The last two days of our trip passed in a blur of fields and trees.  Steep-rooved houses, criss-crossed Tudor beams are either clustered into towns, or spaced out like candles on the flat landscape of a birthday cake.  The van brakes ground, or they didn’t grind, we developed an oil leak but kept topping up. The sole aim was to get home now, distance to cover in case our train pulled into the Euro Tunnel, sliding into the darkness without us.

And yet, like a child on Christmas day fighting tired eyes for fear of missing grown-up events, we clung to the last hours of our amazing odyssey, torn by the requirement to get back and our desire to turn around, shoot off in any other direction but home.  

From Nantes we made it to Mont Sainte-Michele, it’s tall gothic spire puncturing the sky, launching upwards from grey mud-sand of Normandy beaches.  We allowed ourselves a stop from incessant forward movement, to tread its causeway and jostle with multi-cultured faces and voices, squeezing round corners, along ramparts and up to the Abbey itself. Despite it’s apparent medieval nature (think Hogwarts- meets Lindesfarne-meets Bamburgh Castle), it’s mostly a 20^thcentury fabrication.  Tiny turrets jut out at odd angles, wonky chimneys offer ledges from which pairs of seagulls squawk in protest at disturbed repose.

Then back in the van, into gear: onwards.  

Our final evening, Boulonge-sur-Mer, was an opportunity partly for reminiscences, glowing memories over a bottle of wine on a last supper out, and the transactional stuff that I’d fixed on achieving.  M, ever patient sighed as we sheltered from icy rain dashing out to the launderette machines cleaning and drying clothes and dog bedding.  In my head, it was essential to re-enter the UK without a mound of smelly washing.  

I was discombobulated, hormones not helping, but in mourning what was over I was snipey and focused on little stuff rather than seeing a bigger picture.  

Next morning, air cleared, mug of tea shared and approaching Calais, we clicked back into the sync I’d shoved us out of.  Notes were compared as miles passed:  favourite days, favourite nights out, the best of ‘this’, worst of ‘that’, things to change/avoid, do differently in future.  Would we stick with this van or make a different one? Where would we go next time?

What was clear as the road signs counted down the kilometres to our exit, was that we’ve done many journeys in the past 96 days, the least of which was the 5000+ miles. We’ve learnt what we can achieve if we decide on a course of action.  M’s confidence has grown: he had lost faith in his ability to make things, the intimidation putting him off the idea of building the camper to start with. Now he describes how he can reshape the kitchen area, estimating half a day for the work.  He’s started to write, and gets lost in his own thoughts and words, creating a narrative so different to mine, M fluid at expressing things that I find it harder to say.  

My beliefs have shifted too.  I’ve started consultancy work that I’m loving in its own right, proud also to be contributing independently and more significantly to family finances, outside of the guesthouse.  I know now that we can make a new life, lots of new lives.  I have more confidence that ‘blue sky dreams’ are not in fact only suitable for the ether, they have more value and less risk attached to them than was assumed.  My determination to have us both reach for them offers real benefit, rather than folly. Just look at what we’ve done so far.

Which doesn’t at all cover my gratitude.  I am shortly in danger of being one of those gushy actresses who, hands clutching a shiny award, overstays their stage time.  But, if you’ll allow me to monopolize your attention for just a short while longer:

Thank you Mr Wilson.  You are my best friend, my enabler, trustee of the dreams, tears, heights reached, lows plumbed.  I am afforded influence, and though I’m judicial in what I push for, there are times when the adjective is simply ‘pushy’.  I’ve nudged and then oomphed you.  Thankfully, you see our adventures as good things, have loved the journey and appreciate the necessity of changes coming our way.  A lesser man might have descended into resentful irritation.  You have not.  You wake each day determined to be both cheerful and the best human that you can be.  I stand in awe of such resolution on a daily basis.

Vicks has been a stalwart supporter of this and other departures from the norm.  Her visit in the middle of the trip was precious time.  It provided opportunities to chat about subjects inconsequential and more serious. I hope she and I keep running/cycling together.  I love the space it provides, time for the two of us and our endless striving towards her ever-more-ambitious sporting goals.

Family have been wonderful.  Curators of our journey, lines of contact to speak with, eternally supportive and encouraging. We got back to the UK and stopped first with the “London Lot”.  Out came the trolley jack, copper slip, clamps.  Off came the wheels, problems identified, rectified, rolling stock restored.  M up again early on Sunday morning, hands around the brakes and their innards, supervised by Uncle Ron. Then we go North on Monday for M’s Mum’s birthday (she’ll be 82), to see my Mum, Dad and Joy, to spend time sharing the highlights, good and bad.

We’ve been blessed with friends who’ve assumed our abandoned responsibilities, sorting the cottage and caring for it’s guests, ensuring plumbing keeps flowing in the freezing weather, collecting the post and sending weekly reports that the guesthouse is still standing.  Our garage was broken into, we have pictures for the insurance company, accounts from neighbours and colleagues in the police force.  There’s a raft of kindness that we’re profoundly appreciative of, buoyed by the sense that although we sometimes feel like a separate double act, clearly we’re not and have many people to be glad for.

And, I’m grateful for all the people who’ve responded to this blog, sent messages of support, noticed our tribulations, even just affirmed their presence with a “Like’.  Each bolsters, endorses, encourages, make me fight a desire to hide or keep this exploration of the possible quiet and private.  You’ve come with me; your company has been invaluable and reassuring.

It’s going to be a roller-coaster ten months.  We’re stopping the guesthouse, which necessitates leaving it.  That’s four floors of downsizing and we’ve no idea of into what.  The guesthouse bookings are very busy, lots of guests who are valued friends and new friends to make.  Lots of decisions, weighing up, taking down, simplifying and stripping away.  

Optimism is my natural bent, I assume success and strenuously resist losing that outcome.  I have huge buckets of optimism for the future, our blue skies are liberally littered with fluffy clouds of opportunity.  All we need to do is decide where we’re looking first: North, South, East or West, and surely, that can’t be too difficult.  Can it?

We left Zaragoza and headed even further North.  

Down at G&L’s, spring had sprung and perhaps gone over, blossom had turned to almond sets and each day was bathed in warm Mediterranean breezes.  Zaragoza’s trees are bare, the grass is just starting to waken and blossom is a rare flowering entity on the most optimistic of trees.  The air is cold.  We delve into our lockers and pull out the jumpers again.

By the time we’re at the Spanish base of the Pyrenees, 600 miles north and 2000m up in altitude, the world looks like it’s been trapped forever in November.  There’s no snow on the ground, and although distant mountain caps are striped with white, they’re not blanketed as February might expect them to be.

We do a few ups and downs, the van seems happy enough.  It chugs on the ups and when M keeps it in second gear he manages to minimize the amount of braking required.  So far, so good.

There’s a decision point, part-way into the mountain passes.  Carry on straight up, directly heading for the central pass, or divert through the less picturesque tunnel that saves the mountainous undulations but takes all the fun out of the drive.  I show M on the map.  We give it a moment’s consideration.  

“Nah… we’re here now”

“In it for a biscuit”

“Righto…”

We’re set for the adventure and stunning majestic sights; the route doesn’t disappoint. It would if you’d gone up to the highest valleys where the skiing is thin, there were maybe three ice-packed routes to choose from.  You’d be really glum if you in were lower ski resorts.  Then you’d have wanted to bring a stout pair of walking boots and waterproofs because your skis weren’t going to be of much use to you.  But in the cab of our camper, it is glorious.  

Deep blue, semi-frozen reservoirs are fed by icy-cloudy rivers that jumble their way to join the whole.  The sun in it’s hazy sky throws random shots of light across tree-pocked hillsides. Those same rays refract off the snow where it persists, shooting back brilliant gleams of gold, right onto the back of your retina.  It is, not to put to finer point on it, bloody lovely.

Up, up, up we chug.  Over the top, across the French border as we start the 10 miles or so of constant descent. The van is in second gear, or third (when it flattens out a little).  The brakes do squeak a bit, but not alarmingly so.  Just enough to remind us that they’re unhappy.  But they still work.

Or so we think.

The lowest point in the foothills, on the road to Pau is a small but bustling town called Laruns.  As we’re approaching the central square, which doubles as the roundabout we have another decision to make.  The shortest way to reach Lourdes, where M really wants to spend a couple of days, is by turning right here and doing another undulous, tiny, twisty road that will lead us into the heart of that city.  The alternative, flatter but triple-length route is to up to Pau, across to Tarbes and then down the third side of the rectangle to get to our destination. M pulls over.  He’s not happy about the van.  The brakes have started making some alarming noises.

As we move off the main road it creates the most awful sound. Is the entire chassis about to pull away from the van itself?  

“So what routes did you want to show me?”

I pick up the map but say:

“They must have a garage here, what do you think?”

“Yup”

M gets out and shines a torch through the wheel trims.  As he moves from corner to corner, his expression gets darker.  

We’re not going anywhere, we also can’t stay where we are, partially blocking the main access route through the town.  As M puts the engine back into gear, that awful deep grating sound, starts up again. It’s like the wheels are filing down the axles.

A road sign says there’s a camper car park just 200 yards away, it takes us several horrible minutes to grind into it’s entrance.  

Only now do M and I’s joint imaginations relive the past 10 miles of hairpin bends at super-steep slopes.  We realize how incredibly lucky we’ve been.  My head’s full of tales of drivers who’ve careered into pebble beds to save themselves and their passengers, or failed to make a tight curve.  That could so easily have been us; but it wasn’t.

We passed a garage on the way into Laruns.  It’s clear we need assistance, it’s also 4:45 on a Friday evening.  Monseigneur Pierre Casajus, proprietor of the second garage in town agrees, reluctantly at first, to look at our poorly camper.  He and M drive off so that our French ‘Mecanicien’ can listen to the sound of discs slicing through wheels, and by the time they return, he’s on board.

There’s a cynical part of me that says “Well, yes, he would wouldn’t he, given what he’s charging?”  M balks at being fleeced €342 for parts that would cost £40 at home.  But it’s Monseigneur Casajus or the Renault Garage that Google rates as 2½ out of 5.  Pierre seems like the better choice.

The parts can be here by Monday, at the earliest.  He’ll do the van that day, at some point, charging €48 an hour for as long as it takes.  We’re in no position to argue.  The breakdown assistance are much more helpful than last time.  ‘Alan’ (pronounced in a French accent) assures me they will pay for a hire car (but not fuel) and €85 towards a taxi to take us 60km to Pau to pick it up.  So, it’ll all be fine in the end.  

We nudge the van back from the garage to the camper stop, where €21.60 for 3 nights seems a wonderfully fair price to pay.  

Collapsed in a local café, over food that someone else prepared, we count our blessings. We’re not in a crumpled heap on the side of a Pyrenean lane, with no wheels/steering column/brakes left to mend; we’re not in hospital, nor is the dog at the vets/in a dog pound, because of injuries; we’re not sitting in a juddering mess, trying not to cry whilst we cook our supper.

We’re in a warm, busy restaurant, the van and dog are safe. It’s a beautiful place to break down and my French vocabulary is now expanding to include several car parts and vehicular maladies.  All good, by the skin of our brake pads, but good nonetheless.

“Let’s try and get away early” suggests M, horizontal in his pit, unaware that it’s already 8:43, “Let’s be on the road by 10”

“Okaaaay…”

I respond, glancing at the clock.  I forbear from sharing the truth – he looks really comfy and has taken to writing things – its not time wasted.  I love his words.  Another hour won’t hurt…

By a tremendous feat of effort and will, I’m behind the steering wheel at 11:06 as we pull out of the car park and back onto the road.  It’s about 170 miles (3½ hours driving in this van) to the Park4Night place near the centre of Zaragoza, from where we can explore the city.

Our journey flashed past in plains of vast, eye-leading flatness.  They are a patchwork of greens, greys, rust browns and sand-pale, rectangles, tessellating perfectly, unpredictable in colour from mile to mile.  All flat. In the distance we see ridges and mountains, but up close… unruffled horizontalness.

We passed the Airport of Teruel, where you will never catch a plane.  It is an air-park, not a junk-yard of disused machines of flight, but storage for excess capacity, planes that have legal issues, and others awaiting delivery.  Huge jumbo jets dwarf a nearby village, standing out from the smooth agricultural earth like sculptures from outer space.

There’s a lot of un-lovely urbanization on either side of the A23 as it ploughs its way north. Huge factory buildings of corrugated metal surrounded by homogenous, efficient housing for workers, stacked high to minimize their footprint.  We sail past these seemingly lifeless metropolises, hoping that our destination holds more promise.

Which it doesn’t to start with.  

I used to live in Sheffield, North Yorkshire.  I was miffed on hearing that the queen went past ‘my town’ on the train or in the car and commented about what an awful place Sheffield was.  It wasn’t.  But from the motorway/rail line, you only saw the industrialized, metallic and harshest view of the town’s digestive workings revealed in all their ugly glory.  You didn’t see the parklands, the river running through the city, it’s sandstone library and town buildings or all the places to stop, ponder and think.

Likewise, Zaragoza has an unprepossessing set of outskirts.  Row upon row of high-rise terracotta coloured apartment buildings.  Built in the same pink-brown hue is Zaragoza’s penitentiary, plonked just outside the city’s perimeter and by architecture, largely undistinguishable from surrounding residential accommodation.

Then we find the river, gracious banks along the Rio Elba, and the pace slows, water glistens and a parking space accommodates us for a late lunch, a walk for Stan and the opportunity to stop.  In the distance, along the river bank, an amazing collection of spires are calling to us: “Come and discover”.  

Walking is one way of sightseeing; by car is another; also bikes.  But we find two abandoned scooters at the roadside and after app-loading and payment, whoosh, we’re off!  Level 23 takes us up to meteoric rates of around 14 miles per hour – enough to get your hair wafting out behind you and to fix a grin across your chops. Yahoo!

The search to reach those spires take us to a huge plaza, with water cascading down and across a sculpture of the world as a map, a stone-carved globe, and the Basilica. Where in Sot de Ferrer, the place of worship was ornate in structure but in simple white, the Basilica de Zaragoza is the polar opposite.  The vast structure houses thirteen domes, on the outside capped in enameled tiles of blue, white, green and yellow.  Inside each is decorated in fresco, cherubs gazing, holy wars waged, saints blessing, dying, saving others, and these works of art are as nothing compared to the marble.

Vast structures depict angels winged and floating on gusts of folding turbulence, arms reaching down to the gilt laden altars and chalices that send tumbling golden light to caress the bowed heads of kneeling sinners.  It is wondrous.  It is overwhelming.  How could a simple soul enter this palace of worship, see a vision of such wealth and power and not feel awed into deferential gratitude, just to be allowed inside?

I cannot connect with this opulence, but I see those who do, for whom the visit is of benefit, amongst the mostly reverently-quiet tourists.  Wheelchairs and walking stick bearers queue for their chance to hear the padre’s words of comfort and feel his gentle hand upon their hair.  Others sit silent beside the confessionals, one penitent returning to his confessor and pressing something that glints into his hand.  There are twelve smaller dome-topped chapels around the central, largest, most magnificent structure, and in each one, two or more heads are bowed in communication with their saints, their god. 

I cannot enter into their acts of worship, any more than I could crawl on broken knees up thirteen, pebbled Stations of the Cross.  But that reflects where I am, my spiritual journey.  I see compassion here, amongst the fabulous physicality of what is around us, and I’m glad of it.  There can never be too much compassion in this world.  

And we send a prayer for dear friends of ours, who have recently revealed their struggles with illness.  Their faith is strong and shared and Christian, so in this temple of Catholic holiness, surely here, God or one of his saints must have an ear. For them we both send up an application for support:

“Protect them and care for them, they’re going to need you.”