April 12th: No Brexit yet (Phew!) but an organised "B-R-Exit" as Bob and Ruth left the Canaries!

It was a bit of a relief that departure didn't coincide - even though we were travelling completely within Schengen and would not have to cross a border until the next day at the Pyrenees. It was a well-worn trail: super-cheap Vueling flight to Barcelona, hotel shuttle to and from the usual overnight hotel, coach to Girona airport and the on-demand lift to pick up Yvette from the parking lot. Greyrocks looked at the meteo and decided to stick with sandals and shorts/cropped trousers, and that turned out to be OK, even waiting for the shuttle. Not much of interest happened during the migration, other than being intrigued by the large number of young boys roaming around the hotel and airport, and later discovering that Barca was hosting the "World Cup" for soccer academies.

Our Montpelier apartment was booked from the Sunday, so we stayed at a point about half-way: the resort of Valras Plage, which we vaguely remembered as a day-trip destination from Agde. It was fairly bright and warm, but with a very strong and cold wind. On arrival in the town we realised just how popular it is, and this was a sunny Palm Sunday. We stayed in a well-located and charming small hotel, which was desperately difficult to find. (Thank you, Mr Google!) and had a chance to walk down to the river mouth and marina, then have our first French meal close by in a restaurant that had been open only a couple of days.

The House of Cards

Inside eclectic Bar Bouganville

Here we are in Montpellier, having spent  two weeks here, and with one to go! April is coming to and end, so in haste Greyrocks puts on record a few things that happened whilst we were still in Corralejo before we left! Then progress can be made on events here - including the brief visit by offspring!

It had not been the best carnival thanks to weather (cold evenings and some rain) and the emotions fostered by Brexit (suspicion, reticence, fear and anger!), but we had some social functions in the period thereafter that lifted spirits. We went to a Quiz Night at Rogues' Gallery hosted and organised by Elaine to raise money for her local cancer support charity. We were in a team with Elaine's sister-in-law and a friend, and we didn't disgrace ourselves, and had fun, but were up against some serious competition. Nonetheless we won three prizes in the raffle: a bottle of fizz, an ornament which we gave to a good home and a voucher for cocktails at a long-established bar in the "cobbled street". Some evenings later we redeemed them (and repeated at our expense) on some  strawberry daiquiris - being the cocktail of choice at present for Greyrocks after Goa!

So much better these days!

Elaine and Andrew were central to "jollies" in these few weeks, having invited us for dinner, included Ruth in the Ladies That Lunch crew that started at El Anzuelo - thriving under new management - and joined our "leaving party" at the same place. Greyrocks also attended the 80th birthday party for Dave at Rosie O'Grady's, which was a great do, where music was largely provided by Chris and Ronnie. That prompted a last minute evening at Robin's Nest, which is also much improved since the last occasion about 5 years ago!


We fitted in several trips to the spa for swimming - often followed by Argentinian delights at La Bolada, and we usually had a couple of hours on Sunday at Rogues' for Ronnie and (usually) Niamh playing and inviting guests. On two occasions Niamh was replaced by Chel - introducing us to another Corralejo's troupe of musicians. The jam sessions on Friday at Paradise returned to normality after the demolition chaos.

So what is the reference to "cards"? First Greyrocks had three incidents. The credit card blocked after Ruth messed up with the PIN was taken to UK via Goa in the hope of using an ATM at an airport on our way home, but there were no suitable ones so it had to be sent securely to UK and returned similarly - a process that took three weeks but worked to everyone's relief.


Then as a new deadline was announced for Brexit and it was our date of departure thoughts turned to the EHIC. We reckoned if our membership of the Spanish system was shown we would be covered throughout the EU as we have been until the exit lunacy, so we decided to get Spanish EHICs. We wrestled with the relevant website but got refusals by email, we tried phoning but that failed too, so we cadged a lift early one morning and were at the Puerto del Rosario Social Security Office when it opened. We had every bit of documentation we could think of with us and were ready for a long wait, but a nice man said it could be done on the spot as we were travelling soon. He just wanted evidence of our flight. Had we not got anything on our smartphones? He said if we printed something and came back it could be done, so we went into our usual hotel to ask about a locutorio  and he said he would do it . Back to the office, a three minute wait and we went to the desk and had barely sat down when we were asked if we worked in Spain, because if not as our pensions are from UK we can only have UK cards! Back to the drawing board! Half a day in "the smoke" , and we were going to have to find ours anyway even if expired! We never did locate them in Fuerteventura, but after the flight they turned up in an obscure place and had expired, but only just!

The Canarian Health Service operates very efficiently for appointments and prescriptions with the Tarjeta Sanitaria. Suddenly one day we couldn't find Bob's and needed it for the summer's bulk medications. Unfortunately the local Health Centre is not quite as efficient, so it was a long wait to report the loss and get a photocopied replacement which then had to be taken to be laminated in a print shop. (It was Ruth's second encounter in a week with the receptionist as she had accompanied our neighbour there to negotiate about hospital appointments and had a significant linguistic victory!) On departure day Ruth sat waiting and looked at some recently disturbed cables and there it was on the floor: the wretched card!

"House of Cards" also references the old British TV series about shenanigans at Westminster. What could be more apt? You couldn't make it up! We sent this link to friends in UK and the rest of Europe! It is all near to collapse!

Give us the Gilets Jaunes anytime!

Santé