We're leaving 'sunny Spain'.................

Thurday 11th.March

Just when you think the weather couldn't get any worse we had another horrendous spell that lasted till Tuesday. Spanish Tv should snow chaos in Burgos,Madrid and Valencia with snow as far south as Jaen, near where we stopped on the way down here. The border at Jonquera was closed through snow which we had crossed in sunshine 2 months ago. Monday night saw an especially nasty bout of rain and high winds spring up as we joined Nick & Barbera and Bob & Sue for a meal after the usual monday night buffet had been cancelled under suspicious circumstances-the bingo session cum salsa lessons appear to have run their day and the management is looking for new ways to entertain us.
Tuesday and Wednesday dawned bright and cheerful however and the birds have started singing in the mornings and the cicadas cicade ( or whatever they do ) at night. Had a very pleasant day exploring Barossa again and ran into our recently arrived neighbours, John and Allison, who are very serious tandem riders and clock up 2-3000 miles a year the hard way. They are good company and have arrived via Turiscampo in Portugal where we are off to on Friday so much up-to-date information was forthcoming over tea and cakes.
The wednesday night quiz saw us relegated to 4th, with a new quiz master, and our winning partners, Dave & Kath, of 3 weeks ago. We were lying 2nd at the halfway stage but dropped off badly, not knowing that it was Malaga that was opening a third airport terminal and that Billy Connolly was the comedian in The Last Samurai (i chose to answer Timothy Spall who was in it but obviously not comedic enough.This grated somewhat as of course we visted the temples where it was filmed in Japan last year). However, we did know that the link between a seven times F1 champion and the Spanish prime minister was that their names translate into "Cobbler".( I'll send the answer on a postcard to those who can't work it out). Our score of 36/50 shows the increased level of hardness, and the winners only scored 39 1/2 and happened to be our new neighbours, John & Allison.(second and third were on 37 and a tie-break). So in 5 quizzes we came 1,2,3,and 4th twice out of 15-20 teams which I am quite smug about and can be as this is my blog.
In view of a dodgy forecast of rain on Thursday a management decision was made to move off the pitch early on thurs.morning before the drying effect of the last 2 days could be reversed and spend the night on the road by the restaurant. This also allowed us plenty of time to wash the gripmats,ramps and groundsheets at the carwash prior allowing us to leave early on Friday. This proved to be a very good move as we were able to extricate ourselves with very little fuss ( and no swearing) from the quite deep ruts we had sunk into and all the equipment was caked in sand and mud that needed a fair bit of attention. And it did rain on THursday afternoon so we are ahead of the game. Meeting all at the restaurant tonight for farewell drinks and off to OLHAO, Portugal tomorrow.
I apologise if anyone tried to log on a few days ago and had problems with virus alerts. I downloaded a site-traffic counter from Google who provide the blog service and it appears to have contained a trojan. After an email from Julian, I managed to remove the gadget with some difficulty and it now seems OK. I thought Google would have verified these add-ons it recommended.