22 January ’06, Sunday.
Yesterday morning we left Benidorm and headed north. Our calculations told us we would most likely land close to Barcelona for the night. Our drive was uneventful with the exception of a little rain in the first hour. We stopped just outside of Benidorm, for a replenishment of groceries at Lidl (Liidle), a little butter, wine, and some bread…does that sound familiar???. Then it was onto Barcelona. About 4, we pulled into Vilanova I la Geltru, and our campground for the night. This put us about 25 km short of Barcelona, but at a very large and nice campground. This morning after my shower, I went up to the camp store and bought a couple of nice “sweet rolls” to go with our coffee. After packing, we pulled out of our pitch, but found we were heading into a dead-end street. Stopping, I put “Bumble Bee” into reverse and immediately turned into a stone wall. Upset over that, I pulled forward, put her in reverse again and backed into a Palm tree. This time I did some damage…I broke out the back window and put a big enough dent into the back door that it won’t open….S___ . Glass everywhere and I wasn’t a “HAPPY CAMPER” !!! Not only that, I did it in front of someone…why weren’t they still in bed??? Louise and I got out and started picking up all the glass from the ground and around the window frame…sure enough, we both ended up with blood dripping from our fingers, and a lot of smoke from my mouth…I was pissed !!! Here we are, after traveling through a ton of different countries, thousands of roads and back ally-ways, countless campgrounds, and finally heading “home” we back into a damn palm tree… what more can I say??? Now we are behind “schedule”, so we head out towards our “new” destination…Toulouse, France, and it is after 10:30 in the morning. We are looking for our next highway C-31. C-32 is a “Toll” road, so we want C-31…a non-toll. Finding C-31, we motor on towards Barcelona and then to the French border. Funny thing, as we get onto C-31, it all of a sudden becomes a very narrow, winding and twisting, edge hugging, bicycling, little “ole lady”, “Sunday morning”, sightseeing roadway…I need SPEED!!! We were stuck…for just about 1 hour we were on this wonderful (for those that didn’t have a care in the world) road, and couldn’t get off. Finally, after entering Barcelona, we had a chance to jump to the “Big Man’s” highway, and motor on at our fast clip of 100km (60 MPH). What a morning !!! Now we only had 2 more slight inconveniences…we only had $20 Euros in cash, we needed gas, and we were about ready to pay some heavy duty “highway tolls”. Gas would take up to $50 Euro, and the tolls, about $30 before we could leave Spain. Once on the “toll” road we couldn’t get off to get to a cash machine, so we had to hope that one of the “convenient” service/restaurant stops had one. On our 3rd attempt we found one, but they wanted to charge us a $2 Euro service charge…OK, TAKE IT, JUST GIVE ME MY MONEY !!! Escaping into France, taking a last glance into Spain (which we really liked), we headed off to Narbonne. Turning right toward Carcassonne and Toulouse we were heading into “new territory”. We had wanted to find a way to take this route, but we hadn’t found enough campgrounds open to be able to. Finally, after examining some more campground information, we found what we needed…a campground in Toulouse and Limoges that were open year around. Now we had a different route to Paris and some additional sites in France to see…all is good. We arrived in Toulouse about 4:30, set up, and feeling like Don Quixote and Poncho Sanchez, we had some very good Champagne and snacks to drown our sorrows. A hell of day !!!