Sorry for the Test Post! & Cordoba

Hi all, you may be wondering why you got a strange Blog post from us; “Temporary Post Used For Theme Detection“. I was setting up the Blogging Software I use called “Open Live Writer” which lets me do everything off-line then just connect when we have good internet and it sent a test post which it is supposed to immediately delete. But the WordPress platform was too quick and sent it out before the software could delete it. So I apologise if you thought our blog had been hacked.

You may also be wondering why our Blog just stopped last February before we had finished the trip. Well I will explain………..

After Seville we made our way to Jerez where we found the Motorhome Dealer who also has parking for touring motorhomes with electric and all facilities and welcomes you with a large glass of Sherry! He has a great shop with loads of spares so Judy lost Steve for an hour but he managed to find some bits for the heating system he had been looking for for a long time.

After getting set up we rode into the town that evening on Suzie the scooter to a tiny bar that specialises in Sherry and Flamenco dancing. Well, we watched some very strange Flamenco dancing done by a very fat and obviously very gay man while we stood and drank a very large glass of very good sherry in a bar which was literally shoulder to shoulder with people.

After a look round the town next day we moved on to Cordoba, back in a north westerly direction most of the way we had come yesterday. Park4Night found us a nice Aire beside a café called the Peter Pan Restaurant (37.87072, -4.85471 ) about 10km outside the city just right to leave the Motorhome while we headed in on Suzie. We had a great afternoon exploring  the city and took in a free walking tour which was really interesting. The most remarkable thing in Cordoba though, is a gigantic ancient Mosque which has a Christian Cathedral built right in the middle of it! We wanted to go in but it was heaving with coach tours. We did however spot a sign saying that it was open in the early mornings for an hour with free admission which was nice, but best of all was that tours were not allowed. So an early fairly cold start to be standing in line when the doors opened. It was absolutely amazing I repeat “A_M_A_Z_I_N_G” literally in the centre of a Mosque which must have been at least an acre, a hole had been cut in the roof and a Cathedral built there. You perhaps can see it sticking through the roof behind the gardens in the aerial photo below. It had been done incredibly sensitively with none of the desecration one would have thought would have happened in that era. If you are anywhere near, it is a MUST VISIT place.  There are a few photo’s below, remember if you click on any photo it will show much larger for you to see the detail. Just as our hour was coming to an end and we were being ushered out through the beautiful garden, Steve’s phone rang. It was a friend telling us that a very, very dear friend had just passed away, what a shock.

After chatting it through back at the motorhome we decided that we wanted to fly to the UK for the funeral which we were told was delayed for some reason, so spent the next two weeks hopping from airport to airport just in case we had a phone call with date and time. That phone call never came so we ended up back at our house in France at the end of February. The whole journey on tenterhooks, had become very stressful.

One evening, for no apparent reason on the 25th March 2019, Judy had a number of strokes (TIA’s). Steve managed to get through to 112 the emergency number and after an amazing response by the local sapeurs-pompiers (firemen) most of whom were our neighbours who arrived in about ten minutes, she was in the casualty department of Narbonne hospital 40km away within the hour then after a number of scans at about 2am into intensive care where she spent a week. The doctors told us that although she had a number of “Strikes” as they called them, she was a very lucky lady and the brain had rewired itself and she should make a full recovery with no apparent damage. It has taken almost a year but she is now almost back to normal, we bought a treadmill so she could walk for exercise at her own pace which she uses every morning. Whether the stress of trying to be in the right place to fly to the UK was the reason we will never know but sadly we never managed the funeral because it was only a week after she came out of hospital and of course was unable to travel and I couldn’t leave her on her own. Unfortunately this blog never got finished as I have been rather preoccupied.

But the good news is that the Cardiologist has now said we can go away in the Motorhome for three months if we wish, just one more 24 hour ECG in March to be sure all is OK?

So we are now planning our next adventure of three months in Scandinavia, hopefully driving on past the Arctic Circle to the North Cape in Norway which is as Northerly as can be driven.

So look out for the start of our blog at the end of April. Thanks for reading.