Since my parents moved out to Spain several years ago I've been saying that I wanted to drive the 7 over there. I came very close in 2003 I think, the car was booked on the ferry but during the run up to the trip I was suffering with starter motor problems and frustratingly I just couldn't trust the car. That time I had to make the trip in a Citroen ZX with 150k on the clock - but it did do 60mpg, every cloud and all that.
This year was different. Over the last couple of years I'd made a few changes that really have made the car reliable, the Emerald ECU and the geared starter motor to name a couple. We booked the ferry from Plymouth to Santander for the 30th May and sat back and waited. Of course, something still had to go wrong and we had a serious family illness fright a few weeks before we were due to go. We weren't getting many answers so took the decision to postpone the trip by a month and hope that things would have been sorted out by then. Thankfully they were and on the 27th June we drove down to see my Grandma who lives about half way to Plymouth. I tucked the 7 up in the garage and we had a good chat about 'village' life and, of course, plenty of tea, cake and biscuits!
The following morning we had to get down to Plymouth to catch the ferry at midday. I wanted to be there by 10am to allow for check-in, etc, so we set off around 8am. Of course, it was chucking it down and it did so all the way. Fortunately I had fitted the hood the evening before so we were prepared. I took a steady drive down the M5 and were got there with plenty of time and parked up at the terminal. Nothing to do there - doh!
The ferry left on time and we killed some time by going to see Ironman in the tiny onboard cinema before getting something to eat and then going to our cabin for some rest before the long drive. The ferry docked at around 8am the following morning and we were rolling off by about 9am. Time to see if the TomTom maps I had would work. The morning was bright and sunny and we wound our way out of the town and onto some quiet empty roads. I wasn't 100% sure I trusted the SatNav at this point as I had tried to program an itinerary to take us on a route I wanted. I decided to give up on this and just gave it my parents address and off we went. I had filled up with fuel in the UK and we headed off into the middle of nowhere. I had used the self mapping facility of the Emerald to create a cruising map and I had managed to get 35mpg on the trip so far, but evening so, the fuel light on my dash was staring at me for a scarily long time on the first stretch as we we not driving though any villages at all. Eventually, just as I was starting to wonder what I'd be able to do if we ran out of fuel out there, we dropped down a hill, rounded a bend and came into a small village and the welcome sight of a petrol station greeted me. I made a mental note to sort out my fuel gauge as it only took mid-20's litres of fuel and off we went again. The rest of the trip was uneventful, we started off avoiding motorways, running on the major roads that were generally parallel to them. The problem was that all the lorries do the same to avoid the tolls. Whilst dispatching these wasn't that tricky, 3 or 4 at a time was more of a challenge and with the constant towns we came to which they would then slowly accelerate out of, it was becoming clear that progress wasn't what it could be. At around lunchtime we gave in and I diverted to the nearest motorway junction and decided to make up some lost time. The 7 was perfectly happy cruising at 80 - 85mph, the only problem was my feet were going to sleep and then suffering pins and needles. We stopped for some lunch at one of the many break areas and I stretched my legs. The only drawback to my plan was that by telling the SatNav to just take us there, I had forgotten that it would want to take us as far south as Barcelona and we'd have to then drive back north again. I only realised this when it was too late to avoid and we had some rubbish traffic on the Barcelona stretch of motorway. All in all though it was a good trip, 500 miles in about 8hrs although I would say there isn't a lot to look at in the middle of Spain.
Once at my parents the 7 didn't get used as much as it should have - I was recovering, Mandy wasn't very well for a couple of days and my parents had just got a puppy Labrador which meant car and bike trips were a bit tricky. We did have a fun blast around the hills to Tossa De Mar and I took my mum for a blast on the twisty GI-682 from Sant Feliu de Guixols to Tossa de Mar - what a great road, hugging the cliff with views out over the sea. Not that I had much chance to look as I barely got out of second gear the whole way and the 7 was fantastically quick.