It's been a long time since I blogged, and I know I didn’t finish the Irish trip. Sometimes life takes over and other things become a priority, but here we are, off in our beautiful new motorhome (she’s Agy Van2, and she's made life so much easier!).
As many of our trips do, we started with a trip to see family, dad is still doing incredibly well and at 94 is as sharp as ever, even if his body may be failing him.
We saw so many family members in the short time we stayed, but managed to take almost no photos, so here are the few I took, prompted by my lovely sister in law Air, who is a Facebook whizz!
As we were getting ourselves ready to head south again to get the ferry an unexpected message came through to say with very strong winds expected across Biscay our ferry was delayed by 28 hours, so a quick reshuffle was necessary, and we managed to visit my big brother and his family for an overnight stop rather than just a couple of hours, which was a real treat as we don’t see each other too often. Luckily Emma took a photo (sorry Lexi you were at work). It also meant on this trip I managed to see all my nieces (which is just fabulous!).
Once again we had chosen to travel Brittany ferries from Portsmouth to Santander. It’s easy, comfortable and with a cabin and lounge access, feels like a mini cruise. Fortunately as we boarded our cabins were ready and the lounge stayed open. A bowl of homemade vegetable soup and a glass of rose (the best option on board) was just what we needed before bed.
Considering the delay caused by a huge storm, we couldn’t quite believe how fabulous the weather was on our sailing. By the time we woke up the next day we were met with blue skies and a wide flat tranquil sea, and this stayed with us throughout the trip- perfect.
The food on board in the lounge is delicious and with a 2 night sailing, plenty of time to try the stinky cheese, hearty soup, salads and meaty casseroles. The wine is free with meals, so we did partake of a little, although obviously not too much as we had a long drive ahead of us as we disembarked. If you asked my favourite food on board, I would have to say the freshly baked Madeleines. They are sublime. How I managed to only have 1 all trip… well… I will never know!
On disembarkation (at 6am!) we were warned that the border checks had been extended due to the new fingerprinting immigration rules being rolled out. However this is Spain and it was Sunday morning and quite rightly the Spanish border force were not up for all that hassle. After a very short queue our passports were stamped, we were waved us through with no checks - a first for us, we are always searched. So before we knew it we were off!
As is often the case at this time of year Northern Spain is snow capped, beautiful, and as it was a Sunday the roads were empty as we drove south east. Once we got past Madrid the scenery began to slowly change and the grass got greener, our first big black bull was spotted and the orange groves came into view (along with the awful plastic that gives us tomatoes all year round).
By 6pm we’d reached our destination for the next few days, with special permission to park here, and Ian was very excited to see his favourite Spanish residents.
