On the Road Again!

AI photo... It does look a bit like me.

Update! There was a dog on the M20.   When I got home I got a whatsapp from the kennel mum where I had been in the morning, and go twice a week to feed the dogs, to say the dog was OURS! It's a small lurcher recently on arrived from the dog wardens up in North Kent.  She's a stray and very frightened. I sat with her on Monday to calm her down and she went from a heart beat at almost constant to much calmer sitting on my lap. So much so that when I took my hands away she stayed there. Unfortunately, she bit through one of the window safety cords and escaped.  She found her way about half a mile to the M20.  Luckily, traffic stopped and the police cornered her and took her back to the foster.  

I know when I set off from Canterbury, and came back via Hawkinge to the M20, I should have switched the dash cam on!  I forgot to plug in the power lead! If I had had it might have captured the over head sign saying "animals on carriageway" and "50" speed limit.  After J12 the whole lot ground to a halt. We were stuck for 25 minutes or so. I got home at 3 15pm. The screenshot of the Google page says.... 2.25pm! The M20 is a motorway with no parking!!! No one mentions the animals but an accident somewhere towards J11. Either side of the road. Who knows!

We took Molly to Choose Leisure again this morning.  I had booked it in for today last week.  The airbag problem isn't uncommon for Ducato vans and the other derivatives. Of course we were hoping that it was going to be something simple and not the very expensive airbag module itself. We dropped it off just after 9am. They asked us if we wanted to wait for it. We said no. Good job as it was around 3.30pm when they called to say it was fixed. We collect it tomorrow.

Sadly cancelled for us with the airbag module failure.

I used ChatGPT to suggest a route from Dieppe to Calahonda right to the door of the apartment. I set a daily driving limit, in hours and/or miles.  It came up with two alternatives. As well as a daily mileage limit I also said that we had to: Avoid Paris Avoid toll roads as much as possible Avoid areas most likely to need winter or all season tyre The route is decided on, of the original two, was basically to go as far west as possible to avoid the mountainous centre of France. Then to swing south-east to the Mediterranean coast into Spain. It has come up with a breakdown for eight travelling days and seven possible overnights.  What is good is that it also was able to create actual .gpx files I could download and then edit in MyRouteApp. I have downloaded the .gpx files into a folder on the laptop. What it hasn't done is suggest aires, it's basically checked towns and that's it. What I need to do is to cross reference the suggested stops against ...