Today we left the villa in the morning. We have managed to keep our thing pretty much in our small room so it was easy to pack giving me time to make breakfast for us all and the help tidy up.
Today I was driving to the parador in Cardona where we all are staying for a night before we go our separate ways - Ann and Richard onto Bilbao and us down to Tarragona. The drive went well and it was nice to be driving a Polo again after the many years since my first car - a red polo was finally consigned to the car graveyard!
All went well with a fairly easy journey to a mid point town called Vic which I had found. We arrived first and were stuck in traffic went things suddenly went downhill. The gearing of the car seemed strange and there was a very bad electrical smell. We had no idea what was going on but I spotted a car park which turned out to belong to a supermarket and we pulled up to check out the car. The bonnet was burning hot, too hot to touch although when we finally managed to get the bonnet open there was no obvious cause of the smell of burning. We were rather panicking as we had no idea if the car was going to catch fire. Our next challenge was getting out of the short term car park (big thanks to the lovely security guard and lady shopper for their assistance) and we headed back to the car park I had noticed a while ago. In the meantime Ann and Richard had arrived and wondered where we were. The car was a bit cooler but still smelt bad.
It’s a real shame as the town of Vic looked fascinating and there was an excellent market in the Plaza Mayor. We shared some tapas but we were not really hungry as we worried about what to do about the car. Sadly all the exploring I had planned did not happen. The positive of our visit was that Colin bought me a lovely little hand turned box from a man with a market stall - only €4.50 but beautifully made and he even sealed the paper bag with a little split twig.
Colin decided to drive and we thought we’d forgo the air con as I had a feeling this could be part of the problem. It was a warm drive up to Cardona but only just over an hour. The car did make it and only started heating up and smelling as we finally parked it - could it be the gears? I have no idea! We were basically very relieved to be there.
Our room is in the Cardona Parador which used to be a medieval castle. It is so nice to have a decent size room and ensuite bathroom. The castle is amazing and the views more so although rather spoilt by the large pink salt mines marring the countryside. We had a very good evening meal (better value than some of the recent ones) and a surprise entertainment of people playing medieval instruments outside. A great end to a stressful day.
