Holidays!

You'd need to take a test to drive that Hymer, over the 3.5 tonne limit of your car licence or have they changed that recently ?

Over here you need to take a test but they like tape, especially the red variety.

Pilsen didn't look much better in the pouring rain in '97. Nowhere looks very inviting in the pouring rain to be fair.

No visa required for us by then though I remember being told I needed a vignette for my car and, like Switzerland, could only buy a full year. I had no idea what the exchange rate was or how much I had just paid. It was about £20.

Went back to Prague a couple of months later and was looked over suspiciously at the border as this UK car had just turned up with a CZ vignette already in place.

Leaving Ravensburg at the end of our Bodensee trip in 2018 we passed what I think was the Hymer factory at Bad Waldsee. Google tells me there’s a museum there too, if you like other people’s chemical toilets.

I may never have occasion to return to Belfast. Which is fine by me!
😉

6 days in England booked for the first week of August. Here’s hoping for some summer weather, quiet roads, no strikes, and a cheap car rental…

It’s the hope that kills you…

The northbound M1 was a really pleasant surprise on Saturday — smooth and quiet, to almost French standards. Southbound yesterday, not so much.

I'll let you know in a couple of weeks.

In other news, as I am hitting a big birthday towards the end of the year Espadrille decided we should have a nice holiday. I said New Zealand (and even asked Norm's advice offline) but I think that will have to wait for retirement and a two month trip to include Oz and other places a very long way away.

The next suggestion was India, mainly because we would join some friends doing a similar trip, but they are going when I can't. I was prepared wait to see how they liked it but I also fancied South America. The Indian trip would cost about £10,000 for three weeks which I thought was reasonable.

I spoke to a South American expert travel agency in London and they put a package together which included flights, hotels (3 or 4 star) and excursions on about half the days. The quote arrived today and I feel like a person weighed down heavily in the Scottish/Yorkshire/Jewish culture. Similar number of stops as the Indian trip but longer distances. £32,000! The flights alone were £8,400. OK the price includes a good number of day

So South America is off the agenda until I win the lottery. I think the killer is not the excursions (where they must be making a nice mark up) or the hotels which I think are about one grade higher that I really need, but the cost of the flights. Even without sleeping the bulk of the Indian trip has gone.

Trying to find somewhere interesting to go that is not cold over the Christmas break... (and not South Africa). Maybe I will have to wait for our Summer and go to Canada and northern USA which I have been to and would like to take Espadrille.