Downshifting Abroad

Diary of a Downshifter - Part 2

The Journey
On October 3 1993 we set off for Plymouth and the ferry to Santander in a Luton Van driven by our friend Graham and us in the lightweight Landrover and trailer. It was strange to think that ‘that was it’. No more salary. No job. No England and all the English things, and even harder to imagine that this wasn’t a holiday. It was for real. Remarkably very little happened of note and we boarded the ferry without incident and went on to enjoy the 24 hour journey to Spain. It’s really well worth while travelling this way even if a bit pricey, but you avoid the exorbitant cost of motoring through France (toll roads/campsites/fuel/refreshments/drinks). We’ve been through France many times but delightful as it is, it’s just so expensive. That hasn’t changed over the years. Two years ago I crossed the Pyrenees into France by car. En route, I stopped to have lunch in Spain where for eight euros I had a meal of roast Pyrenean rabbit with all the trimmings, half a bottle of white and a coffee. Eight euros! On my first stop in France at the end of that same day, three small beers in tulip glasses cost me nine euros! (I had to have three because the glasses were so small!)
Anyway, back to getting to Spain. The Picos Mountains were our first site of the country and we arrived in that delightful port on a perfect autumn day and set off up that hill along which all travellers have to go.  After shuffling drivers around we lost Annabel near Burgos. Graham and I stopped for a drink at a road side inn and even though she nearly ran us over, Annabel passed by without seeing us. We set off after her and it took three hours to catch up. She thought we were ahead and was going at speed to catch us.
Our first night was to be in the campsite at Aranjuez, but it was closed so we made our way back towards Madrid and stayed at Getafe in a not so salubrious place, but it had a bar and for the moment that was enough. During the second day we lost Graham who thinking he had passed us went back to Bailen to find us, then realised he didn’t actually know the route or where we were going. He ended up in the police station where we found him many hours later. We spent the second night on the outskirts of Granada.
On day three we finally ground our way down to our small cottage behind the big rock known as La Peña near Los Romanes in the province of Malaga.
By the time we had burnt out most of the gears on the Luton van after it got stuck in the valley, we were desperate to unload before dark, and we finally moved everything into the now grossly overcrowded cottage. We were to spend the next 13 years wondering why we had brought so many belongings with us. In fact we still have most of it in the original boxes. We had been warned to take nothing and we had ignored it. At the end of the day we went straight to a small bar in the nearby hamlet and tucked into an excellent meal and copious amounts of wine. This was the right thing to do. It relaxed our frayed nerves and set us up for the days ahead. As we wandered back to the cottage, Annabel looked at the dark, isolated non electric cottage and said, “I’ll give it a year”.