2016 Morocco

Up early this morning so that we could check the dogs in to have the pet passports checked which Eurotunnel ask for an additional 30 minutes. We leave Wissant, our overnight stop, at 7:30am and arrive at the old pet passport checkin building and then find that they had moved the facility 100m down the road. At 8:00am we are checking ourselves and the van in at the border checks. We find that we can take the train that is one hour earlier at no additional charge. Departure is scheduled for 8:50am.

We are all loaded and start to move off only five minutes after the scheduled time but almost immediately come to a stop. There is a technical fault…. About 30 minutes later we start the journey again. We now make the short train journey to Blighty. With the clocks going back one hour we are driving off the train at 9:00am UK time.

The journey home is uneventful and I did remember to drive on the left. We arrive home at 11:15am. The total mileage over the last 9 weeks was 6309 miles.

Would we do it again? Maybe but we will have to think about whether we use the longer more expensive ferry crossing to north Spain as an alternative which would save a week of driving and about 1600 miles in the return journey. The experiences this year were precious and we met and made friends with some special people as well as continued our friendship with others.

Is it good to back in the UK? Except for the weather it was great to be back on familiar soil and be close to the family.

Until the next trip ….

Really cold last night even though we had the screen covers on. I woke at around 7am and put the heating on so that we could get up to a warm van and then went back to bed. Around 8am the kettle went on and we were soon up and around.

 

We left at around 9:45am to start the long drive to Wissant. Around 12:30pm we stopped for a little lunch. We continued the remaining 100 miles and arrived at around 3:30pm. Quiet relaxing afternoon but still very cold. Getting ourselves ready for the crossing tomorrow. Going to have to get Tina up early which is not always easy especially when it is still dark outside which it will be. Wish me luck. We plan to leave at around 8am.

 

Home tomorrow to see our new bathroom….

It was cold last night as we evidenced with a significant frost on the windscreen. I didn\’t put the screen covers on but will do tonight if it\’s going to be similar in future nights on the way home.

Our first stop was to go and get some fuel from the close by Carrefour. At €1 a litre it\’s still pretty cheap. Filled the tank but we will need more before we exit France.

As we drove along the outside temperature warning light was consistently telling me how cold it was as the beware ice symbol was displayed. For most of the journey it didn\’t get above 3°C. We arrived at the overnight stop early afternoon. I had decided to make today a shorter journey and tomorrow a longer journey. The reasons: On a Sunday there are less trucks on the roads and also. Wanted to listen / watch the AFC Bournemouth match.

We raised the satellite dish and I watched some rugby internationals and also tried to use the Internet to get the football. The Internet was so poor I had to put up with a live blog instead but I did gave the consellation that Match of the Day would be on later and I will be able to watch it.

More rugby and then watched \”The Voice\” on BBC1. Later I was able to catch up on MOTD whilst Tina went to bed.

I did remember to put the windscreen cover on tonight as it\’s going to be yet another cold night.

Tomorrow we make our way to Wissant in readiness for the short drive to the tunnel crossing on Monday morning.

Woke early because one of the dogs wanted to go out so I was up at 6am. Kettle on to wake Tina at 7am as we need to be on the road before 9am. We get to the Vet early at 9:10am and wait our turn. We are called in shortly after 9:30. We explained that Bobby didn\’t want to swallow the worming tablet last year so an injection would be better thus year. He didn\’t flinch. Woody however didn\’t want to swallow the pills this time but did so with a little persuasion and technique from the Vet.

We were on the road at 10am after paying €20.50 which so cheap compared to what others have paid for two dogs. We decided to take the toll road as this will reduce the time on the road. We only have 3 days to travel the 1100 km or around 700 miles. The roads were good and we arrived at out destination around 3pm and were later joined by one other van making two for the night.

We raised the satellite dish for the first time for many weeks in anticipation of receiving something. Voila….we had BBC1. We watched the news and later the rugby international.

Tomorrow will be another long drive and again we will use tolls to save some time. It won\’t be long before we will be back at the tunnel.

Slightly more leisurely start to the day this morning. We woke slightly later so breakfast was at around 9:30am.

We decided that we would use a parking place close to the Vet tonight so we needed to service the van this morning. We paid our €3 at the bar and sat and waited for the chap to come and unlock the barrier. We waited and waited and eventually Tina went in and reminded him ans shortly after that he came out. Soon we were on the road. It was 10:30am

We had around 400km to travel to the outskirts of Leucate. Later in the afternoon we came up to the border with France & Spain. In the past this has been a formality to drive straight through…not today. All the traffic was being diverted past a Police presence very slowly. I assume that they must make the odd check of a suspicious vehicle. Fortunately it wasn\’t us today. We are now in France.

Not long and we are pulling into the parking area. It has some travellers already ensconced with mains water taken from some locked public toilets and mains electric stolen from the adjacent electric boxes. There is a washing machine available to all which has water and electric all plumbed in. No wonder they have new vehicles and caravans.

We changed the crossing date tonight to Monday and had to pay a supplement…. It\’s good to know we will be back home to everything that\’s familiar.

Tomorrow after the Vet visit we will turn north and head for Calais. We will have three days to make Calais.

On the road at 9:30am this morning. We had around 360km to drive to our destination which was close to the one we have been to before. Our first stop was for fuel. Filled with 85 litres of diesel and while I was doing this I was reflecting on the way we in the UK are ripped off. We have been paying around 56p a litre in Morocco and currently in Spain I was about to pay 99 euro cents or about 80p. I noticed that our cheapest diesel close to home is around £1 per litre. How can this be …. tax of course and that we are considered to be wealthy enough to pay for it. Are we not dumb…. don’t answer that!!

We are now travelling on the toll road as this will save us about 2 hours in journey time. The road is quite empty for most of its way until the road becomes free once again and all the trucks are on the road.

We stop at a roadside service area and visit the cafe in the service station. I say cafe because that is what is on the window. It turns out to be no more that a small supermarket selling a few sandwiches, drinks and accessories but they do have free wifi albeit very slow. The break was refreshing though.

We arrive at our destination around 2pm. It is in a small village close to where we have stayed before. However, I soon change my mind and we make our way around to the familiar stopping place by a restaurant. The aire id free to use but there is a charge of €3 for the services. I think we will need to use these in the morning.

After visiting the cafe and obtaining the code for the provided free wifi I proceed to update all of the tablets with the latest photos and app updates. Very useful.

After our evening meal we watch another film. Some of the films I have on the hard drive don’t seem to have any sound so our choices are becoming limited. No problem as it will not be long before we are back in blighty.

We did speak to the bathroom contractor and he was a little shocked that we plan to be home on Monday. He was expecting more time to finish our bathroom but we did explain that we do have the van we can use for facilities.

Tomorrow we will make the final part of our journey to exit Spain in readiness for the visit to the Vet on Friday morning. The it will be 3 more days back to Calais for the train and then home. Until tomorrow …

After making the decision last night that we would try and make the Vet earlier than we had planned it was going to be a long journey today. We set off around 10am after emptying the cassette. I followed a frenchman and found where the place was they had used. Tina came back and reported that there were two places. The first was a small round drain over in the corner. There was also a water upstand tap close by. The other was close to the hut and was a big manhole that someone had lifted.

The drive was all on dual carriageway and the initial few miles on a toll road. We kept up a good steady pace of around 90 kph stopping at around 12:30 for a bite to eat and giving the boys an opportunity to have a run.

We had thought we would get as far as Valencia but it was soon evident that this was ambitious so we scaled back the rest of the journey and finished at a hilltop Bar / Restaurant close to El Campello.

On arrival Tina needed to check if this was the place. The bar was full with people playing Bingo and the numbers being called out in English. The camping fee is €5 for the night with access to the Wifi.

I found the purse that we carry with loose change in Euros which we use for car parks & tolls. It had some notes we had left over from the last trip but was also full of small denomination coins (shrapnel). I counted out the €5 in 50, 20 and 10 cent coins. The owner was not at all pleased with us as his words were “This isn’t a supermarket” but he did accept them and we are now here for the night.

The stairway to the bar gave us an opportunity to see the state of our roof which is still covered in sand from our visit to the desert and the sand storm. Its a good job that we are not relying on the solar panels to charge the leisure batteries because we would have been in trouble judging by the state of them.

We thought about using the restaurant but we have got used to Morocco prices and we felt he was expensive so we cooked in the van …. something that Tina hasn’t done for a while!!

Watched a film in the evening and early to bed as we want to get on the road and cover another 400km tomorrow. …

After breakfast we drove around to Lidl and did some essentials shopping. Its surprising what you think you need and then what you actually walk out of the shop with. As usual Tina was drawn to the “bargains”. She picked up a pink top that she assured me was good value at €10… I wasn’t convinced.

Next stop was Mercadonna, the supermarket chain, where we bought the bottles of Caramel vodka at the start of the trip. Unfortunately it seems popular around here as they only had 2 bottles. Have to gone some elsewhere in Spain we thought. We also drove around to Media Markt where I wanted to get a replacement cable for the laptop. After having excellent service in Morocco where everyone wants to help this was a culture shock. The sales assistants just didn’t want to know. Eventually I found out they didn’t have one anyway. It can wait until we get home.

We are now on the road making our way to our overnight stop. Ah … another Mercadonna. We stop and buy the 14 bottles that remain on their shelves. They must think that this is popular in these parts.

We make good time and arrive at Golf Noria where we have been many times before. The “boys” love it here as there is freedom to roam and run. We relax in the afternoon which is warm if a little overcast.

We decide that we would eat out tonight at the Chinese buffet we have frequented before crossing to Morocco. The food was good and it was quite noticeable how many of the people in the restaurant were english. It must be because there are many hotels here that cater for short holidays for the english.

After returning and watching a film we decide that we would crack on with our journey and maybe rearrange both the vet visit and our Eurotunnel crossing….. we will have to see. No matter we are going to leave tomorrow.

Usual start this morning but once again we were on our own again as the french van had gone early. We later saw him queuing at the port. The guardian was now on parade so I did offer him the overnight fee which seemed to have gone up to 40 MAD but he did let me empty the cassette for nothing which is normally 10 MAD.

Making our way out of town at 10:15am we stopped to refill with fuel at the last filling station. We wanted to try and keep the tank full even though we had 90km to the port. We used the toll road which was 71 MAD and it took us about an hour.

Arrived at the port and was told that there was only one boat going out today at 3pm. Fortunately we did get the ticket and changed our last bit of money back to euros. Now came the formalities of the Police, Customs and finally the X-ray machine before we eventually came to the dock around 1pm where we waited for the ferry to come in.

We finally got loaded at around 3pm and set sail. It was very windy and choppy and difficult to walk to the cafe bar for some coffees but we did manage it. The time seemed to fly be and we soon docked at around 4:45pm.

Next stop was to fill with LPG as see how low we were. To my amazement the bottles only needed just over 14 litres of gas…. not even one empty bottle. If only I had known we could have had the heating on when we were up in the mountains. I will know for next time,…

We then took the short drive back to the car park adjacent to Carlos office and Carrefour. As it was Sunday all the stores and restaurants were closed so dinner was a McDonalds. Not our favourite but needs must. We did take advantage of the free WIFI and call some of the family.

Tomorrow it will be shopping for the essentials that need replenishing followed by a short drive along the coast. A fairly easy day for our first full day in Spain …..

We woke as usual and breakfasted and it was soon time to say farewell to our travelling companions who were going to make their way to the coast. They have some time left in Morocco before they will depart the country. We said goodbye around 10am after making discussing some ideas on when and where we will meet again later in March in the UK.

Soon we were servicing the van and departing ourselves. It was around 10:15am when we were on the road. First stop was for some fuel and then travel north west towards Asilah. Nothing eventful happened and we kept a good speed so we arrived in Asilah around 1:30pm.

There was no guardian to greet us and we were the only van on the parking area until one other turned up late in the afternoon. We have not been asked for the fee but maybe it will happen tomorrow.

The internet speed here is excellent so I was able to update the blog and the photos were added to Dropbox. It also enabled me to watch the AFC Bournemouth match which was live on BBC 1. They were playing Everton in the FA Cup. Unfortunately the score line was not favourable 2-0 to Everton.

We still had around 8GB of data allowance so we decided to continue to watch “The Voice” which had been running for several weeks. It seemed strange to catch up with some news and also watch some UK TV.

Our plans have continued to change and we are now going to make for the port in the morning and cross if we can. The weather is similar both in Spain and here so seems little reason not to go. So iy will be farewell Morocco tomorrow …