renault 16 and caravan. Most of those trips went to the Bilbao region initially and then back from Barcelona to the channel, but at least one trip when I was navigating we came to Barcelona directly. Much of that route is now motorway grade toll roads so we tried to avoid them, but we did cross the Dordogne river just north of  Cahors over an old stone bridge that rang bells, and there was a municipal campground on the banks that could have been where we stayed one night and hung bottles of drinks in a shopping bag in the river to cool them off as we had no fridge. Or it could have been somewhere completely different - every thing i thought I knew about family and childhood has been corrected by other family members lately, so why should this one be any different?

Need to run around and buy some bits of furniture tomorrow so will keep the box for a couple more days, then it will be time to strip it down and get back to a normal vehicle, at least for a few weeks....

Pikey-mobile

In preparation for our relocation I've added a bit of luggage space to Tigger II in proper traveller fashion, although I think they tend to favour transit vans...