Sitting here at a much warmer campsite (no more gloves or beanies) with a view overlooking the Med much happier, with all our battery problems behind us and over 1000kms under the belt in the last 2 days. Weather has been good, sunnies are out – what more can we say?

DAY 06: Fri 09/02. San Sebastian to Madrid. 502 kms. Total 839 kms

Mission accomplished. Did have to drive till quite late to get near to Madrid as roads were pretty steep with one or 2 mountain ranges to cross which was pretty tough going at times in a heavy Land Rover. Highest was a snow covered mountain pass of 1710m. Eventually ended up stopping at a 24hr service station on the E90-A2 approx 29kms north of Madrid. Wasn’t planned but worked out quite nicely and as it was another long driving day ahead of us so didn’t have to bother putting up and taking down the tent and we just slept in the back. (Did actually stop at the tourist info at the last major town/city before Madrid and ask for campsites but were told the closest one was 50kms in another direction! That settled it – service station it was!) Not too bad actually – decent, cheap food/tea and coffee and toilets. What more do you need? Although noise from the highway was pretty bad but Inga recons she slept better than in the tent in the wind and rain.

As if we hadn’t had enough battery problems there were signs that our auxillary battery was now not charging as fridge, radio and inverter were now not working. This started around lunch time and gradually got worse until we stopped. However we had the iPod playing most of the day so we thought that maybe battery had not had enough chance to charge after jump starting etc over the last few days. Decided to run all day tomorrow with nothing running off auxillary battery power.

DAY 07: Sat 10/02. Madrid to Almunecar (near Motril). 524 kms. Total 1363 kms. Camping Carambola N36°44.361’ W3°40.648’

Strange sort of place this campsite – just pulled in. No one about so just set up camp sort of in someone’s garden. Man eventually came over after about an hour and said “Pay tomorrow” – gotta love Spain. Really nice though with view of the Mediterranean. Good day on the road, quite warm at times driving through all the olive tree areas inland & oranges, fruits etc nearer the coast. Not as mountainous as yesterday so made much better time (even though Inga was driving most of the way – oops, I’m going to get a smack for that!)

Sorted the auxillary battery charging problem. As there was no improvement by lunch time running with everything off I decided to check the relays. As I thought we may have blown the aux battery charging relay – i.e. even though the switch was on it wasn’t charging (probably only Matthew would know about this but I must have jump started with the aux charging switch on) To make a quick repair and get some charge in the battery as we still had 3 hours on the road I swapped one of the other relays and after an hour or so we were back up and running with radio, fridge, inverter etc. Once we set up camp I replaced the blown relay with a new spare – luckily we have a few – and swapped back the old temporary one from the inverter. So all sorted now.