Today we are having a rest day as we cross the Pyrnees tomorrow into France and it will be quite a long drive. We have caught glimpses of the high mountains and are looking forward to being among them.
I'm finding it increasingly a challenge to write the blog as cumulative tiredness is catching up with me. France will be our eighth country on this trip and we are sleeping in our twentieth bed. We drove 2500 kms in the Balkans and already several hundred in Spain.
However, I am going to persevere as I want to have a record of the journey to put away and take out on a dark winter's day and remember what it was like to be on a road trip.
When we were in our twenties Gill and I would go away in the motorbike without any clear destination. Our trip was motivated by the desire to see what was around the next corner and that has never quite gone away. We are enjoying this trip perhaps more than any of our recent journeys. This is not because it is better but because we are capturing some of what we felt when we would zip up our motorcycle jackets and set off down a long road to an uncertain destination.
Now of course we have to be better organized. Our advancing years require more comfort and our wallets can stretch to a little more luxury. However the excitement of being on a road trip is that we never quite know what awaits us. The serendipity of travel jumps out and surprises us at every turn.
The demands of a long road trip make you very reliant on each other. You are in a small bubble of car/accommodation/ restaurant so you have to mesh together no matter what is thrown at you. Gill is, and has always been, the perfect travel companion. She is unfailingly enthusiastic and positive and has dealt with all the ups and down of the trip with an incredible amount of inner strength.
However, beyond that she makes me laugh with her impish humor and makes me so glad she is there beside me as we negotiate the tortuous roads and gasp togeether as we turn a corner and see a jaw dropping vista stretching to the horizon.
