InvictaMoto's Family Travels

After a look through the Rough Guide to Spain and then TripAdvisor a rough plan was established that we should do a clockwise circuit around the central region of the region. The distances involved in this trip won't be too great so we should have time for a good look around without too much driving about. I have booked another Parador in Trujillo for two nights. On the booking sites there weren't too many hotels available for our dates. I thought about an anti-clockwise trip around the circuit but that didn't help. So a quick trip to the Parador.es website and I signed us in there. I booked another hotel  in Mérida ,  Again for two nights. This one a little less luxurious but it looks very nice. As we have seven nights to play with, the above leaves two to book.   So I have gone ahead and booked a single night in Badajoz and the last night in Cáceres.  These are also decent looking hotels. We will have to get used to the standards after the Paradors. 

With the Extremadura as the destination for some serious touristing I have booked the first night just short of the border from Castille. A bit of luxury before we enter the "Frying Pan" of Spain.   The Parador at Oropesa. I was looking last night and the Parador site has discounted rates for over 55's and in the Extremadura there are quite a few Paradors in the area. Oddly, booking.com had a much cheaper rate than the official site. Even with the senior citizen discount the cheapest rate is non-refundable and was way more than the booking.com refundable price.  How? I have no idea. The Parador's official booking site used to have a special "bulk" purchase rate. Something like four nights for the price of three or something along those lines.  Worth checking out. I need to get the Rough Guide out to see what we can see in the area. I have also bought a copy of the regional Michelin map #576. It covers Extremadura and across to Madrid and

The Tour d'España has come about really because we wanted an early holiday.  Most often we have been to the US in May but with the changes to my contract at work, where I am stuck with school holidays for the bulk of my leave, it has meant that two week trips are out  of the question unless done at Easter or Summer. I would like to have gone  back as we did in August  2014 on the Explorer -  Revisita España 2014 , and on the bike but it is not practical with Claire's hip and her gradual worry about being on the bike! The next best thing is to fly/drive. I have been checking on Skyscanner and the way it works it seems impossible to get the flight out and back into UK when you want them at a reasonable  price.  A quick click to one-way revealed a lot more flights. It also revealed that their website creates round trips groups of flights that when checked as singles come out at a very different (and lower) price.  In the end I booked Iberia out from London Gatwick t

We were up early for breakfast. The paperwork said that the parking along Beselarestraat from near Beselare towards Zonnebeke was open until 10am. The first problem was leaving the A19 as instructed that the junction wasn't policed on this section and we took nearly 15 mins to get the left rurn onto the N303 road into solid traffic through the town. Way before the start of the parking we were directed into a field and told to walk up the road. I had put a way marker into the TomTom for the road junction at the bottom of the parking. It was still some 600m to go. We were stopped by police and could see buses up ahead and a queue of people. By the time our column got up to about 200m  long the queue at what was Bus Stop F has disappeared. We were then told buses would come. With the traffic we were far too late to have a look around the museum site and went through accreditation and straight onto buses to Tyne Cot. We eventually arrived there about 1