Iceland Revisited

 It's ten years since we travelled around Iceland with a great group of motor-homers and caravanners so it was good to meet up for a celebration (but in the slightly less ambitious Stratford upon Avon). A lot of these guys have been meeting every year since but it was our first time seeing many of them since that brilliant trip.....and how nice was that. We're normally out of the UK at this time but perhaps being able to attend this is the only advantage of Brexit that I've discovered as we're trapped here by the 90 day rule. Very weirdly, everyone looked almost the same, even if the trip photographs showed that this wasn't entirely the case. [Blog rules mean that images of these activities remain private] 

Meals were eaten, wine, cakes and prosecco consumed and communal activities undertaken. We also found time to explore Stratford again, take the town tour (highly recommended) and, as we always do when in Stratford, visit the Shakespeare Theatre, this time to see the RSC's newly launched modern interpretation of Love's Labour's Lost. 

We stayed on for an enjoyable couple of days after the reunion...

Visits to:

Warwick Castle - commercialised, yes, but in a good way we think. The ex Madame Tussauds waxwork figures do really bring many displays 'to life'.

We saw a fascinating demonstration of a large Trebuchet as a new attraction to add to low flying birds of prey.

Kenilworth Castle - English Heritage is the guardian of this excellent site, including a nice café in an ancient stable.

The British Motor Museum - a must-see for car enthusiasts like me. 

A shot from the Jaguar heritage collection:

I used to have one of these as a student, hand painted orange.

....and, on that note, what about our car.......

This was the first tow of our 1.7 tonne caravan with the new Volvo XC60 Recharge - and quite a test it was; we towed up to Stratford upon Avon through high winds, rain and hail with many heavy lorries on the M25 especially. Much to our relief, the car performed extremely well, feeling very secure in these conditions even if not quite delivering the immovable performance of the old Touareg. The power from the 2 litre turbo petrol engine was more than adequate after the main charge of the battery was used up. Impressive and extremely comfortable. The downside is 22mpg motorway towing.

Let's see how it gets on in our forthcoming trip to Portugal.

Travelling 2024

 As Brexit casts its travelling shadow on us we are balancing the time that we might spend travelling in the Schengen zone with staying in our Nerja home. We've decided that travelling in Portugal with the 'van works if we spend less time in Nerja in the spring, planning to use almost all of the 90 days allowed in the previous 180. Unfortunately this will impact on the time we can spend in Nerja during September/October. 

So - after a couple of trips to Nerja up to March, if all goes to plan, we'll be heading for Portugal via France and Spain for around five weeks, meeting up with our daughter and partner in Lisbon, from where they're working for a couple of months. We'll work out the rough itinerary soon.

The trip won't be with our car of eight years - our much loved, powerful, comfortable VW Touareg; we've downsized. We now have a Volvo XC60 Recharge - which is a plug in hybrid with a 2 litre turbo petrol engine. It won't have the lugging power of the 3 litre diesel Touareg but should do the job while allowing local electric only trips back home. I've sat behind a 3 litre diesel in various forms for some 20 years so, for me, it's quite a change. Still, it's controlled by a Google driven touch screen which is a bit of a novelty and it goes like stink when asked to perform so we'll see how it goes with 1.7 tonnes on the back... Watch this space; OK Google?