The road to recovery

Here we have a simple Land Rover project.

Well, that says it all really doesn’t it?

Simple and Land Rover don’t even belong in the same dictionary, let alone sentence.

The theory was to take off the perished tyres, BF Goodrich Trac Edge which had been on there for 20 years or so, not huge mileage, been off-road, snow, mud, the usual, and brought us safely down from the north of England to the south of Spain towing a Sankey trailer, and through snow around Madrid and mud in Andalucía. A lot of mud in Andalucía in fact.

Trac Edge were incredibly popular years ago, but then seemed to fall out of favour. They never let us down.

Then get some new tyres to put on the (Disco) rims. That’s as much of the plot that’s necessary for now, as after some considerable time had been spent with the hacksaw and grinder it was obviously not the anticipated simple little project after all. Well, there’s a surprise.

A quick five minute job ……

And given that we were setting off back for Gib around noon, the simple little project had to be abandoned for another day.

Question. Continue with the not so simple little project or take the wheels to the tyre place? When we have more time than a couple of hours on Sunday morning, I may be able to give the answer.

Meanwhile on the way back, having finally hit the road, it was warm. We’ve never had a vehicle with air-conditioning – but who needs air-con when you have vents? Sometimes they are really loud but they were perfect on this warm hot journey.

Last of the Defender vents

We like to stop in classy locations for a quick drink, for all three of us, and a leg stretch for all of us too. Here are the boys chilling out at Marbella service station on the peaje (toll road). Los Altos de Marbella.

Chillin’

Just before Marbella we hit the toll booth and there was a huge queue on the other side. But not for the toll. The Guardia Civil were stopping everyone. I was so stunned, I forgot to pick up the camera to take a pic of the nice man with a machine gun. Or maybe it was just as well I did forget.

Incidentally toll prices on the Fuengirola to Marbella section are currently 6.95€, and 4.70€ on the San Pedro section. We don’t use the one from Estepona to Sotogrande. Unless there is a bush fire of course and we get redirected.

If you don’t want to queue at the toll both there is an automated payment lane headed ‘turismos’ ie private cars and not commercial. You can get a Disco through the roof barrier, but a vehicle with extra lift, a roof rack and a load of clart on top might have a problem. If you don’t have euros you can pay by debit card at both the booth and the turismo lane.

Remember the bush fire from a couple of posts back? Can’t believe how quickly the vegetation and trees are recovering. Look at the amount of growth on these trees.

Green shoots of recovery – let’s hope Spain’s economy gets some too

That’s not just to justify bush fires by any stretch of the imagination, but the recovery time has been so quick. Luckily.

And, this is not the fogblog, but I couldn’t resist this mist swirling around the Rock as we drove through the frontier and across the Gib airport runway into home.

Swirling around