On the Road Again!

Maybe. Maybe not. I had an email today from the apartment reception and then are happy to let us change the booked dates as they have vacancies. We won't know until after September 17th when Claire has the surgery to know if we need to change.  Fingers crossed that we don't need to move the trip to a date any later in the year. Changing to a later date will mean messing about to get my Arsenal ticket changed as I am currently down on the spreadsheet to go to the game with Liverpool on the 27th October. If the worst comes to the worst I can always move the holiday back a few weeks and I am certain Phil (who I share the ticket with) won't mid attending the Liverpool game instead of me! I can change the P&O dates although it will cost an amendment fee.  But at least the Spanish part of the trip will be saved.

I have had a few days off as there were other things to look into. The rear bumper fix for Molly being one of them - more on that elsewhere. So whilst I was playing with Max (the TomTom Go Camper Max satnav/GPS) I decided to let her/him/they calculate a return journey from Alcoceber/Alcossebre with the dimensions slightly altered to make the van wider.   If you have read the earlier blog about the journey to Invicta Caravan Services you will get an idea how even the best laid plans can be ruined by Google having the wrong information in their Maps application! Plus the roads chosen were too narrow for Molly to pass trucks and buses safely without one (usually me as truck drivers know the size and weight always wins!) of us diving to the left to avoid contact. On the summer trip in May we started coming north from Valencia.  This time Alcoceber is around 110kms to the north of Valencia.  The route though looks pretty much like the one we did on the way ...

Today I have been looking at the France 2020 Atlas to work out where we can stop overnight on the way down. Does anyone else use a ruler to give a rough idea of distances? Just me? The inside cover has the overview of the whole country showing the pages. I use that to roughly work out the stops with the ruler. I have been using this atlas as well. It shows lots of Aires and campsites on the pages. It's okay and easier to handle than the bigger AA atlas. Allowing for the time when we  arrive in France plus some shopping for us and Reggie at Picard, I think that the first overnight stop might be Formerie where we have stayed before. It's about 170kms from the port. It's a small Camping-Car Park Aire with only six pitches. Each with electric hook-up. I'll probably have to reserve a pitch in advance. From there the Google Maps non-toll route goes in a familiar direction to Dreux and then diverts around Orléans and to the non-toll A77 towards Vichy and Millau on the non-toll...

I was looking on the Resort Condominiums International ( RCI.Com ) site to see if there was anything we could drive to and that was pet friendly.   I have owned a timeshare in Tenerife since 1994.  It was very cheap at the time. Of course annual maintenance goes up every year so not using it hurts!  Across Europe there were a few places but as we plan to travel in October that really ruled out Finland and Sweden, although maybe one day we can take Molly the Moho over that way. Purely as I don't know much about the weather there. There were a number of others in Austria and Hungary. One of the Hungarian places I have been before with my ex-partner. We went on our motorcycles and stayed near Heviz and Lake Balaton.  I ruled out Austria as the size of the dog was restricted to 10kg!  Reggie is around 17.5kg. It's another place I have visited quite often especially when I lived in Brno and was only 75 miles or so from Vienna. So that left three p...