The Editour reaches Spain

It is shortly before five o’clock on Saturday morning. I, Kay Barton, am sitting in a taxi in Vienna’s third district, waiting outside the house of my colleague Heike Fischers for us to catch an early flight to Barcelona for a tour of Spain and France. With barely four hours sleep, we dragged ourselves somewhat wearily to the airport where we had our first cappuccino.
Although our flight is on time, others are being cancelled or rescheduled due to a lack of staff during the peak holiday period. In fact, we even managed to gain time on the flight and arrive 15 minutes earlier than scheduled. By 10am, we had passed through the terminal in Barcelona with our luggage and taken charge of the Editourmobil which had arrived in the meantime.

However, a few problems over the past few weeks had led to postponements to parts of the Spanish and French tour and now Heike and I were at Barcelona airport to pick up the vehicle and drive to Novapet in Barbastro on the way to Zaragoza. Our temporary driver Siggi had kindly agreed to take the Editourmobil to Barcelona where we would take over and drive back via France to Germany over the course of a fortnight. It is hot and humid in Barcelona with a temperature of over 35 degrees Celsius. After a short discussion, Heike and I leave for Barbastro where we have an appointment with a PET material, preform and container manufacturer on Monday.

The drive takes the whole afternoon on virtually empty motorways, not because the distance is all that long, only 250 km, but rather that the tour vehicle is desperately slow, particularly when travelling uphill. Fortunately, there is a well-stocked supermarket on the A2 motorway where we make a brief stop to buy a few essential everyday items. Towards evening, we arrived at our campsite in Alquézar, which we had researched in advance, around 25 km away from our Novapet appointment.

There is a great buzz around the campsite, but our vehicle is a bit too big for the rather narrow parking spaces. However, after a lot of manoeuvring, we are finally in our parking bay and can devote ourselves to our first task of the tour which is to give the vehicle a thorough cleaning. We then go to the campsite restaurant which, we discover, does not have seriously good ratings on Google for nothing. After some tapas and calamari, tiredness gradually sets in and the effects of the long day become apparent.

The first night in the vehicle is quiet, except for a slight headache brought on by having one too many “Estrella” beers the previous evening. However, two cappuccinos at the campsite café get me ready to face the day. There is also a fantastic pad coffee machine on the Editourmobil, but if you love traditional coffee machines, the pad ones are pretty awful by comparison.

Breakfast is served in customary style on camping chairs in front of the vehicle. It is 38 degrees Celsius today which is not a problem for us experienced globetrotters – we have been in more extreme conditions. So, we are spending the day in the vehicle working on our laptops to deal with a few business issues before moving on to Novapet tomorrow.

Yours,
Kay Barton, Editor