Silver tops still wandering

Certain things need to be addressed if you embark on road trips with only a bit of a plan. Essentials must be planned in advance, like how much tea to take! We thought 150 Ringtons teabags would be enough. We make 2 mugs from one bag, so that is 300 mugs of tea dutifully guzzled in just under 6 weeks. We feel proud, and hydrated. Yorkshire thoroughbreds that we are in every respect both thrifty and thirsty. Catastrophe has struck this morning, we have run out. Only consolation is we know where we go to next have Yorkshire Tea, in abundance.

Adaptable as ever I have transformed our bathroom into a drying area. Why is it when you pack you wear just a fraction of the clothes you bring? I do it every time.

Current location has a laundry room, so we laundered our little hearts out! We seem to have extended our intended time away by quite a few weeks. Our four or five week trip is already approaching 6 weeks. No wonder the tea supplies are out, and the doby bag was full. We have got around to  booking a ferry home, but not for another couple of weeks.

This extravagant unplanned purchase, along with a kettle have been marvellous investments. These European types are most excellent at providing coffee making facilities. One place we stayed had three different options for your preferred style of coffee. But few have kettles! As for the fan well it has multiple advantages. Not only keeps you cool at night but blows away any would be opportunistic flying things looking for lunch. The gentle humming also diminishes ones focus on ‘other noise’, like snoring. Mrs Russell snores aswell…

Final essential is our trusted plug in cool box. Had it over twenty years. Carries Mrs. Russells’ dinners, milk for tea, a few beers for emergency use, always a cheeky chilled white and fruit. Optionally a very British pack up of sandwiches and salads if it looks likely that we might be caught out by these continental eating hours. We can always get a meal in the cities, but we have wandered off piste quite a bit so have learnt to do the boy scout thing and ‘be prepared’.

Any road up, ‘dib dib’ for now. We are going to spend the day in San Sebastian. We may find a big screen to watch a certain football final, or we may not. I doubt very much that we will need to make haste to the border on account of England winning!