January

A few cloudy days .. temp on average around 14 - 16 degrees. not to bad not sunbaking weather
a couple of easy days, frequented a couple of local bars and restaurants in Coveta Fuma , food pretty good.
Visits to Elche( couple churches and cemetary) and Alicante (the Three Kings Xmas parade at night.. lotsa people , Denia and more with family did a couple of touristy things. Spent a wonderful xmas traditional day lotsa paella and vino tinto with Danny and Marta distant cousins of Briar's. ...Left Coveta Fuma Villa, El Campello on the 10th Jan - drove to ALbacete then on to camp ground at Los Batanes. Snow around about and snowed during the night as well.
11th Jan drove on to Madrid - pretty cold and heaps of snow all the way up in the huge ploughed fields. Even the bucket of window wash water was frozen solid with the hose stuck in it!
Found a camp ground on the outskirts in Villaviciosa which we will travel into Madrid from on the bus.
We are camped just west of Madrid with access to the city via the bus service. Today we are having a camp day to get the blog site up and running and catch up on business stuff for Mark also.
We have travelled through some high country climbing steadily to Madrid. Snow has been in vast fields of ploughed land – as far as the eye could see. It snowed during the night we stayed at Los Batanes, Albacete – a lake area where driving around to the camp ground was a little like driving around Lake Rotoiti – very picturesque. We have the occasional extra thrown in – I am calling them TomTom tours – where we misunderstand ‘Ma Cherie’ and she misunderstands me mostly – sadly we named her before she gave us the assorted tours we weren’t expecting…
‘Hugo’ is trucking along really well – had him serviced in El Campello so we know all should be great. An easy drive with enough power to cope with all we ask on the motorways etc. Only a couple of doors swung open as we drove off and I have learnt to open overhead lockers slowly after travelling – or risk a dumping of the contents after the movement of travel. Getting pretty good at packing anti-rattle by now whew…so the trip is relatively quiet. Great heater on board so we keep very cosy and can work in the kitchen easily as well. Got all we need!