This page is laid out to be read from top to bottom giving some visitors the opportunity to skip the pictures of the Lotus visit at the bottom.

Welcome back, and to the start of our tour of Spain which is expected to last two months. As always the trip has been planned (I will attach the Travelscript at the end of the trip) but I did get a little carried away. It was to have included both Spain and the southern part of Portugal, but having done all the research I added up the number of places we were to visit and found there was nowhere near enough time to do it all, and so I’ve chopped out Portugal and some of the Spanish destinations, leaving sufficient to give us an average two days at each location. As always the itinerary is totally flexible and we’ll chop and change along the way as we choose.

I’m now glad we’ve chopped out Portugal as they have tightened up on motorhomers this summer. Visitors can only stay 48 hours in any one location and can’t park within 500 metres of a beach, presumably to force motorhomes to use the campsites. This I’m afraid is what happens when travellers try to do everything on the cheap and spoil it for the rest of us.

Those who looked at our ‘Expenses’ sheet at the end of the last may have noticed that the fuel costs and LPG were not completed. This is because to try and be accurate I calculate the expenditure from ‘door-to-door in the UK and Port-back-to-Port when on the continent. However coming home on our last trip we suffered a mechanical failure on the A1(M) and ended up doing the last 120 miles on the back of a recovery vehicle. I felt it would have been a little cheeky to ask the recovery driver if we could stop off at Morrisons Supermarket in St Ives to top up the LPG cylinders and fuel tank as we passed. Following a diagnosis of the problem at our local garage it turns out to have been the EGR valve.

I did finally get around to writing to Morrisons supermarket HQ regarding the confusion of whether they sold LPG at a pump or in cylinders. I suggested the website for each filling station location show ‘LPG pump’ or ‘LPG cylinders’, or both of course if they sell both. They liked the idea and are going to amend their website accordingly.

The Chef and I returned to the Lord Nelson pub in Burnham Thorpe for lunch on my birthday at the end of July. I wanted to take a look at how the extension and refurbishment had turned out. I have to say they’ve done a lovely job. It’s a shame it had to have an extension in order to accommodate a restaurant but at the end of the day these are businesses and they have to be profitable otherwise we lose them forever.

I had been keeping an eye on the number of visits to the blog in the run up to my birthday in the hope that it reached 600,000 on the day, and to my delight it did, though I did have to wait until about 22:30 for it to click over to 600,003, so that was a close one.

On the 7^th August I made a visit to the workshops of Classic Team Lotus www.classicteamlotus.co.uk  (GPS: N52.559877 E1.181736) at Hethel in Norfolk. Google Maps still show them occupying the buildings next door, but they moved a few years ago. This visit was vastly superior to the one I made back in2010. The new building has terrific workshop facilities downstairs with individual bays for each vehicle being worked on and a display of historic Lotus racing cars upstairs. Our guide, Richard Parramint, has been associated with ‘Team Lotus’, and later, ‘Classic Team Lotus’ for many years and was very entertaining and knowledgeable. The visits are every few weeks and cost around fifty-five pounds. I’m sure it would be a treat for anybody interested in motorsport. I have put photographs of the visit at the bottom of the page for those interested.

Right now, America’s favourite senile geriatric, President Joe Biden, has completely screwed up in his rush to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan. This left the UK with no alternative but to get out ourselves, as we stood no chance of doing the job without their military support. What kind of military expert with a chest full of medal ribbons plans a withdrawal whereby the military leave FIRST, resulting in the humiliating and dangerous task of having to return to evacuate the civilians? It was so annoying to see just how fast the Afghan Army’s well equipped 300,000 soldiers could drop their weapons and run from the hairy-faced tea-cosy-wearing invading Taliban army of some 60,000 fighters. On reflection perhaps the US and British army’s should have given the guns and training to the Afghan women who are left to pay a far greater price than the men.

During the evacuation and after twenty years of training and rehearsals the world witnessed the first public performance of ‘The Flying Yella-Bellys’ display team. Unfortunately for them things didn’t go quite to plan. Perhaps grieving family members are already considering suing the USAF for failing to provide outside seating on its planes.

I think it’s right we should take some of the refugees from Afghanistan, especially the interpreters and their families who supported our troops on the ground, at great risk to themselves. The trouble is they’ll be on top of the boatloads of illegal migrants landing on our shores every day, a situation which Boris the Clown seems utterly incapable of resolving.

Speaking of boats, we’ve now arrived at Portsmoth harbour and are due to sail from to Santander at 09:00 tomorrow morning. I just hope we’ve got the necessary covid-19 paperwork in order. Some may question why we are making this trip. The simple answer is that when you’re young, losing a couple of years out of your life due to covid restrictions isn’t so hurtful, you have lots more years ahead of you to make up for what you missed out on. But at our age every year is precious, too precious to spend it hiding away from the world. We have done everything required of us during this pandemic, and now it’s time for us to get back out and live our lives again, taking, of course, all the necessary precautions along the way.

Do please join us.