I haven't told the entire story, so let's see if I can make you laugh some more.Originally Posted by Alex_UK
As I said, this lad would insist on eating McDonalds, so after the Le Mans fiasco I suggested the kids stock up on food that they WOULD eat, otherwise we were going to make forward progress around 10 miles per day. I was very fair in saying that at the next supermarket stock up they could choose exactly what they wanted to eat because I was Donald Duck'ed if I was searching for a McD 2 or 3 times a day for the rest of the holiday. Anyway, me and the woman stocked up on the usual bacon, eggs, bread, milk, etc., but when we reached the checkout we found daughter and boyfriend had come back with 5 bananas and around 10 packets of crisps. I said nothing.
After we landed at Calais, I turned North to head into Belgium to stock up on cigarettes because France is a funny place to buy ciggys if you are a smoker. I bought 2 cartons then with the intention of stocking up just before returning to England. Part of the journey was to go through Andorra before hitting Spain near Barcelona. Only stopped for one night in Andorra and walked around some town centre or other gazing in the shops. The prices were incredibly low because it is tax free of course, so the kids (Daughter aged 14, boyfriend aged 21) buy bottles of booze and cartons of ciggies. I pointed out several times that once at the Spanish border we probably would be clobbered by customs for duty, but their attitude was what does a silly old fart like me know about these things? Sure enough, at the Spanish border there was one heck of a queue to leave Andorra whereas on the way in there wasn't. We got pulled over and searched with a fine tooth comb and the customs man was smiling when he removed an armful of cigarette cartons and demanded either the duty or have it confiscated. I told him mine were bought in Belgium and he should look at the packet seals for proof, so he could whistle fro any duty from me. The kids had spent all their money buying the fags and had no money to pay the duty, so they waved goodbye to the lot. Sympathy from me? I'll leave you to guess how much sympathy I had.
Anyone who has been in Spain during August will know that flying pigs and rocking horse crap is easier to come by than space on a campsite, so every evening it was a stop-start trek from one campsite to the next trying to book a space but being turned away. We had reach Cape Trafalgar at around 5.00pm and I stopped at a site that said vacancies on the gate. Yippee. Went into reception and yes there was one place left, so open wallet, pay the man and smartly walk back to the 'van with site map in hand, mighty pleased with myself. Open door and daugher announces "We aint stoppin' 'ere". Errrrrm, why not? "Cos it aint got a swimmin' pool". "Aint got a feckin' ski slope or feckin' helipad either, but they have got a feckin' space for the feckin' night" thinks I. Grrrrrrrrrr. I had an instant Flashback to Planes, Trains and Automobiles when his rental car goes missing.
Daughter starts bawling, mother wades in and orders we move on. Between Cape Trafalgar and Cadiz there must have been at least 20 campsites and all of them were full. 6 hours later my navigator manages to get us lost in Cadiz city centre. Not entirely her fault because there were roadworks and diversions all over the place, but I am getting very tired, very hungry and as fine a city as Cadiz may be, I was getting pissed off with seeing it the fifth time around. It was knocking on for 2.00am now and I had more chance of swimming the Atlantic with Tower Bridge strapped to my back than finding a campsite with a vacancy. T'other side of Cadiz, I pulled off the motorway down a side road and found a layby because my eyelids were mighty heavy. Engine off, kettle on. Daughter says "Why are we stopping here?" I said I have no intention of driving another yard because I was exhausted and particularly so when 3 others have been snoring for the last hour behind me. "But I don't feel safe spending the night here" she whines. If I took her brain out and put a turd in there it would probably double her intelligence. I ignored her but mother says the same thing, so I pointed out the SAFEST place to spend the night was 9 hours ago and 100 or so miles behind us. Suddenly, this crisis has become MY fault. FFS! "Saint Frank" simply isn't big enough a title for what I had to go through then.
After I bunged matey boy out at Benalmedena, it was sulks, sulks and even more sulks from daughter. This little bitch could sulk for England at the Olympics. Reached Malaga that night and actually found a space at a campsite!!!! The place was packed. Each plot was fully occupied down the last millimeter and the streets in the campsite was packed with cars, so I had to do some deft steering wheel spinning and gear shifting to back into the allocated space, each side of which was lined with pollarded trees. I asked mother to look out on the nearside of the van and daughter to guide me in on the offside. Managed to avoid all the cars, got the back end of the van into the space, when I hear a very loud crunching noise. I look in my rear view mirror to see daughter staring at the ground with her hands in her pockets. In amongst the bushy foliage of the pollarded trees there was a branch which took an obvious dislike to my roofline and the roof lost the battle. Courtesy and politeness was not my top priority when I got out of the van to speak to daughter. Just then the heavens opened, the rain came down with a vengeance and I have a hole in the roof that needs attention. Luckily, I found a shop nearby that had some wide white tape which I hoped would stick enough to keep the rain out. That night was spent in silence.
The rain managed to plague me again the following night, not due to a hole in the roof either. Reached Almeria by evening time and found a campsite well away from the coast - seemed to be the best tactic. Nice big plot at the bottom of the site, with a vine covered canopy. Fabulous. No cars at all in the streets, so nice easy access. Backed in nice and slowly, looking in each mirror at my very attentive helpers. Suddenly, the images are moving up my driver's side mirror. Strange, thinks I. Take it out of reverse, into 1st gear and nothing i happening, I am not moving at all. Jumped out the door to see my rear wheel spinning in fresh air over a firkin great big hole where a patch of gravel used to be and the van resting on it's chassis over it. The hole must have been around four foot square by six feet deep, it had what looked like steel reinforcing bars supporting a few paving slabs with about 6 inches of soil and gravel chucked on top. The campsite owner said it must have been the rain that softened it up because there was a big motorcaravan parked in that space the night before and that was fine. Really? I got yanked out by a 4x4 and a length of chain and "Manuel" put a cone behind the 'van and walked away nonplussed. Of course, daughter starts panicking that Spain is going to open up for a 100 miles either side of this hole and we'll never see daylight again. If only.
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