Apart from updating the blog, most of last night was spent wrestling the French campsite guide book I bought yesterday. I swear you need a qualification in Origami to extract any useful information from this book. Other essentials include a decent paperweight, a pen and pad and an endless supply of post it notes. You also need to have a fair amount of knowledge of roughly where you are trying to go and try to find a stop on your route which suits your timetable. You need to assemble several snippets of info found across several pages before any of it makes any sense at all. Maybe I just need to try harder? Maybe I just need to face the reality that creating a perfect route might not actually be possible and start putting effort into something else now instead.As I was giving more thought to my trip this morning, three things struck me as I battled to the office on my motorbike in the appalling weather. The first thing to strike me was a windscreen 
wiper unit that had unloaded itself from the car in front as it furiously tried to wipe the screen dry. Not just the rubber bit, the whole unit, arm and everything hit me full on the chest and gave me a right jump. This strike enforced the reality that anything can happen at anytime to anyone. As a former claims handler, I should have known that already.
wiper unit that had unloaded itself from the car in front as it furiously tried to wipe the screen dry. Not just the rubber bit, the whole unit, arm and everything hit me full on the chest and gave me a right jump. This strike enforced the reality that anything can happen at anytime to anyone. As a former claims handler, I should have known that already.The second thing to strike me was the weather. It was so bad this morning that it made me 20 minutes late even though I gave myself 15 minutes contingency. Aside from the physical soaking that struck me, so did the realisation that if I encounter bad weather on my trip and fail to make one of my carefully planned stops as a result, then I’m knackered without a plan B.
The final strike was seeing a road sign flashing with the message 
‘M25 – Long Delays J4 to J12’. Now, I’m not an M25 expert, but even I know that’s a long queue. So, it occurred to me that if I am as unlucky on my trip as the thousands of commuters I sped past this morning were, the evils of bad weather and traffic could combine to enforce the use of a plan C which I'm nowhere near compiling.
‘M25 – Long Delays J4 to J12’. Now, I’m not an M25 expert, but even I know that’s a long queue. So, it occurred to me that if I am as unlucky on my trip as the thousands of commuters I sped past this morning were, the evils of bad weather and traffic could combine to enforce the use of a plan C which I'm nowhere near compiling. I am conscious, therefore, that I might be trying to over plan the plan at the risk of not actually being able to stick to it. I've given it a lot of thought and have received some helpful advice from more experienced owners using my post. My view now is that as I've little idea of what I'm in for, the comprehensive plan still seems the way to go for me as a starter so I will still try to find stopovers all the way and book them in advance. I can always make changes to my plan as my confidence and knowledge grows although I must bear in mind that there are two aspects I can't change and that is the fact I need to be in Rojales before Christmas Day and be in Bilbao by midday on the 29th. By giving me 4 days to get down there and another 2 to get to Bilbao, we might actually find time to enjoy ourselves too.
I did start making that list of things I need to do but then made the mistake of also trying to do the things on the list as I wrote them down. For example, I know I need to get an EHIC certificate thingy from somewhere, so put that on the list whilst simultaneously clicking websites 
to get one. Easy, fill out a form and its done. I thought Google's Autofill feature would do that for me. Oh no, that's disabled on the site so I had to put all our details in it handraulically. I soon realised that I couldn't submit my request because I need all of our National Insurance numbers. So now I have added 'find out all of our National Insurance numbers' to my list. I've then had to cross reference that to the EHIC thingy on the list so that I know what to do with the numbers when I find them. And then I've emailed myself a reminder just in case. In all, therefore, I think I am better off having an almighty list creation session before I try to do anything else. That will be tonight's joy in between watching the footy of course.
to get one. Easy, fill out a form and its done. I thought Google's Autofill feature would do that for me. Oh no, that's disabled on the site so I had to put all our details in it handraulically. I soon realised that I couldn't submit my request because I need all of our National Insurance numbers. So now I have added 'find out all of our National Insurance numbers' to my list. I've then had to cross reference that to the EHIC thingy on the list so that I know what to do with the numbers when I find them. And then I've emailed myself a reminder just in case. In all, therefore, I think I am better off having an almighty list creation session before I try to do anything else. That will be tonight's joy in between watching the footy of course.- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
By the way, I found out today that despite congratulating myself for operating the gas heater the other day, I had in fact managed to successfully heat up the water boiler instead. I'm only grateful that I was equally negligent at emptying the water boiler tank thus avoiding major self harm to the boiler. I really do have a growing respect for the user guides and finding where those guides are, is now on my list of things to do.
No comments:
Post a Comment