Larry Goes to Fuengirola. (1) Monday 9 May 2022
I belong to (in fact, founded) a club called the Throgmorton Club in 1995. It has only one aim, which is to go out once a month on salary day and have a really good lunch. It began as an occasional rebellion against the increasingly prevalent sandwich-at-desk-and-keep-working syndrome. We have been going for over 25 years now, and we have added new members, lost one or two, and so forth. One of our earliest members, being cleverer than most, emigrated to a very pleasant town on the Costa del Sol, called Fuengirola. Every few years, we decamp to Spain and have our lunch in or about Fuengirola, which is roughly half way between Malaga and Marbella.
The first time, Sue & I took the ferry from Portsmouth to Bilbao, then drove down one side of Spain, coming back up the other side to the Picos de Europa. The second time, we just got a cheap flight to Malaga and back. This is the third time, and having acquired my lovely new motorhome, what could I do but decide to drive there and back, in Larry La Strada?
So towards the end of December, I booked Larry onto a nice safe, reliable P&O ferry. Ha! Little did I know that P&O was about to shoot itself in the foot. When they sacked all their staff and their ferries were prevented from sailing, I tried to cancel the booking, which their website said customers could do, they flatly refused to refund the cost. So I hung on, and waited to see what would happen. Not a very auspicious beginning!
A week before I was due to sail they managed to get one of their ferries, Spirit of Brexit, sorry, Britain, working again. Then on the Thursday before I sailed they sent me an email to say that my booking had been rescheduled from 7am to 9.30am departure. No good for me because I was planning to visit friends near Limoges and would have no hope of getting there at a reasonable time if I only reached France about 12 noon. After a long phone call, they moved me to the ferry before.. 3am!
The crossing went well enough - I was asleep much of the time - and I got to drive in France for the first time in over two years, at about 5.50am. And what a delight it was ... no traffic at all, at least for the first few hours. I made steady progress south and only really encountered traffic holdups on the outskirts of Limoges. However, it made for a long day, and somewhere south of Orleans I had to pull into an aire and doze for an hour to avoid being too sleepy to be safe.
I reached Tim and Kaja's welcoming embrace about 5.30pm, after what felt like a hard day - but I was now deep into Limousin, proper rural France. It was so nice to meet Kaja and to see Tim again for the first time in nearly 20 years.
After a brief rest we walked into the village, tiny but it does have a bar. Everybody shakes hands with everybody when they come in, very sociable. Then back to the farm... Tim is an accomplished cook, and we had a lovely meal and just a drop or two of wine before I crashed out and slept like a log ..
The source of the river Charente is just a few yards from Tim & Kaja's property
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