I would say that im quite an adventurous kind of girl, so when it came to planning my 2010 summer holiday with my 2best friends i thought that something needed to change. Every summer since the year i was born i have gone on holiday to spain. So we decided to do something different but without straying too far from tradition. So the plan was that we were still going to to go Spain, but we were going to road trip it there instead. No more trying to squeeze clothes whilst also trying to save room to pack your make-up, tan enhancing sun creams and piles upon piles of shoes into one suitcase and not needing to worry that it will not be over the weight limit, no more never ending queues at the check in desk with that dodgey trolley with only three working wheels that somehow you always manage to get, no more walking through metal detectors and having it beep knowing that the butch lesbian with the man hands gets to rub you all over to make sure your not carrying anything illegal on your persons, no more having to endure long aeroplane flights with constant turbulance giving you heart palpertations whilst having to share your personal space with about 300 other strangers and there screaming children.No this year was going to be different.
So as you can imagine we were excited about planning our new journey. And the automatic thought about not having packing restrictions was an absolute blessing. Well that was one short lived thought. The car that we were going to be road tripping it in was a Mini. Well known for being compact little cars. That didnt bother us though, we just came up with a plan.......... Strategic packing, so when our adventure finally arrived everything was expertly packed into the boot of the car. And you may think as we were going on a road trip we would just all equally share the driving.......No. One of the three of us didnt have a drivers liscence and the other one didnt trust me to drive on the other side of the road so that only left our one "only capable driver" to do it all by herself. I wasnt complaining, i got to be a passenger in my own car for 952 miles. Bliss. We had decided that when planning our journey that we needed to get the ferry over to spain which was a blessing in disguise (not realised until our return journey) as it broke up the trip into two sections,Part A - driving to the ferry (310miles)
Part B - Driving from the ferry to the villa (642miles)
If we hadnt of done this then it would of meant our "only capable driver" would of had to endure 1699 miles of driving all in one go. As we had no desire to sight see or stop off along the way and spend a night in some random flee ridden deserted motel. Our mind set was that our destination was our holiday, and that our holiday would not officially start until we arrived.
So when the moment finally arrived when the ferry landed in Santander and the drivers foot hit the pedal we were on our way. It was such an exciting feeling which was unfortunately also short lived. We had only been on spanish soil for less that 200 yards when we reached the dreadded round about when our "only capable driver" began to make her way around it in the wrong direction, thankfully there was a spanish police man there to re-direct the car in the correct direction. Needless to say our high spirits quickly plumeted and we needed somewhere to pull over fast. Luckily enough we managed to find a lay-by shortly after as cigarettes were definitely needed as you could of cut the tension in the car with a knife. After that we were warned by the driver, for every future round-about, juntion or overly populated place with lots of cars we had to help remind her that we were now in Europe and that everything was on the opposite side to what we were used to. When we started to yet again begin our journey it was easier to get into the swing of things as we were now more calm and collected as we new what to look out for. Also my many weeks of planning and compiling the ultimate summer playlist payed off as the first song that came on ended up being repeated about 20 times. Success
Summer PlaylistSong number 1 - Marvin Gaye - Lets get it on
So far this all seems like peaches and cream, a perfect little story, but what would a Road Trip be without a little hiccup in the road here and there.
There is one thing you musnt do when on a road trip which unfortunately didnt take us too long to do.
Road Trip Rules1. DO NOT draw any unnecassary attention to yourself, especially if abroad and the main language isnt English
It was just before dusk and we had already been driving for several hours and still had about 4 more to go. Our normal natural happy selves had detiorated quite severely, we were now masked with a kind of fake happy feeling which was very knew to us, it must of been a combination of a lack of sleep infused with a horrendous amount of E numbers that we had consumed through junk food and fizzy drinks to keep us awake and mobile. We were in a deserted car park stood a little way from the car when all of a sudden a car with 2 lads pulls in, as the three young flirtatious girls that we are we each shot them a seductive smile and unfortunately it didnt end there. When the car began to draw closer the cleverer 2 of us cautiously made our way back to the car leaving the other standing there still smiling away at the boys (silly girl) she realised all wasnt going too well when the car started to circle around her, quickly she made her way over to us and we all locked ourselves in the Mini. We quickly realised we needed to get back to a populated area so we headed out of the car park and back onto the road unfortunately followed by the other car. They then repeatedly drove up next to our car staring at us before dropping behind again, they did this continuously for about 10 minutes before thankfully giving up and driving past us which was when im guessing they cottoned on to the fact that we didnt want to play whatever psycho game they did. Phew. We were quite panicked after that, atleast we had some semblance of normal feelings and emotions again though which i was thankful for. Being in a car for long periods of times makes you go quite delirious. Anyway a few more hours passed and we were well and truly traveling in darkness, thankgod the satnav said we only had one more hour to endure when all of a sudden we recognised the car behind us, which was strange as we were in the middle of the south of spain and didnt know anyone. But then all of a sudden the car got closer and started to pull up next to us again, it was those lads from before. How the hell when they overtook us hours earlier did they manage to creep back up on us again from behind. Needless to say i will never be giving random goodlooking strangers sexy seductive smiles from now on in the middle of knowhere. I value my life too much to be murdered, raped and buried by the side of the road. So let our memory be a cautionary tale for the rest of you. When the moment came when we finally reached the Villa we were that exhausted from the long drive that we didnt even give ourselves a moment to take it all in, the feeling of joy and happiness was overcome by the feeling of sleep. We moved like zombies from the car up to the bedroom, our bodies had begun to shut down before our minds had. Wierd feeling, one that i decided i didnt want to relive any time soon, well i didnt have a choice, the drive home which was in 27days.
