As I mentioned in an earlier post,  following the shakedown trip to Berlin, we were heading off on a tour of Spain, France, Switzerland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Belgium in July.

We had ummed and ahhed about buying mesh jackets to wear instead of the Klim kit we have but thought that we would struggle for luggage space because we would need to stack the Latitude and Altitude gear somewhere if we were wearing mesh jackets and we were packing a lot of clothing already, given the quality of the hotels and restaurants we had booked, so decent shoes, trousers, shirts and dresses were already taking up a fair bit of space.

How much space? Well there was all the standard luggage space (including the optional top case) and on top of the top case we were again using the Kriega US-40 Rackpack but this time we had added one of my venerable old Kriega US-20 Drypacks on top using the wonderful strapping system engineered into these bags.

I also thought about buying a new drone to use on the journey but with only a week to go decided against buying it for now as the trip was going to be pretty mileage-intensive so stopping, setting up, filming, returning, repacking, etc. was probably off the table.  Maybe next year?

A couple of days beforehand, I thought I’d just print out our travel documents. You may know we’d originally booked it for a week or two before before but Angelina’s graduation date was announced and clashed, so we had had to rebook… without the CClub Lounge access on our original booking.  Luckily there must have been a last minute cancellation, so I managed to book the last two spots, meaning we could relax in a bit more peaceful surroundings and enjoy complimentary food and wine.

We headed off to Portsmouth after work on the Thursday, boarded and found our cabin. Two nights and one full day aboard awaited us.  Sadly, Brittany Ferries’ “Salamanca” ship doesn’t have an actual gym or fitness suite and the spa was just a couple of chairs and a table near to the kids’ zone. Hardly relaxing. But the cabin was fine, the porthole looking out to sea was nice to have and the quality of the food and drink in the Lounge was good enough for us not to need to eat in the restaurants.

Overall? Pricey at £747 all-in one way, but comfortable if a bit boring and it got us to Santander on the Saturday morning ready to go. Would we do it again? Well, it gets you right into Northern Spain but £750 pays for a nice hotel or two and the petrol to ride down the West coast and through the Pyrenees.