Thursday, June 17, 2010

Mataro, Spain

24/05/2010
Not an auspicious start to the day. We were ready to go pretty early, setting off for Barcelona. The car battery had other ideas. Flat as a tack. No doubt as a result of a couple of short trips and the miles of downhill from a couple of days ago. However, we had a spare battery. What we didn't have was the right sized spanner to get the current battery out. Luckily, I found a cheap wrench at the local garage. That also didn't work but I ended up just pulling the battery out of its supports.
Of course the spare battery was flat, too. As was the leisure battery.
There was no room and we were not strong enough to push Skippy for a clutch start, so we rang once again the trusty RAC breakdown service. Or not so trusty. Apparently, you only get one breakdown per trip. This is outrageous. We brought 3 months cover so we expect 3 months flipping cover. We'll be having words with RAC.
We rang up a local breakdown service, who wanted to charge 100 euros to come out. Declined. There was no-one else around camp and reception was shut so, in the absence of anyone to jump start us, I set out to buy another battery or a battery charger. No chargers for sale and the cheapest battery was 62 euros, so I went back to campsite to think of something else.
In last ditch attempt, we hooked up the car battery to the leisure battery slot and flicked on the charger from the mains. After about 20mins, I put in back under the hood and Hooray!, we had success and were quickly back in the road, although a few hours later than expected.
Two lessons: 1. Always make sure you spare battery is charged. 2. Don't automatically believe a mechanic who tells you that your leisure battery charger doesn't work.
We were heading for a campsite called Camping Barcelona, which was actually a bit north of Barcelona in Mataro. We didn't have the exact address for the campsite and spent an entertaining couple of hours driving and then walking around Mataro looking for tourist information office to help us. The tourist information office was shut (of course) despite it being a couple of hours before closing time. 'Fiesta', we were told by a couple of likely gentlemen who were hanging around the office doorway.
Cleverly, Catherine noticed a little tent sign on a map just near the office and we took a punt on heading north. Very glad to see the sign to camping Barcelona a few kms down the road.

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