I arrived in Leipzig today from Prague. I am quite frankly in culture shock. I have previously driven through small parts of Germany, but don’t believe I have stayed, even for one night. Therefore this visit to Leipzig, although short is my first experience and it hasn’t been anything like I was expecting.
Germany has the strongest economy of any in Europe and has been like that for some years. Everything we have heard over the past 30 years has been how well off workers are and how well the social state looks after people.
Having checked into my hotel I decided to take a short walk to a nearby restaurant for an early evening meal. The area I found myself in is a student area, but living near to Oxford, that is not something that is new to me. On this road-trip I have seen many poorly maintained buildings that are in that state due to lack of finance, age of...
We only stayed in Rzeszow for one night and then we started the first good drive of the trip. Up until now, due to the very high temperatures everywhere, I have restricted our driving to two hundred miles a day. Hardly got started before I was putting her back in the garage. Today I have decided that, as the temperature has dropped to mid-twenties centigrade and it is cloudy, we will do a full four hundred miles.
Great decision because the roads in Poland are in first class condition and by and large the traffic is light to middling. The weather played ball and remained reasonable all day, although it did rain for about an hour. Fortunately, I saw the warning signs and put the top up before it started, so all text book stuff. Including several stops, we were on the road for seven hours.
We arrived in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, at around 16:00 hrs; this is the 17th...
Firstly my apologies for the delay in posting this 'end of run' blog. After nine months away from home there are so many things that demand attention that I quite forgot that, according to this page, I was still in deepest France.
I spent three very pleasent days in Blaymont with my cousin and her husband and did absolutely nothing to the car other than a cursory check of the oil and water levels. The steering still felt secure so I assumed the kingpin was holding up.
There are several different routes from Blaymont back to the UK and I surveyed the different ferries available before deciding that I would drive all the way up to Calais and use either EuroTunnel or a ferry. Bridget and I set off for Le Mans using minor roads rather than the main highways. The weather was dry and for the most part sunny, but I didn't drop the hood. Bridget was rather laden down with too many...
The run home has not started particularly well. Transmediterranea Acciona, the ferry company operating the original ferry service between Cadiz and the Canary Islands, is an un-principled operator with no concern for its customers. In full knowledge of the detrimental effect that sea water has on the bodywork of automobiles they insist on placing their customers cars on the open deck of their ferries. Bridget has a glazed coating of crystallised salt thanks to Transmediterranea. To anyone thinking of taking a ferry to the Canaries I would strongly recommend the alternative company that operates.
We arrived in Cadiz and disembarked at 12:30 on Monday. From there we drove the eighty miles to Seville, my first overnight of the run. Bridget and I visited Seville on our first ever run together in 2006 and I was scathing in my summing up of the city. Although I only had a few hours to explore I have to say my previous comments were both...
Having received an e-mail from my ‘conscience’ in Abingdon pointing out that it has been four weeks since my last report I thought I had better make the effort. My apologies to those regular readers that may have wondered what had happened.
This will be our final post from the Canary Islands before starting the run back home.
In fact I have been enjoying a very entertaining time. First, my very good neighbour came visiting for a week bringing all the local news for the past eight months. We spent six of the seven days she was here walking in the mountains and were fortunate with mainly warm and cloudless weather, important if you are to be able to appreciate the breath-taking views.
The next week I got back into some serious training in the gym and obviously overdid the whole thing because I pulled a muscle in my groin and had to rest it for most of the following two weeks. It...
