Back on the road with facts and figures!

After 6 weeks back in the UK, we are back off on our travels again.  We split our year 2 around Europe to come back to the UK for our niece’s wedding.  It’s been a lovely time catching up with family and friends, stopping with our daughter and her boyfriend (as our house is still rented out) but it is time to head south for the winter!

Sonny, the motorhome has been fully checked over and had a full-on clean inside and out. His MOT isn’t due until December but as we plan not to be back in the UK again until January we have had to have this done in August.  We still find it crazy that you have to come back to the UK to have this done, as you can get everything else done abroad. We are well stocked up as well with all English goodies that you can’t buy abroad.

Our year 2 tour started on 29^th January 2018.  We made our way through France down to our son’s house in Punta Umbria, Spain.  We spent 3 months in Spain, visiting some lovely cities and villages and doing lots of walking around Andalucia.  It is such a pretty part of Spain, the landscape is stunning and we love all the white villages that are built into the hillside.  There are some fantastic walking routes all around Andalucia and we used a book called Walking in Andalucia, by Guy Hunter-Watts, which is a great guide to walking the area.  We also used an App called Wikiloc that gives you free GPS hiking trail all over the world with photographs, that people upload and share.  Whilst in Spain we popped across into Gibraltar for a couple of days.

Leaving Spain we crossed the border into Portugal and zig-zagged our way South to North across the country.  We loved Portugal, it is such a ‘motorhome friendly’ place with so many free Aires, the people are friendly and the cost of living is really cheap.  From Portugal we crossed back over the border into Spain, and spent a while around the Basque country before heading back through France and back to the UK.  If you want to read more of the places we visited just click on the on the countries under 'Labels' on the right.

Facts and Figures!

Total cost for 5 ½ months (157 days) €7,252.34 €46.19 per day (approximately £41 p/day (not including Vehicle tax and insurance and MOT, personal travel insurance)

Miles Travelled: 5,627 (9003.2 Kilometres)
Fuel Used: 866.21 Litres/192.49 Gallons = 29.23MPG
Last year we averaged 31.8MPG - but to be fair Sonny is a little older now!

Vehicle: 2014 Sun Living Lido S42DF (Adria)

How we spent our money
The chart below details where our money went.  All figures are in Euros.  Most went on eating/drinking out, followed by supermarket costs and then fuel.

Where we stayed
We stayed on a mixture of Aires, campsites, France Passion and wild camping.
We were lucky to have 135 free nights (including 50 nights we spent at our son's house in Spain, spread out over 3 months), 9 paid Aires, 9 campsites, 1 France Passion (free vineyard) and 3 nights wild camping.

So, with a tearful goodbye to our daughter and future son-in-law we make our way down the A1 to catch the Dover to Dunkirk ferry.  We then plan to make our way through France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece and then who knows where for Christmas!

Sally x