On the Road Again!

Up, packed and breakfast had before we set off at around 10am for the 332km drive back to the airport hotel where Centaur have their rental office. Unfortunately, I had a dickhead moment getting the car out of the parking space and bumped the rear into a concrete post. The underground garages are a forest of posts and some of them quite large to hold the building above up off the ground!  I was just rolling back and "bang".   There was a  minimum of damage, just a little paint chipped off the bumper. More my pride was hurt. It is lucky I opted for the "smart" all inclusive insurance. I hope. The 1.0L Polo seemed very economical to run. Admittedly it is a little underpowered on the autovia but cruised at 110 to 120km/h okay. It was supposed to be full when we left last week but this might have been the gauge rather than the actual level of fuel. I filled up in Badajoz and it took 8.78 gals to the "click" and we had done 313.5 miles. That comes out at 35.7 m...

After some faffing we picked up a 1.0 litre Polo. The TomTom fitted and we are off. An hour later we finally work our way to the non toll A5. Traffic quite horrendous. A warning for next Friday's return trip. By 5.30pm I was needing a walk. We stopped for a coffee. On the way we had been caught in a few torrential downpours. Traffic at a standstill occasionally as the wipers couldn't cope. Photo from right, passenger, side of the car. We arrived at the Parador in Trujillo about 7.30pm and checked in. Nice room. http://mobi.parador.es/en/paradores/parador-de-trujillo Nice floor.. posted from Bloggeroid

Arrived Madrid Terminal 4 quite promptly. Despite half term not starting until this evening there were loads of kids. Amazing that parents ignore the seat belts sign. Standing in the aisles and letting small children stand on the seats whilst we have seatbelt lights on. Sadly typical middle-class English who know better!! Once out. Another long walk. Got luggage and exited the airport. Car hire minibus easy to find.... We were the only customers on the bus. posted from Bloggeroid

Arrived last night in time for scampi and chips and then a relatively early to-bed. Up at 0645, just like a work day, to have full English breakfast. Once sorted we arrived at the parking. The road works look to be overnight only and we sped through. By 0915 we were checked in. They decided the aircraft was pretty full and our small cases have gone in the hold for free. Bugger. And here we are in Starbucks having a coffee waiting for the flight to appear and the gate number pop up. Gate 11. The long walk starts... To be continued. posted from Bloggeroid

Another juggle. Day 1 - Flight out to Madrid and Trujillo Parador to stay 2 nights. Day 3 - Mérida and stay 2 nights. Day 5 - Badajoz - one night Day 6 - Cáceres - two night Day 8 - Back to Madrid and flight home. Using this Rough Guide to read about the places to visit. To give us more time I have dropped one of the overnights and doubled up at Cáceres. Three weeks to go. Update 12th May 2018 Email British Airways. the return flight has been re-timed to be 1835 instead of 1805.  Not that it matters as we have to have the car back at about 1530.

With the Extremadura as the destination for some serious touristing I have booked the first night just short of the border from Castille. A bit of luxury before we enter the "Frying Pan" of Spain.   The Parador at Oropesa. I was looking last night and the Parador site has discounted rates for over 55's and in the Extremadura there are quite a few Paradors in the area. Oddly, booking.com had a much cheaper rate than the official site. Even with the senior citizen discount the cheapest rate is non-refundable and was way more than the booking.com refundable price.  How? I have no idea. The Parador's official booking site used to have a special "bulk" purchase rate. Something like four nights for the price of three or something along those lines.  Worth checking out. I need to get the Rough Guide out to see what we can see in the area. I have also bought a copy of the regional Michelin map #576. It covers Extremadura and across to Madrid and the east. Although I...

The Tour d'España has come about really because we wanted an early holiday.  Most often we have been to the US in May but with the changes to my contract at work, where I am stuck with school holidays for the bulk of my leave, it has meant that two week trips are out  of the question unless done at Easter or Summer. I would like to have gone  back as we did in August  2014 on the Explorer -  Revisita España 2014 , and on the bike but it is not practical with Claire's hip and her gradual worry about being on the bike! The next best thing is to fly/drive. I have been checking on Skyscanner and the way it works it seems impossible to get the flight out and back into UK when you want them at a reasonable  price.  A quick click to one-way revealed a lot more flights. It also revealed that their website creates round trips groups of flights that when checked as singles come out at a very different (and lower) price.  In the end I booked Iberia out from ...

Only one more night left in Spain but the best part of two days. We didn't get up too early. The alarm was 0800 but as check out was 1200 and no breakfast in the hotel, thought we'd lie in and then pack and go. The first stop was the Bernabeu Stadium. Of course I went into the car park the wrong way, had to "off road" across some pavements to set Döra up for a photo session.  Stadio Santiago Bernebeu Stadio Santiago Bernebeu Stadio Santiago Bernebeu Stadio Santiago Bernebeu - don't ask about the orange character We still hadn't had breakfast, so after a few pix we set off again. TomTom took us around the entire stadium and through the car-park of a shopping complex and we saw a Musee del Jamón. Parked and a ham croissant and coffee later we were off to the second stop at Segovia. The route I planned took us over the Puerto de Navacerrado. It's over 1800 metres and progress was deadly. To cover today's long distance I opted to take the autovias. The bui...

Today we had a full day of sightseeing. It is not as hot as Toledo but still in the high 20's. Breakfast. We had a walk up Huertas again to the top and chose a cafe on the square. Croissant for Claire and porros for me. Porros are huge fat churros! I managed two of the four. Our sightseeing included El Corte Ingles, Museo de Jamon, Plaza Mayor, the market then down to the Royal Palace. Somehow we were out for six hours. We adopted the tapa style of eating and in the market, more a food place now than a real market,  we had some small fish tapa at €1 each. They all came on small pieces of toast. The "pulpo" was quite hard to eat, but the cod meat in a sauce was superb. On the way back to the hotel we called in the Carrefour. Fanta is €1 as well. Maybe the San Miguel is better value? After a siesta, we dressed, my chinos got their first outing! We had walked so far in the day we wanted somewhere local. In the end we had a great meal at a Cuban restaurant on Huertas called C...

From the dictionary: tinker - ˈtɪŋkə/ verb - gerund or present participle: tinkering attempt to repair or improve something in a casual or desultory way. "he spent hours tinkering with the car" synonyms: try to mend/improve, work amateurishly on, fiddle with, play (about/around) with, toy with, trifle with, dally with, dabble with, potter about with, fool about/around with. I don't think any of the changes I make to The Plan can be called amateurish, but I do like to refine the plan. I was looking through Tyre to look at the route for the trip and wondering if to cut it into bite sized or daily itineraries for the TomTom.  It's then I noticed that the last couple of changes hadn't been made to the overall route and so I changed the hotel waypoints.  Now it looks up to date. Whilst tinkering, I checked all the hotels former their off road parking. And the price where it isn't free! Some are a little expensive, others free or reasonable. I like to think that Dör...

Had a few minutes at lunch time to have a look a rough idea of where to go to take in a few of the tourist spots. And here it is.  The ferry will dock in Santander around 7pm, so even with the long (sunny?) days it is still a stretch to get far, so I have booked a hotel in the city around a mile from the port. Hardly time for Dora to warm up. That gives us the evening to have a look around and get something to eat. Day 1 - Saturday at sea. Day 2 - At sea arrive Santander.  Overnight hotel. Day 3 - set off for Avila. The walled city is about 230 miles away, and in the months before we go, I'll look for things en route to stop and look at. Day 4 - a short run to Toledo. One of the old Moorish capitals. I stayed here years ago at the Parador, but it is across the gorge from the city and a long trek around. Here I have booked a hotel in the middle. Day 5/6 - Madrid. Two nights here in the centre where we can get to the Prado etc. Day 7 - set off for home.  It's a fair trek so...