Week 2 – Saturday 12th July – On the Road to Hondarribbia

Here’s a question for you, do you know who the 9th member of the G8 is – it’s been causing Anne significant concern since they’ve had their conference. Actually, it’s the representative from the EU, so now you know.

Not much doing today, just the drive from Carcassonne to Hondarribbia. It’s not a difficult drive, 430ks of mostly motorway driving (according to Jane), but the day is overcast and rain is forecast. We started in grey conditions and sure enough, the rain started about an hour into the journey. Because of the low cloud and the very smooth motorways, which atomized the water and created a fine foggy mist, it was like driving in a white-out, which slowed our progress quite considerably. I found Anne’s polarizing sun glasses gave me better visibility, but it still took a lot of concentration for most of the trip. We made a couple of stops for petrol (French diesel is much dearer than Spanish diesel, so we only gave ourselves enough to give us confidence in the reserves in the tank) and comfort.

We arrived at about 3:30pm, with Jane delivering us painlessly to the front door of the hotel (I’d typed the address in the previous night). “Honda” is a tiny, but very authentic Spanish town right on the border with France. The Hotel we are staying in is a family run hotel in the old part of Hondarribbia. It is in a 16th century palace and the hotel itself is only 8 rooms. The family are great – it’s all the little extras that they do that make it a great place to stay – a bottle of wine and some fruit on our arrival, a chocolate and a bottle of mineral water each night, individually served breakfasts – it’s just great. To please the accountant in me, we even have free parking and free internet, so one of my gripes fully catered for. The ceiling in our room has a “heavenly” sky / bird scene fresco painted on it. It’s almost a bit Dali-esque and not to everyone’s taste, but it adds to the overall anbience of the place. Add a chandelier in the centre of the room and it really does feel a bit special.

Parking is in a restricted area, with a bollard that raises and disappears in the centre of the entrance to the car park. We managed to get into it, but don’t quite know how, so getting out tomorrow will be fun. Anne ran round waving the sensor card in front of everything that looked like it was associated with the bollard (and a few things that weren’t), and pushed all sorts of panels to try and make it disappear, which eventually it did. As I said, we don’t know what it was that made it work, so the next time we try to leave will be interesting.

We spent the rest of the day walking around Honda and had bread and some cold cuts for our food for the remainder of the day.