First the news, Heather has been credit approved and is now a house owner, her new apartment in Crawley has gone through and it is to be completed end August so all we have to do is “help out” a bit with the deposit. SWMBO and her can't wait to get together when she arrives here on Sunday to talk about how to furnish it.
When SWMBO and I first got here we went looking for the local Carrefore because there are certain things we use you can only get there, but to no avail because when we turned up at the place the GPS said it was, it wasn't. There was a Carrefore sign but only a garage door entrance and nothing else. Derek and I decided to give it another go because if it was shut or had moved, why were blokes putting up new bill boards around the A12 with new products Carrefore were selling? Although I do not think a 50” plasma will actually fit in the MS if we do find it.
So followed the GPS again and guess what? Yep exactly the same place and result, as we drove away however, by a different route, there it was and it was massive! Reason we had missed it the first time was that the garage entrance me and SWMBO had seen turns out to be a pedestrian entrance and also the usual Carrefore sign was more or less at ground level and not on the roof as normal, also the building itself was very grey and not the usual white. So guess where SWMBO and the present Mrs Leadbetter want to go today.
Last week, that is a week ago today, because Jeanne walks into Mendigorria every day for exercise, she found out that there was a local market there. So SWMBO who normally will sleep like the dead was up like a shot this morning as a visit to the Thursday market AND Carrefore is just about as good as it gets for her.
At the time of writing I'm am trying to concentrate but it is very hard because of the noise from Jeanne's bloody manual cherry de-stoner (see pic) going ninety to the dozen outside the MS, she doesn't half like cherries does Jeanne. I washed it up the other day and the bloody thing is dangerous, six or eight steel pins, I can't remember but there are lots of them, are formed into some kind of device that reminds me of a beaver trap, you should have to hold some kind of license for these things.
I don't know if it is us, but all the loony campers park next to us, loony in the manner of their transport and sleeping arrangements that is. This one is a Land Rover (SWB) with an actual tent on the top, Derek made the case that they use them in Africa, on Safari. I'm sorry but as the tent is only 1.85 m from the ground and is a fabric TENT and not a steel covered hut, lions et al can easily lean against the bloody thing and grab a nice thigh or torso, no thanks.
Jeanne likes cooking which is good because I like eating, she did a Lamb Tagine, a north African dish, the other day and it was superb!
Well the good news is the roof bike racks I put on the other day have been tested and actually work. They are both extendible V shaped steel plates that bolt to the roof rack and an arm, pivoted near the font of them, is attached via a clamp to the diagonal frame member of the bike. Now if you understood and can picture that correctly, you should get out your Haynes car manuals and mechano set because you are wasted reading this.
The only problem is getting the bikes up there!
The roof of the Navara stands at nearly 2 m, over 6 foot in old money, so I have to climb onto the metal covered pick up bed and a helper i.e. SWMBO lifts each bike up to me and I then manoeuvre them into place and lock into position whist trying not to chip the car's paint with peddles etc. Of course this is rather difficult before the bike ride, after the bike ride nearly bloody impossible as your legs muscles are cramping all the time and the paint work is scalding to the touch, still she's happy. So now when we see a bike ride that is simply too far to ride to, we drive to it.
Which we did by driving to Ezcaba, just north of Pamplona where we camped last year and doing the 12 mile river cycle ride to Pamplona and back. Derek & Jeanne enjoyed it, we had a picnic half way and it was flat because it followed the river Ulzama into Pamplona. Derek particularly enjoyed it, as at a number of points on it's twisting path glimpses of the Lidl (May God bless and keep it) at Burlada could be seen between the trees, little things please you know.
On the way back a call into Carrefore was required so Derek and I set our GPS's and promptly drove off in different directions arriving more or less at the same time, but by different routes. However Derek drove straight into the underground car park with SWMBO “asking” why we had not followed them in, I pointed to and through, our glass sun roof. So we had to circle a while until we found a space because she was determined that Jeanne wasn't going to have all the fun. I actually forgot to buy beer on a trip to a supermarket, a first, I must be losing my grip.
Friday 4 June 2010 El Molino and days are going fast.
We will be back in England in less than two weeks!
Plan today is to cook my special chilli vegetable soup but as my cook house chilli didn't go down, if at all, well, I may have it all to myself. The girls tried adding yoghurt and cream to cool it down a bit but it was still a bit of a stinger, although I just ate it as it was but I must admit that the next morning I became alone in the toilet block quite quickly. So I'm cooking and the other three have gone on a walk, although I think Derek misunderstood and thought Jeanne had suggested “a long talk”, so he got suckered. I better put the beer in the fridge now.
When they got back all complained of the horse's tails, like little darts, that get stuck in your clothing, especially your socks, Derek didn't like them much.
Back to yesterday. After a bed sheet washing day it was decided to visit some of the wine factories or “Bodegas” in the Basque countryside, some can be visited and some are even hotels, as it turned out we saw a lot of them but never actually visited any. This meant, or rather turned out to be, a 170 odd mile drive via Logrono, Laguardia and Penacerrada, the last two being villages and Logrono a fairly large town. For Caravan Club members this was via A12, N 124 outward and N 232 inward.
The Navara was being used as a magic washing line so Derek's Land Rover Discovery was the chosen vehicle. A/C consisted of opening the windows and as reported temperatures of 36°C, we needed to open them as far as possible. Derek's Mio GPS has maps on it that Napoleon used during his Peninsular campaign so we stopped quite at lot to look at equally old hand maps that bore no relation to the road numbers we were coming to.
As SWMBO and I both had cameras we took a lot of pictures, she twice as many as me. Some of the views along the route were spectacular and I can only include a few as uploading pictures from the “Free” El Molino site, sitting in reception can be quite arduous. It was a good day out thoughbut and I could not understand, as only a passenger, why I was so knackered when we got back.
Speaking of which being Friday, when we did get back around 7'ish the Spanish had arrived, shocker!
It had started out as a “car walk”, that is drive to a certain spot then a circular walk of about two hours. After visiting the various places the walk was put on a back burner and we never found the start point anyway. Although I have a sneaking suspicion that that was Derek's plan from the beginning as he and exercise don't really mix well, he will do it but usually only at gun point or the lure of a bacon sandwich at the end of it.
This afternoon will be a big shop as second born, Heather arrives tomorrow and all the talk is of what food she will eat, if I know Heather at all it will be anything so long as there is tomato sauce in easy reach. So it's the 75 mile, or so, drive up the Biarritz airport to pick her up and we might go the pretty way via Saint Jean de Luz. The car is beginning to know the way without me.
Just got back from the big shop and in Pamplona it was 36°C and not much cooler here at El Molino and guess what, SWMBO has to do a load of ironing, serves her right for doing so much washing in the first place, say so in the scriptures.
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