17th June 2010, Mendigorria and on to Bilbao

So I went to check out and was worried that the discount I was hoping for would be honoured. In the ACSI book some sites give you a free night for every seven and two free if you stay two weeks. But it could be construed that that was the maximum, I believed otherwise, i.e. we had been here over five weeks so I took that to be five free nights worth €75, so worth fighting for.

Turns up a reception and as I go to get some money out of the ATM the older Spanish lady owner locks up and buggers off!



So back and three hours later tries again, This time it's the nice Spanish lady who speaks a little English. I give her our receipt with the date we first arrived 38 days ago and she looks at the calender on the wall and works out that we owe €90 minus the €6 deposit for the gate key I was returning. I had worked it out to be €489 with the maximum discount so she had obviously thought that we had arrived on the 2nd of June, instead of 2nd of May. Being the honest stupid tosser that I am, I pointed this out to her showing my working out and my total, she was more than pleased and accepted my number but also made me count out the money in Spanish, correcting me each time I got it wrong and then I was out of there. So worked out to about just over £12 a night including electric and wi-fi, not really that bad I guess.



It's funny, but we have been here over five weeks and still managed not to play tennis once and didn't visit a few places we were meaning to, where does the time go?



I had bought a couple of bags of frozen mini pies from Euroski and now was the time to cook them and the two pizzas for the journey and to take on the ferry.

“Why have you got all those pies, you'll end up throwing them away?”



SWMBO's history with pies, on a diet or not, is shrouded in the mystery of time and I have learnt over the years that when we travel, pies, of any kind but preferably steak and kidney, should be in easy reach. There is only twenty of them but I will be more than a little surprised in any of them make the ferry, hence the pizzas. We are also taking a very large bottle of water, they charge £1.50 for a 100 cl bottle, that's £11.50 a litre! Ten times more expensive than diesel! But I will have the full Monty English breakfast on Friday morning which will keep me going until we arrive home.



We were thinking of a short last walk up to Mendigorria where I could stock up on some extra beer for the trip but it's now out of the question, so it's reading and baking is what we are doing.

There's probably no sadder site than a camp site in the rain, everybody sitting in their caravans looking out of steadily increasing condensation on their windows drinking tea and playing cards.

Speaking of which SWMBO has beat the hell out of me in dominoes for the last two nights running, it's going to be pay back time after dinner. She's sitting there in mega reading mode and every time I make a noise, like typing loudly, she tells me to shut up.



Watching “As good as it gets” with Jack Nicholson, no he's not here, don't start that again, probably for the sixth time.



So it's 7:30 pm and I'm baking the pies and pizzas and it's peeing down, I must admit I feel sorry for all the extra new kids and a Dutch rally of about 20 caravans turning up on a day like this, stuck inside staring at the rain.



Thursday 17th June and we are on our way.



Got out OK and the 120 mile journey was a breeze, stopping once, just before Bilbao to fill up with cheap Spanish diesel, then a 2 hour wait and on to the ferry. Decent sized en suite inboard cabin and the ferry was about a third full.



For the first time we managed to see some dolphins! They look quite small viewed high up from the ferry as they swam around the ship's bows, SWMBO was very impressed. Had a good evening meal and watch Holmes & Watson in the movie theatre, which was very good. Next day we watched Clash of the Titans, which was crap, IMHO.



Last off, again, the ferry and made a mistake of using the A29 to get home as I thought it was more dual carriageway than it actually was, some scary moments!



Arrived at home number two and cleaned MS and it is now in it's storage site at Buxted.



Next stop; blog 4.