Yesterday, I forgot to mention that Sally Satnav had recovered from her little Pyrenean malfunction; she had lost satellites overnight, having been turned off, and re-acquired satellites again yesterday morning. All the way to Chartres, she was plotting our little car where it should be, on the road.

With 900 miles/1440 kms of our journey behind us, today’s third leg of our journey should be a little simpler. It’s a mere 215 miles/350 kms from Chartres to Calais, then 130 miles/210 kms home from Dover, following the 90-minute ferry crossing. As is our habit with Chartres, we set off in the rain at 8:00 AM.

Not knowing much about journeys of this length, I had originally booked a ferry at ~6:30 PM. Chartres to Calais, though, is a breeze, especially in light Sunday morning traffic, and we rolled into the ferry port at 12:30 PM having been diverted around Rouen due to a major river bridge being closed and having stopped at the last French service area for our final slightly cheaper fill-up of diesel.

“We’re a little early for our ferry”, announced Francine, grinning.

“So I see”, replied the P&O check-in clerk. “That’s OK, I can get you on the next sailing at 1:35 PM. That’ll be £60.” [I’ve rounded up from £59.something.]

It’s just about worth £60 not to hang around Calais for four hours with home in tantalising sight, so we went for it and joined the line waiting to board.

I thought Italians were supposed to have style but apparently it’s not a universal trait. Waiting alongside us in the boarding lines was an Italian chap wearing a blue-ish jumper, green-ish checked shorts and white plimsoll-like shoes with knee-length black socks. Sartorially elegant, he certainly wasn’t. In a stroke of archetypical genius, though, perhaps trying to distract us from his choice in clothing, he was playing Italian opera music from his car stereo. Inspector Morse meets Mr. Muppet.

The crossing went smoothly, as did our journey home through the Dartford tunnel and round the M25, minus anything worse than a speed limit through miles of road works which, apparently, are continuing until 2015. Yikes! We arrived home at 4:30 PM.

The Spanish summer weather was all that I’d hoped: wall to wall sunshine. Temperatures had been high (for us), 30+°C/86+°F, every day and without too much in the way of humidity. I found it very pleasant and soon fell into the “expect tomorrow to be fine” frame of mind. One day, sitting on the naya with Chris, I asked if he’d ever had a bad summer during their 10 years in Spain. He considered this for a while and replied, “more humid ones”. I laughed.

Spain cannot manage the wildlife interest of the south of France, it’s a much more arid, desiccated country. There really is a dramatically stark change as you cross the meteorological dividing line of the Pyrenean mountain chain. Spain does, however, have what seems to be a guaranteed summer.

In the main French holiday season, the journey was arduous and I’d think more than twice before doing it at this time of year again. At quieter times of year, it should be noticeably easier. We were, however, going to join Chris for his early August birthday, and to witness a fiesta, hence the timing. Maybe a Ferry to northern Spain (Bilbao or Santander) would be an interesting and more relaxing option for any similar future trip.

Quite an experience.

At least, I think so.

Today being day 2 our planned 3-day journey home, we set off from Foix at 8:00 AM, our destination for today being Chartres, 440mls/700kms north.

400 miles of our journey today would be on autoroutes which, early-ish on a Saturday morning, started relatively quietly. We even made it round the potential trouble spot of Toulouse smoothly. However, having begun our holiday on a “black” Saturday [France’s heaviest driving days – extremely difficult driving], we were now heading back north two weeks later along with a whole bunch of people whose holiday had finished and were now driving home. Today may not have been a “black” day but it was a “red” day [France’s second heaviest driving days – very difficult driving].

Toll roads may seem expensive to those of us with very few in our home territory but the tolls do help to keep the traffic down and, out of season, make for blissfully easy driving. They do have a problem, though, in the form of les gares de payage [toll booths].

The start of a toll section begins with a toll booth where you take a ticket; this is usually no problem – drive up, ticket emerges, grab it, barrier raises, proceed. Problems begin at the end of a toll section where the payment booths are situated. Paying takes a little longer, especially for the home team who seem dead set against using anything as simple/swift as a credit card. Oh no, the French generally insist on paying cash which takes a lot longer. This process causes tailbacks even in normal traffic. In heavy traffic it causes long tailbacks. This has become exacerbated by automation/modernization which takes about twice as long as the old hand-your-ticket-and-payment-over-to-a-warm-body approach. At our first major toll booth, there were about 12 lanes operating, all with queues of 20+ vehicles waiting to pay. Each payment takes ~30secs minimum even if Francois Frenchman gets everything right, which he normally doesn’t. You can do the maths.

Having said that the taking of a ticket at the start of a toll section is usually no problem there are exceptions. At Vierzon, we ran into a very big exception. Electronic boards warned of  a bouchon [blockage] at the gare de payage. The 2-lane autoroute fans out into ~8 lanes to take a ticket. Those 8-ish lanes then funnel back into 2 lanes immediately after the toll booths. A this very point, a new autoroute spurs off. 90% of the traffic seemed to want to take the rightmost lane to change autoroute. Consequently, 8 lanes were trying to funnel into one. With the French approach to merging, you can imagine the chaos. We did get to Chartres but about an hour later than we had anticipated.

Apart from lesson #1, not going to France during the French holiday season, lesson #2 should be, if you insist on going during holiday season, travel during the weekdays with all the trucks as opposed to at weekends with all the outbound/inbound holiday makers.

I haven’t put that theory to the test and I’m not likely to. It wouldn’t, after all, have cured our Bordeaux problem when heading south, but it sounds good.

Today was day 1 of our 1200mls/1900kms journey back home. Our first target was a motel in Foix ~460mls/740kms away. We forced Chris, Yvonne and Scamp out of bed at 6:30AM and hit the road at 7:00AM. Chris, very sensibly, returned to bed. 😀

For much of our journey, we were on the Mediterranean autovia heading north towards Barcelona before leaving the coast and heading inland towards Andorra. Sally Satnav was unstressed and tracked us well, guiding us around the mess of busy roads that circle Barcelona. She guided us masterfully towards Andorra and, even more masterfully, made us just miss Andorra [Andorra sucks!] taking us directly into France at Puigcerda.

After crossing into Sally’s home country – she speaks to us in French – we continued to climb to the col of Puymorens. Sally wanted us to stop climbing and go through the tunnel but the tunnel doesn’t open until 15th November, being apparently a winter-only tunnel but Garmin clearly doesn’t know that.

Approaching the col, Sally really started to throw a wobbly. It took me sometime to realize what was wrong as she repeatedly muttered, “calcule encore” [recalculating]. Carefully sneaking glances at Sally’s map display in between negotiating the various hairpin bends up into the high Pyrenees, I realized that Sally wasn’t plotting our position accurately. She was drawing the little car representing us about 100ft/30mtrs right/east of where we actually were. The effect of this inaccuracy on a straight/slightly bendy mountain road was to make her think we were “off piste” on the mountain side. Well done, car – good job it’s an occasional 4×4. Sally tends to go silent in such situations, knowing not what to do about our apparently adventurous driving. However, the effect of such an inaccuracy on a descending series of hairpin bends is rather more dramatic; now our apparent position was making it look as though we were driving back up the section of road that we had just descended. In this situation Sally thought she knew what to do to correct our mistake and kept “recalculating” accordingly. Every time we turned another hairpin bend, Sally thought we were going back up the previous section and told us where to get off. Bother, or words to that effect!

BTW, driving off piste immediately made us notice the sudden change to a hillside covered in wild flowers on the French side, as compared to the much more barren landscape of the considerably more arid Spanish side of the Pyrenees. To continue …

I can only imagine that Sally was having trouble with satellite positioning, though what trouble I don’t know. Maybe there were reflections in the mountain pass or perhaps she’d just lost one of the all-important satellites. I’d never seen the like before, this malfunction was something completely new. We re-booted Sally – when in doubt, reboot – in the hope that she’d re-acquire satellites and get an accurate fix but to no avail. Our little ghost car was still 100ft/30mtrs east of where we actually were. Once the hairpins straightened out and we simply descended a relatively straight road, Sally went silent again. Eventually  we went through a village and our little ghost car began crossing village backstreets 100ft/30mtrs away from the main road. Sally suddenly burst back into life, repeatedly “recalculated” accordingly until there were not further village roads for our ghost to be on and we returned to driving off piste up the hillside. Sally was worse than useless, her directions had become actively confusing – we turned her off and resorted to old-fashioned methods of manual navigation.

Fortunately, I have an excellent Navigation Officer in the form of Francine. Francine can read a map and doesn’t even have to turn it upside down to go south. Francine took over and got us to the outskirts of our destination, Foix.

I had just said, “at least my Navigation Officer doesn’t break down like Sally Satnav does”, as an intended compliment, when, approaching a roundabout, Francine muttered, “turn right” as she clearly indicated left.

Against all odds, with technological failure of Sally Satnav and a frazzled Navigation Officer’s brain, we made it to our motel.

Sheesh!

As a self-confessed dragonfly obsessive, this was the main target of this trip to Spain. I had made e-contact with a specialist to find out where I might find dragonflies near our Jalon location and he came up with this, “which is supposedly good for Black Pennants”. Black Pennants (Selysiothemis nigra) cannot be seen in many places so I was naturally hooked.

With no other early morning engagements, we set off for Gandia. The journey was easier and shorter than I’d imagined. Moreover, there was an all but unused parking area just outside the entrance to the reserve. We parked and wandered in past a mechanical digger.

As we wandered down the entrance track, the digger passed us. We soon found a water channel and our first suspects, a Blue-tailed Damselfly (Ischnura elegans) and a Scarlet Darter (Cocothemis erythraea).

Continuing I scared up a resting Emperor Dragonfly which resettled for a photo opportunity.

Our next distraction was the digger which was excavating weed and an invasive Crayfish species from the drainage channel. We paused ntil the digger operator paused and beckoned us through. Our shoes got v. muddy from the material left on the path but at least they were managing the environment. Good for them!

We walked around a very well constructed boardwalk meandering through the reserve and found a few more species including the delightful, though common, in its range, Violet Dropwing (Trithemis annulata) and our new friend the Epaulet Skimmer (Orhthetrum chrysostigma) but no sign of out target species, the Black Pennant. Their season is weakly defined so maybe they’d finished for this year?

I returned somewhat disappointed but not unhappy ‘cos the Epaulet Skimmer was already more than I’d expected.

Following a little pre-trip research, I had a target in mind of a wildlife reserve called the Aula Natura de la Marjal de Gandia. However, today having been kicked off with a spot of  pilates -by Francine rather than by me, you understand – our morning was mostly gone so it was a little late to head for Gandia, which is most of the way to Valencia. So, our fine hosts suggested heading inland, over a twisty, turning mountain road to a place called Val d’Ebo. Here, there was reportedly a river for some critters and a good little restaurant for some lunch. However, Chris warned us to be careful how much food we ended up with: “just got for the tapas without the main course; say solo tapas por favor”, he advised. Right. Off we set.

In fact, it would have been quicker to drive along the autovia to Gandia than over the twisty, turning mountain road to Val d’Ebo. However, we finally arrived and drove into town/village over the river bridge. Did I say river? All we saw was dry, sun-bleached white boulders with no water flowing across them. Not promising for critters. Nonetheless, we parked and began investigating, noting first our proposed lunch venue. Wandering through the village, we ended up down at the river bed where we did find some remaining pools of water that were no longer flowing. They were there, though, and so were a seven species of dragonfly including several additions to our vestigial Spanish list. Here, we added:

• White Featherleg (Platycnemis latipes)
• Goblet-marked Damselfly (Erythromma lindenii)
• Keeled Skimmer (Orthetrum coerulescens)

together with an interesting Skimmer that was either a Southern Skimmer (Orthetrum brunneum) or a Yellow-veined Skimmer (Orthetrum nitidinerve). More research/opinion needed – watch this space.

Satisfied, we returnerd to our lunch venue and ordered, as instructed, “solo tapas, por favor”. A salad arrived, complete with the obligatory bread and allioli [garlic mayonaise]. We began eating. A plate of squid rings and fish balls arrived. Yum! Some pickled anchovies arrived, garnished with anchovy-stuffed olives. Excellent! Albondigas [meatballs] turned up with a few token mushrooms. I’m particularly fond of albondigas. Something whose name I forget but which resembles small meat patties arrived, complete with a few homemade pork sausages. We were full. Pork chuletas [chops] were presented next, garnished with some grilled courgettes/zucchini. I’m sure I’ve forgotten something but we couldn’t move.

We’d washed what we could manage down with a couple of beers and a couple of glasses of rosado [pink wine]. €30 the lot; great value but far too much for a lunch where we are concerned.

We wobbled our way back to the car and drove back over the twisty, turning mountain road to refresh ourselves in the pool … after the food had settled, of course.

This trip through to Spain in August was inspired by several things. In no particular order, they were:

1. to experience some proper Spanish summer temperatures;
2. to see something of the Jalon fiesta (it’s a week long);
3. to help our host Chris celebrate his birthday.

We’ve been doing #1 since we arrived – the skies have been blue and the daytime temperatures have been consistently hitting >30°C/86°F. When we arrived, even Chris’s swimming pool temperature was up at 34°C/94°F.

Today we took care of both #2 and #3 in one visit to a downtown Jalon restaurant in the company of ~14 other revellers, to sit in the street and destroy a selection of Spanish tapas. Being a celebration, we also destroyed several beers, several bottles of vino and a bottle or so of Soberano [Spanish brandy].

Having visited several times, we are familiar with the look of the Jalon town square over which our chosen restaurant looks. Today, though, the town square looked very different. The central fountain structure was covered in wood/metalwork. The square itself was covered with a layer of sand and all the businesses surrounding the square, including the bank, farmacía [chemist/drugstore] and restaurants/bars were shielded by large iron bars enclosing a walkway with seating areas above. The reason for these fortifications? The Spanish obsession with bulls.

A large part of the week-long fiesta is daily sessions of so-called bull running. Since we are not talking about an actual bull fight finishing in blood and gore, I was keen, though a little apprehensive, to witness it. After some food – fear not, our table was in the street at the back side of the restaurant rather in the path of the bulls – a firework was let off signalling the approach of the bull. Francine and I wandered through the restaurant to the front, safely behind the ironwork, for our first taste of a Spanish fiesta.

The bull was let into the ring. It was a truly magnificent looking creature, shining a glorious black. We were later told that they were oiled to improve their appearance. The bulls are bread for fiestas such as this and, of course, for the more blood-thirsty bull fights, and are quite unlike any bulls I’ve ever seen anywhere else. This fabulous creature deserved respect. Naturally, where the Spanish are concerned, respect is precisely what it didn’t get.

The bull was not the only creature in the ring, though it may well have been the most intelligent creature in the ring. Along with the bull, and competing with it vis-a-vis levels of testosterone, were half a dozen young studs. Their job was to taunt the bull unmercifully to enrage it and make it charge, whereupon they would show it a clean pair of heels and flee to safety of several wooden frameworks, either behind or atop them. From their king of the castle positions, they would continue taunting the hapless bull. This all seemed to delight the crowd above and behind the safe ironwork.

When I say “safe”, all things are relative. One spectator was leaning through the ironwork taking pictures. One problem with staring through the viewfinder of a camera is that one’s attention is focussed and one tends not to see surrounding action ones direct field of view. Such was the case with our snapping spectator. Big though they are, these beautiful bulls are lightening fast. Quite suddenly, the bull snapped its head around and attempted to gore the photographer. The photographer leapt back through the bars, rapidly followed by one of the gleaming bull’s horns. The bull tossed its head. Its horn, doing a quick upper cut, didn’t quite contact the guy’s thigh but it did rip his shorts. I’m ashamed to say I found myself baying for blood – human blood. I’m always on the side of the critters.

I’d had enough and retreated to the safety of our table; a bit like burying my head in the sand, I suppose, pretending the action in the next street wasn’t happening. What began as a vaguely intriguing spectacle descended swiftly into something I regarded as abhorrent.

I really don’t understand how people can treat animals in such a demeaning manner and derive pleasure from it.

When we were here at Jalon in Spain in early May this year, we spotted a pair of Red-veined Darters (Sympetrum fonscolombii) beside Las Salinas, a lagoon in Calpe on the coast. I was a little surprised because the water is probably salt or, at best, brackish, hence the name. To see whether or not this sighting was an aberration, we returned this morning.

No, not an aberration. While our hosts were shopping, Francine and I wandered along the edge of Las Salinas where we disturbed Red-veined Darters on a regular basis, finally counting 21 in various states of maturity. This one is an immature male just beginning to turn red. I now see that my dragonfly bible does mentions Red-veined Darters and coastal lagoons in the same sentence.

Las Salinas is better known, though, for its Greater Flamingos.

In the afternoon I returned to the local Jalon river to show Francine where I’d been rummaging around yesterday and to use her as my spotter. At one of the fords that had produced nothing the previous day – at least, nothing that I’d seen – Francine saw a blue flash whiz past. We lost sight of it, as is not uncommon. While looking for it though, we did disturb a Scarlet Darter/Broad Scarlet (Crocothemis erythraea).

Our blue flash returned. I spent about 15 minutes trying to get a decent vantage point to snap it as it spent a similar amount of time avoiding being snapped. Eventually I had to resort to getting my walking shoes very wet wading in the ford to get an angle. My first thought looking through the lens was Southern Darter (Orhetrum brunneum), it was the same colouration, but it didn’t look quite right – too narrow in the abdomen. Back chez Chris and Yvonne consulting  my bible again, I suspect that what we have here is a so-called Epaulet Skimmer (Orthetrum chrysostigma). This is an African species that has made it into southern Spain.

It’s a good job the weather is hot and sunny, my shoes dried by the time we’d walked home.

.

After yesterday’s scare with our engine-shaped warning light in the car, today when I started the car all appeared to be normal. I’m going to be nervous for some time.

As this is our first visit in the midst of dragonfly season, I wanted to go and investigate the Riú Xaló-Gorgos, the river which flows through the valley and Jalon itself. We’ve seen the river swell to a fierce torrent capable of washing cars downstream in the winter months but now, in summer, it is a much calmer affair. There are several fords, hence the cars being bowled downstream, all of which are now largely dry, and the flow rate is much slower. My plan was to park in town and walk upstream towards a dammed area which widens out into a modestly sized lake.

I followed the river checking various areas where I could access the water as I came across them. Nothing, not a sausage, pas un chat as the French say. I wonder what the equivalent Spanish phrase might be?

Once far enough upstream, I fought my way through the undergrowth to a wider area of water just beneath the dam. Still nothing, still not a sausage, encore pas un chat as the French continue to say.

Fearing that this river might not actually support any populations of Odonata, I moved up above the dam and fought my way through yet more undergrowth and tall grasses in an effort to get somewhere near the water’s edge. Ah ha, finally I disturbed a dragon, a Broad Scarlet/Scarlet Darter (Crocothemis erythraea). These brilliant red dragonflies can be seen in the UK on occasion but I’m most used to seeing them in the south of France. Beside the Scarlet, perched just over the water, was another one of my friends that does occur commonly in England, a Black-tailed Skimmer (Orthetrum cancellatum).

My best find of the afternoon, however, was a little further back from the water where I discovered one of my favourites, a Violet Dropwing/Violet-marked Darter (Trithemis annulata). These rather gaudily pink males are colourful at any time but in the lighting conditions here, this one looked spectacular, I thought. Very happy snapper!

I did also spot a Blue-tailed Damselfly which remains a bit of a mystery. There are two possible suspects in this neck of the woods, the “regular” Blue-tailed Damselfly/Common Bluetail (Ischnura elegans) and the Iberian Bluetail (I. graellsii), both of which look painfully similar. Just to make life even more challenging, in areas where the two species overlap, as here, they apparently hybridize. I think I’m going to need a targeted photo, now that I know what to look for, to decide what I think they are – assuming I can find them again, of course.

Today was always going to prove interesting because we would be travelling through a large chunk of Spain for the first time. As it turned out, it proved a lot more interesting than expected.

We’d chosen our routes to and from Spain to cross the Pyrenees in two different places, hoping to see more of the sights crossing some of the higher mountain cols [passes]. Our morning weather was cloudy so our first decision was whether to actually bother going up over the col or just to use the almost 9kms/5mls Somport Tunnel. As we neared the real mountains, the skies were clearing a little so we chose the col.

The high points of the Pyrenees mark the actual border between France and Spain. Once over the border, the change of architecture and atmosphere make it quite obvious that you are now in a different country.

Being in strange territory armed only with an out of date satnav, we were feeling a little exposed and decided to call into a fuel station to buy a road map of Spain. Francine found one she liked the look of and we set off again. Something looked wrong on the dashboard. Surely that little warning light in the shaped of an engine block shouldn’t be on? Bother! (Or words to that effect.) Francine consulted the manual. Paraphrasing slightly:

You may have a problem with one of the engine’s emission control systems. The car may feel normal but you may be putting out too many emissions that may damage the vehicle further. When safe to do so, pull over and stop. restart the engine three times with a >30 second pause in between. If that doesn’t clear the fault, go to your nearest dealer to get it checked. Avoid hard accelerations. The fuel consumption may be affected.

I tried the stop and restart routine to no avail, as expected. We were now driving through a high (1200m/3700ft) plateau which looked like the bread basket of Spain with harvested cornfields to either side. I wasn’t really keen on being delayed here and, as indicated, the car did feel perfectly normal. I checked the fuel consumption and that also looked normal. We decided to drive gently and try to make our destination, Jalon, about 6 hours/300miles/480kms down the road. Once on a delightfully underused free autovia [motorway], I set the cruise control to 60mph/96kmh and continued, silently muttering prayers to Gods in which I don’t believe.

Approaching 1:00 PM, the warning light having been glowing steadily for the last 3 hours, I pulled off to fill up with fuel and have lunch, which we’d cunningly brought with us in the form of two boxes of tuna and rice salad. We filled the tank then, with the temperature at a windy 34°C/86°F, we stopped in a small amount of shade on the station’s forecourt to empty the boxes of salad.

Our lunch stop at the fuel station had been about 20 minutes. We strapped ourselves back in and I started the car. Miracle of miracles, the engine-shaped warning light was not now glowing at me. We clambered back on the autovia where the engine-shaped warning light continued not to glow at me all the way across to Valencia and down the remaining hour and a quarter to Jalon, where we arrived, mightily relieved, at 4:30 PM.

If we suffer a recurrence and I do have to get it checked, at least we’d now be comfortable and among friends.

Phew!

After a day recuperating in the Marais Poitevin with Mike, today we were on the road again heading for the Pyrenees. Our target was a little walled town called Navarrenx towards the western end of the mountain chain. We set off at about 9:00 AM after a simple breakfast of bread and jam with the all-important coffee at our great value B&B in Arçais.

Satnavs really can be spectacularly stupid. Leaving Arçais, ours decided to ignore a perfectly sensible tarmac road and send us down what I can only describe as a farm track with grass growing down the middle, which eventually turned into an unsurfaced rough stone track. The speed limit may technically have been 90kmh/56mph, which may have saved a second or two over the sensible route, but much more than 20kmh was out of the question. Nonetheless, we eventually made it to the autoroute and began heading south towards Bordeaux.

With the heavy travel weekend now behind us, we expected today to be considerably easier and so it was, at first. We even sailed through the toll booths north of Bordeaux with very little delay. Then we stopped. The autoroute section forming a ring road around Bordeaux was locked solid. We eventually stuttered our way around and popped out of the south side of Bordeaux about an hour later. A stalled car in one lane wasn’t helping on one section but essentially, this was that most English of problems: too much traffic and too little road. The roads around Bordeaux are broken.

Approaching the Pyrenees, Sally Satnav got confused again but this time through no fault of her own. Her maps are two years out of date and the French have clearly been making some improvements. Poor Sally was trying to have us turn into junctions that no longer existed courtesy of what appeared to be a new dual carriageway. Navigation Officer Francine had to take over with a more modern real map.

After a much harder day than I’d expected, we checked in to our pre-booked Logis hotel in Navarrenx at about 5:30 PM and sat on the local square unwinding with two beers – each, that is.

A local supermarket was open and netted us a bottle of rosé to see us through to meal time, when the hotel’s restaurant produced Francine some excellent scallops and, of course, another bottle of wine.

Maybe now we’d be able to face tomorrow’s crossing of the Pyrenees.