Devall Travels

Once having been through the Holt's Pocket Battlefield Guide a few times, I've added a few points of interest to the original plan. We are now officially on Plan B.

I ordered the pocket guide from Amazon, really just to check that the places I had selected were do-able and also to see what else was local for a "fag break" length stop. The places I have chosen are part of the "Big Six". In fact five of them.  The sixth is the Ulster Tower (above) just a short hop from the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing and the recently built visitor centre. Holt's tours are half day, one day and longer suggested  routes. They are also based on Albert as the overnight point, and hence the starting point. Our start point is Calais.... I may re-jig the route to take into account the tank memorial on the Albert to Bapaume road at Pozières, and other of the aforementioned fag break stops. Currently four of the Kent Centre are booked into the hotel and I have advertised the run to the SOC wider audience and to the R1150GS Facebook group. It's a long way off and once it gets into the club magazines it may take off 

I have planned the route in Tyre. To get to the Somme area in reasonable time, I have planned to use the A26 in both directions. There is a small toll free payable for bikes at either end at Arras and again at Ardres. There will be those that don't like autoroutes. I have done the trip to Thiepval several times using the N and D roads and the time taken in traffic and in villages wastes so much of the day.  Ideally, we could go N43 and N19 to Arras but time is important. I will provide the route to everyone that wants to go, both in GPX and ITN formats, so Garmin and TomTom satellite navigation systems are catered for.

The countdown started with the alarm going off at 8am. By 9am we were up, breakfasted (a noun into a verb) and tidying the apartment and sorting the rubbish. Transferring some stuff (the dirty bag) to my little case to pack around the Arsenal boot bag (electrical stuff like chargers etc) and the Acer notebook meant that the big case would weigh a mere 19.5kgs. Once checked out and email/facebook/blogger checked on the wifi we made slow progress to Playamar to have a coffee and read the kindles.  Time usually drags but with the current two-hour before flights stipulation, we needed to be getting a move on.  TomTom took us to Malagacar and we dropped the Aygo off. I mentioned the key buttons didn't work and they just said the battery had gone.... In 7000kms?  Not good enough Toyota!! Once on the shuttle bus it was a matter of minutes before we joined the queue for the check-in. Pretty painless it was too. Security was a dod...

So once we rejoined the A7 we thought maybe one last visit to La Cala. This time we parked in the Main Street and walked through to the ice-cream parlour. First job was to top the car up. The Aygo needs to be returned as empty as possible. And we were down to the last flashing bar (of six) on the gauge. Not knowing what this will give us, I put in €5 worth. The car must be doing 40mpg if not more, so 3.5 litres put in should give plenty of miles to get back to the hire office at lunchtime tomorrow. In the centre is the Arab Tower. Built like many along the coast as watch towers. Our last dinner is back at El Bombo. Calamari and chips and a salad. An appetiser of bread and garlic mayonnaise. The waitress brought us a sardine each "on the house". Very nice. Too full to walk! Once we have finished we have the walk back to the apartment to pack and maybe get a few minutes of the England game on TV. Up early tomorrow.

The last full day of the holiday. I was awake all night with a gut ache to match even the best curry night afterburn. A couple of codeine-phosphate had it under control in a few hours. We didn't want to waste the day so we set off for Torremolinos. In the end I felt a bit duff so we turned around. Stopping for a coffee at the Cafestore at Arroyo de la Miel grew into lunch. Plus they have free wifi so we could catch up with news and Facebook etc.   Next stop?

Still no Malaga day. Instead we went the other way and went first of all to La Cañada shopping as Claire wanted to have a look around. She bought some face cream and we had a look in the Apple store. I'd like a pad but wanted to see if you can connect a camera to look at the photos, none seem to have that capability. Oh. We had a coffee and unsuccessfully tried to connect to the California coffee shop's wifi! Outside is a curiosity, a fully relocated German Wurzel stand.... German Wurzel stand I suppose the English have "tea like at home" bars... We then set off for Estepona along the coast. TomTom said that it was a toll route but didn't give any options for not going that way and that is very unusual. Down here there two versions of the autovia, A7 free and AP7 toll. Why TomTom opts for the toll route is anyone's guess. If I knew how to send map updates I would as the speed limit on the A7 is 80kph along the entire length f...