Our (Tony’s) new project, changing our Laika motor home for a heavy goods vehicle converted into an expedition truck, was gathering momentum. The 2003 ex Fire Brigade tender we purchased from a dealer in Preston was being shipped to Poland in May 2017 and we reckoned the conversion would take six months or more to complete.
Meanwhile we planned to drive to Morocco, our fourth visit since 2012. We left the UK by Eurotunnel in the middle of May 2017 and stopped overnight at Montbazon where the evening temperature was a balmy 20° and we were able to enjoy an evening meal sitting outside beside the river Indre.
We stopped briefly to have our wheels balanced in Poitiers before travelling on to Monségur to say hello to Caro and Charles in their sunny spot near Bordeaux.
Our next stop was at Navarrenx, an ancient fortified town in the foothills of the Pyrenees. We had just managed a brief walk through the beautiful old town when the rain started and it continued raining for the next 36 hours, making our crossing of the Pyrenees much less spectacular and spoiling our overnight stop by a lake near Zaragoza. That evening it was 13° and we were glad of a burning log fire in the local café where we had a glass of wine and shared a pizza.
By the next evening it has stopped raining and we were able to enjoy a meal outside by the river Tagus at Aranjuez, south of Madrid before driving on to Córdoba where we stopped for three nights at Santaella, a site we have visited many times in the past.
