Devall Travels

All change. Some small changes to the overnight stays have required a change to the routing.  The Parador de Gredos has been changed to another hotel nearer the main route between Madrid and Extremadura. The changes are really to make the trip a little smoother. This routeing is set to avoid toll roads and highways. As usual I have used Tyre to create the routing. Tyre  Route - avoiding highway & toll routing

Booking.com - if you want to book hotels and aren't already signed up with them, please follow the link and sign up.  It's free to you.

So with the car-hire dilemma sorted.  I went for the no-excess plan instead of the low rate and potential hassle route of the cheap hire and massive insurance risk. So back to the route.  As usual I have used Tyre to plan a route between the various stops and the airport. Having this in the TomTom doesn't preclude from going off-piste to look at things in the Rough Guide or on the hoof.   I know there are people that think that a paper map is all you need and technology only ruins the trip. Good luck to them.  Finding a hotel in a huge city and arriving right outside the front door is preferable to riding around for hours.  I have done both other the last 40 years of touring and believe me. The TomTom way is way preferable. So this is the base route: Anti-clockwise at the top from the airport to the Parador de Gredos and then clockwise around the Extremadura cities. There will be some autostrada as well.  Not all of it on ordi...

It's been a while since I updated this trip. Everything has been in place for quite a while and there was nothing much to do, apart from make sure the Advanced Passenger Information (API) was completed for both of us. Then as I was looking through the folder in my Yahoo email I to check dates and make sure that my Tripit itinerary was up to date (it feeds into Google Calendar!) I noticed that although I had a few car hire emails, I hadn't booked any. Car hire is always one of the biggest bugbears for me.  Flights are easy to book. They give you a price and you accept that and then check for the add-ons (rip offs?) such as baggage check and reserving a seat and you get a price.   But with car hire.  There are so many "insurances".  Very annoying.  I ran through a few of the online booking agencies and there are quotes as low as €40/£35/$50 for a week's hire for a small car like a FIAT 500 "Cinquecento". This includes legal insurance cover....

The bane of the blogger's life?  Looking at old posts to get some information and you click on the link and get the dreaded 404 message appears!  Aaarrgghh! It happens to me when I went to  http://invictamoto.blogspot.co.uk/2009/04/easter-saturday-family-war-grave-trail.html to pick up the URL's on two of our relatives that are buried in France in WW1. I ended up having to go to the CWGC website and re-entering all the details to get the new and correct links. Grrrr. I updated the original posting with an "Update" at the so as not to spoil the original alliteration. Job done.

This trip has been on the back burner for a while and I waited until I had something concrete to write about. November 11th 2018 is the centenary of the formal ending of the First World War and there has been very little written about what commemorations there will be. I saw a note on one of the battlefield travel tour operators for a trip to the Somme that included either a visit to Thiepval or to the Australian monument at Villers Brettoneux. I checked with the British Legion and they didn't seem to know anything about organised event at Thiepval at this time. I took a punt and checked out the Aussie sites and found that they were taking applications for ticket and so I filled in the forms for Claire and myself.  At the moment it looks like we have been successful and accepted.. So need to wait a while before booking anything... Oh. I forgot. I have booked the hotel we always stay in at Amiens....

Currently a little quiet on this trip. We have to pay the balance on the trip in March but apart from that we have not much to add. There was a newspaper article about cruise companies becoming a little stricter on what people are wearing on the ships during the day. With mass cruising there seems to have been a downturn in the standard of dress with people wearing football shirts and gaudy leisurewear. Maybe they shouldn't be letting stag and hen parties on in the first place, as one of the stricter rules is no messages and group wear..... On the only previous full cruise we have been on with Saga, there was a dress code and it is not hard to adhere too. But there have been loads of over reaction from people vowing never to go with NNNN Cruise again. P&O are one of the NNNN companies and have said that they will enforce a certain level of dressing on the ship.  I am all for that. Cue comments? And that's about it. https://www.cruisecritic.co.uk/news/news....