Well, it has been quite a day.
We were away from Viacamp around 9 am. The rain had pelted down in the night, causing much worry about the errant cats (who came home around 01:30) and it was still raining heavily as we had our morning coffee. I suggested waiting a while or even staying put for another day but The Driver wanted to crack on.
As it happened, the rain stopped before we left and it remained stopped all day.
The first leg of the journey was quite lovely. The scenery was great and the light fantastic. There was virtually no traffic on the road, though quite a lot of tumbleweed in evidence! There was what you might call a stuff breeze.
Things went downhill as we left the Pyrenees and neared Lleida, where the scenery really bottomed out.
When we arrived at our destination it was only to discover that our parking spot had been washed away by floods. We moved to a nearby parking place but it lacked services that we were in need of. All other nearby places held the prospect of being weather-damaged also and so we decided to skip a day and do tomorrow’s journey today as well.
It turned out to be a pretty poor decision.
The wind picked up very quickly after we set off again. It became worse and worse and ever worse once we had reached the Mediterranean Highway. We saw one big tailback in the other side of the road where a caravan (possibly/probably) had flipped over and been reduced to matchwood. It didn’t do our confidence much good… I described it earlier as being "extremely windy"; I have since been informed by The Driver (and resident weather geek) that the correct technical term is "fucking windy". Indeed, at one point I called up a wind map service to see if things were to improve. They weren’t. And at that point it was giving gust speeds of 107 kph for our current location.
Shortly after that discovery we had to exercise our Gilets Jaunes for the first time ever, when having to pull up on the hard shoulder because our awning had blown open and one of the legs had come down. Ever tried to close a van awning in gale force winds on a motorway? I don’t recommend the exercise.
The Driver did what he could but shortly after we got under way again I could see that it wasn’t properly closed and was flapping a little. We left the motorway at the next exit and parked at the toll area and tried closing the thing again. It looked to me to be bent out of shape so I suggested deploying duct tape (fabulous all purpose kit essential item).
Happily the awning remained closed for the remainder of our journey. Windspeeds also decreased somewhat. By the time that we reached Alcossebre, you wouldn’t have known that there was a wind at all!
We almost didn’t get here at all. Just minutes before our exit we were overtaking an HGV that suddenly and unexpectedly signaled to pull out right in front of us. I admit it; I shrieked in horror and expectation of a collision. Not sure how but my expert driver avoided it. He was very rude about the lorry driver though. I am beginning to feel that we need a swear box in the van…
We arrived a few minutes before 3 pm, picked a pitch and booked in for an expected month.
Showers were had, beer opened, shorts and t shirts donned… Butterflies and Dragonflies were on the wing. We ate our dinner outside and sat out until after dark, listening to the sea and the cicadas.
It was a perfect end to what had been until then a perfectly dreadful and horribly stressful day.
25 °C today and the same expected tomorrow. We plan to try the pool out.