I’m back from 3 weeks of glorious touring around the Iberian Peninsula in the van. A total of 2,400 miles as we circled the entire country with a brief excursion into Portugal, and every single mile brought sights and experiences to relish or reflect on. But it is a luxury. Even though Mr Sanchez had cut the price of fuel duty in Spain, doing this kind of trip cost a great deal of money before we’d even thought about looking around the Alhambra or paying for campsites. Roughly at 2,400 divided by 28 mpg and diesel at 2 Euros a litre ( 2 x 4.5 =9 Euros a gallon), it works out at about £770 on fuel alone.
A high price indeed, but the benefits outweigh the cost by a huge margin. Visiting friends and relations, places of cultural significance, herding goats in mountain locations, driving the Colle De Races, watching storks and hoopoo birds, swallows and swifts, inhaling an ever changing scenery and marvelling at humanity’s ability to live in such varied places be it a troglodite cave or a gilded palace, wondering at the builders of Salamanca’s cathedrals or Tordesillas’s explorers dividing the New World, communicating very badly with countless people of all races and persuasions and ultimately laughing a great deal.
If everyone travelled more, then everyone would be more tolerant, more accepting, more understanding and more human. Less divisive or aggressive. At least that’s what I believe.
Musically, I listened to loads and loads, but I did keep returning to Jonathan Wilson and Kevin Morby; maybe it was the sunshine in April. And you lucky people now have four radio shows to catch up on, that’s 8 hours of joy, so dive in, folks. As ever…
