03 - No, not that Mont Blanc

Monday 6th August 2018

Here’s where the trip really begins. Following two and a half weeks of relaxing and beating Melissa at Tennis, we headed back to the UK for a brief weekend of catching up with family, the amazing wedding of my good friends Stuart and Mithula, and Melissa sailing down the canal in a floating hot tub as part of her soon-to-be-sister-in-law Vanessa’s hen party.

Bright and early Monday morning, we flew back to Alicante where Trevor had been waiting patiently for us. Though we both flew from London to Alicante at 6:30am on Monday morning, Melissa and I actually flew on different flights, with different airlines, and from different airports. Though terrifically inconvenient, this saved a few precious pounds that, as two currently income-less travellers with large upcoming visa and relocation related expenses, meant that one of us had to fly on Ryanair while the other took the only available reward flight with BA bought with air miles. Of course, it was determined that it was more “convenient” for Melissa to take the BA flight. So I joined half the population of Essex heading out on their summer holidays, all too vulgar and skimpily dressed to even appear on TOWIE. I crowded onto the Ryanair flight out of Stansted, all the while trying not to vomit at the stench of fake tan while thanking my mother for those valuable elocution lessons that allow me to distance myself from my origins in the heart of Essex. Other than a minor delay to my flight, things went smoothly and I happily reconnected with Melissa and Trevor at Alicante airport and began our epic roadtrip by heading north towards Valencia.

After a couple of hours on the road, we stopped for what was supposed to be a quick bite in a small town near Valencia called Segunto. Opting for the menu del dia, as we had done many times previously in Spain, we hadn't quite realised that we had actually just signed up for a delicious 5 course tasting menu. We finished up and took a very quick walk around town and the castle before getting back on the road. We then navigated around the many castles dotted throughout the Spanish countryside (to quote Eddie Izzard: "We’re up to here with f**kin’ castles. We just long for a bungalow or something.") to reach our final destination for the day in a small town outside of Montblanc called Espluga de Francoli. We covered almost 500km in what was a very tiresome day.

On to the first real stop tomorrow in Andorra, leaving Spain behind for the Pyrenees and 3 days of hiking (if the weather holds out...).

J & M