A friend of a friend of ours has this thing of coming out with little sayings, one which stuck in my mind from way back was “Spain is a cold country, that happens to have hot sun”. 

At the time I didn’t really know what that meant, but now I do.  Most of the year Spain is warm and sunny, spring and autumn are sheer delight.  The hot summer you can survive, between the beach and the pool and not trying to do too much.  But the brief and brutal winter is HORRIBLE… in homes built to stay as cool as possible in summer heat, every icy breeze penetrates, and the lack of sun in our chilly north-facing villa adds to the frozen misery with damp and mould.  Between us we have never had more colds and respiratory infections, since moving to this ‘healthiest climate in the world’!

Our big mistake was viewing this beautiful villa in the early summer, when it was glorious, spacious and luxurious.  We paid no attention to the lack of radiators, curtains, interior doors, or even a woodburner… and we have spent the winter trying to heat the bits we are living in through a combination of inverting air conditioners (which produce astronomical electricity bills), and a calor gas heater which produces such damp the condensation runs down the windows, creating more black mildew and rot everywhere.  The girls rooms have little oil-filled radiators, that work OK in the smallest bedrooms (and in the office if you actually put your feet on them).  We have also become big fans of the good old hot water bottle!  Basically the strategy is focus on warming up the immediate area you are occupying, rather than the whole house or even room.  Lots of layers, hot drinks.  Warming soups…

So we are OFF.  In just two weeks, to a smaller, warmer place, with friendly helpful landlords, a proper long term lease, and that most wondrous of inventions… central heating!!!  Bring it on.

It was still dark when the alarm went off, but we didn’t take long to get ourselves up and look busy, we knew we had a long day ahead of us. As soon as I was dressed I ran out to check on the car, which was still there, so that was good. Breakfast was, like everything else at that place, basic, functional and sufficient.

Before we set off we lashed the roof stuff over again with the newsagent’s stringy stuff and tried to secure the useless plastic sheeting at the back. It was so cold that even if I didn’t have the residue of a chest infection it would have still, I’m sure, have hurt to breathe. The car made a scary whistling noise when we started it up, but that seemed to stop soon.

We set off toward the autoroute, watching the sun rise over a deserted landscape. It was clear as anything and the sun was blazing down, but when we looked at the shaded verge it was still thick with frost - the screenwash nozzles didn’t defrost until we pulled over and squirted deicer into them. We put on some music and our shades, and relaxed into having the motorway to ourselves. I was even thinking about trying some of the driving, even though I had never driven on the left and it was apparently really hard to get into gear… thankfully Richard seemed relaxed enough about it as the road droned endlessly on.

Suddenly a stench of burning rubber had us pulling over – oh god this is it, I thought, but Richard calmly complied with all European traffic regulations by popping his hi-vis vest on, unfolding a warning triangle and poking around under the bonnet to reveal the shredded remains of the aircon drive belt. Well we weren’t likely to need that on a day where there was still ice on the bonnet an hour after setting off. So we got going again quickly.

Circumnavigating Paris was fun but Basil (Fawlty, soundalike) the satnav did a good job in difficult times, despite our distraction by a badly-timed listen to the Now Show CD someone had thoughtfully placed in our family secret santa stocking (thanks, whoever that was!). After Paris France seemed pretty boring – flat, cold, sunny and with endless pylons marching across the unchanging landscape. We stopped for lunch at a service station somewhere – and bought new bungees and straps to replace the ones that appeared to have simply perished in the cold. Tyres seemed to be holding up despite the load, but diesel was very pricey.

Later that afternoon, as the road began to climb and the light to fade, we took back all we said about the boring flat landscape. As the snow began to fall so did our journey speed, and we realised our planned overnight stop in Bezier was becoming less and less likely to happen. Very annoyingly, we were unable to connect on the premium rate number to cancel the booking before being charged, but eventually stopping for the night became the highest priority – the road ahead through the Pyrenees was almost certainly closed anyway (trying to interpret French radio bulletins was a challenge but we got the gist), and we were going more and more slowly, becoming seriously concerned about safety. Richard had been driving for more than 9 hours, we were now averaging less than 40mph according to Baz, and we had to call it a night. So we ended up in a seriously grotty Travelodge-equivalent in the Auvergne somewhere. Room stank of a mixture of French fags and air freshener, no internet, and not even any soap in the dispensers. It also didn’t have anything remotely pretending to be secured parking, and we couldn’t see the car from the main building. We weren’t about to go any further though, and we figured any opportunist thieves – with skiis – would have to be pretty determined, to be bothered to risk hypothermia to nick our stuff. We had a dispirited meal in the services café downstairs then gave up. We had started so well, made such good time, but the weather had won this round.

The road goes ever onwards…