Sleepy Suffolk

As time flies out the window and into oblivion, it's time we got our trip preparation underway. To start with the team: not just any team, The team.

Pilot A will be JuanLu - no discussion about that. After it is his ride, his wheels, and his initial idea. I'll be the copilot and manager of the roadtrip. After all I'm the oldest guy, France will be the main country to go through and I've got a gut feeling that letting JuanLu do the mapping could lead to catastrophic decisions such as those illustrated in the picture hereafter...

Now some folks when they dream of holidays, adventures, and the likes immediately picture themselves in a hammock on some remote Carribean island or in a safari or even perhaps coast-to-coasting in the USA.
All's that nice and well but we tend to overlook our own countries - our home nations that often have more than one surprise round the corner.
Having said that, I'd like to go to a safari too. My friends at http://www.longerwaydown.com/ are doing one hell of a roadtrip. BUt with only a few days to spare, it wasn't quite feasible.
The other thing is that one of my housemates (a dude from Madrid - poor fellow) has recently agreed to pile in another six months of Ipswich life and would therefore like to drive his little Fiesta all the way from Madrid to Ipswich. Now, to do that, there are roughly three ways:
1. take a ferry in Bilbao or Santander that goes straight to W&E Sussex / Kent
2. take a ferry or the Eurostar in France that goes to Kent
3. drive up all the way to Hoek van Holland and ferry your way across to the quiet Essex town of Harwich, only a stone's throw away from Ipswich. You can even avoid Colchester, its rowdy military and its Essex girls...

So, JL (that's his name) were stroking our beards and pondering on our options: obviously we wanted to taste Spanish Rioja, sip French Bordeaux and abuse of Belgian beer! And hey presto, here we were pinning out on a map which cities we were off to.

A. Madrid - starting point - in the wee hours of the morning (so by Spanish standard that's a few minutes shy of high noon)
B. Bilbao, spend the night there, hopefully hook up with some Spanish Erasmus friends
--------------- the border ------------------
C. My hometown(s) - with a bit of luck my family beachhouse
D. Paris, the capital bien sûr, to hang out with the BT ring there
E. Bruges because I must say the movie with Colin Farrel was a riot
F. the ferry (Hoek van Holland / Harwich)

This blurb on a map looks like this:

Ver mapa más grande

More to come...

The past couple of days saw me 'jet off' (to put it in WAG terminology) to Madrid and then hop off to Barcelona as part of a leisure / business trip. In the latter case, I'm attending OGF 23 and BEinGRID Industry Days where I'm giving a presentation on a business experiment dealing with online gaming.
Now that work is done is dusted, here's a report on our mighty oldies, the bold adventurers Guy & Mimi who dared to cross the Pyrenees from France into rainy (yes rainy) Spain.
After a rocky start - Guy having his walled been robbed in the underground (el metro Dora would say) - G&M eventually managed to find a decent apartment somewhat to their liking within the M30 (London's Circular or Paris's inner ring) only some 5 stops away from Puerta del Sol. Fitting location for a sweet start in lively Madrid. ¡Habrá que aguantar la marcha!
And for the family's remaining bits and bobs, here are a few snaps of the golden couple's new nest.