Books, Books, Books!

As we're planning to mostly stay away from campsites on our trip I decided it'd be worth getting better guidebooks for the Aires in France, Spain and Portugal. There are also schemes where you can stay overnight for free which look interesting, so we also got joined the UK Britstops scheme as well as the France Passion scheme.

Britstops allows you stay overnight at pubs and restaurants in the UK if you have a meal or a drink or two. I'd heard good things about them from a few folks so thought it'd be worth having - even if we're not planning to spend all that many nights in the UK on our trip.

France Passion is a similar scheme in France, where you can stay overnight in a range of places - farms, vineyards, museums etc., without an obligation to purchase anything (although it's probably polite to do so!). It looks very interesting and is right up our street, so I'm hoping to use them a fair bit.

The Aire's books (from Vicarious Media) look very good - much better than the other Aires books we have. The Spain & Portugal book looks particularly good and a quick flick through it has identified quite a few places on interest. Really looking forward to getting down there now!

Tomorrow is a big day as the motorhome goes in for its MOT so fingers crossed. Before that one of the Motorbikes is also in for MOT (if I can get it to the Honda dealer, as it's running very rough having been unused for a couple of years!) and we're also due to pick up the little bike we'll be taking with us.