Viva Espana

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As I sit on the ferry trying to wrap myself around the 10 item mega-breakfast there is time to reflect on my first ever visit to Spain. That's right, despite being reasonably well travelled I have never been to Spain before.

On the negative side, it isn't exactly pretty. At least, not on the coast which is lined with 60's and 70's concrete apartment blocks and hotels. I'm guessing that architects didn't exist back then or, if they did, they must have all been busy designing cement factories. Inland comes a layer of cookie-cutter villas. These are mostly much newer and ok on the eye but there are countless thousands and all identical. When you eventually break through the villas you reach the cement factory belt. I assume the big cost of concrete apartment blocks must have been diesel for the cement lorries because they have certainly tried to keep delivery distances short! Finally you reach open countryside which is very lovely when it is hilly but covered in greenhouses and poor little towns when it isn't.

By far the worst thing about Spain are the roundabouts and speed bumps. The roads are good, smooth and mostly traffic free but any journey takes an age and involves constant acceleration and fierce breaking. My theory is this: when the construction business here went tits up (there are abandoned developments everywhere) they were left with a zillion builders and ten zillion cement factories with nothing to do. A roundabout or speed bump doesn't use a lot of cement but build enough of them.......

Good things? Well, the weather obviously! In very late November it was T-Shirt weather and I gather temperatures almost never drop into single digit degrees C. It is also cheap as chips, for example:

Diesel - less than a quid per litre
Beer - a pack of TWELVE cost me £2.50
Wine - in a restaurant a very drinkeable house wine is about 6 quid
Hotels - our cheapest was 27 quid and perfectly OK

I'm sure there are other things I could have bought but I can't bring them to mind.

But the BEST thing about Spain is the motorways! If you have ever wondered what it would be like to drive up the M1 when it first opened just try the main motorway up the middle of Spain. It is only 2 lane but almost completely empty. I set my cruise control at 80 and, 600 miles later I had averaged......80! Even better - there are vast stretches in the south that are toll-free. I would get there soon and givem then a try - it can only be a matter of time before they have run out of other places to put speed bumps!

In the last year or so I have started to believe that I am growing out of my near-terminal sea sickness. The boat has just left the harbour into a fair swell and I realise I was wrong. Huey and Ralph - I'm calling your names!

Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone on the EE network.


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