Hi all.
So I spent 3 nights on a campsite in Tarifa wondering what I was going to do and where I was going to go now that I had run away from Africa. Being unable to find a solution to either of these problems I decided to go to Portugal. Having thrown my map of Europe away in Morrocco I decided to go to Gibraltar as I thought it would be easy to get a new one there. No ****ing chance. I ended up paying 7 Euro for a map of Spain and Portugal at the airport as the only things for sale in Gib are duty frees. I did come away with a case of scotch 25,000 Rothmans and 350 litres of petrol in a trailer so it wasn't a completely wasted journey.
I decided to ride through the Aracena national park to get there, let me quote from a tourist leaflet about the area, "the area, noted for it´s high rainfall contains a large selection of broad leaf trees". noted for it´s high rainfall. It was the seventh level of hell. As soon as I hit the boundary of the national park it came down in sheets, so hard was it raining that it came down went up and came down a second time. 30kms in I stopped at a town to find somewhere, anywhere to stay.Through a sky as black as depression and clouds like fists I sloshed into a bar.
"Nada", she said "not here senor you must go on, 25kms to Aracena, there you will find a hotel". Christ. Back out into the deluge, fire up the bike and grit my teeth into the gale. Riding a motorcycle in these conditions is like attempting to walk on a greased pole. No longer is it " if I misjudge this corner I´ll readjust halfway round, it becomes "if I misjudge this corner I´m under that truck or over the edge". Four square inches of worn rubber on a rain wet slick and diesel spilled carriageway. And you know this. And you must go on.
When I got to Aracena the rain stopped for exactly 15 minutes and I decided to camp on a campsite made of mud on the side of a hill. the rain washed in again as I was setting up and continued unabated all night and all the next day. At 4am I woke to find 6 inches of water in the bottom of the tent, sleeping bag soaked feet still soaked and nothing I could do about it. The next day I packed up in the rain now so wet I may as well have been living under water for three days.
No breakfast as I couldn´t light the stove in the rain and running a petrol stove inside a nylon tent is about as safe as lighting the fuse on a firework and then holding it up to your face to read the instructions. I made it to the Portugese border and the sun came out shining on a verdant and pleasant green landscape dotted with low trees and bumpy narrow roads winding in and out of the hills. Not at all like Spain I was surprised to find.
I stopped at a cheap (£5 a night) campsite after only an hour and a half to try and dry out and stayed for 2 nights. Dried out, worked on the bike and sat next to the tent watching Tangerine trees framed against a Potugese blue sky. Sunshine, like a blood transfusion to the dying, came to my rescue in Beja.
Ah! That case of Scotch. Has our intepid dickhead returned to the demon drink thus far in his pointless wanderings? The answer, unfortunately, is yes. Arriving back from morrocco I noticed (noticed yeah right) that the supermarket was selling boxes of red for 40p so I bought one drank half of it that day and half the next. The day after that , as the sky hadn´t fallen in I went back and got another and finished it by 2pm. The only thing preventing me from going back for more was the fact that I was too drunk to ride the bike.
The next day I went to Gib for the map. Christ! Nothing worked. Everything jangled, couldn´t get the bike in the right gear, this bloody traffic and got lost about 8 times. I just became angrier and angrier at nothing and the world became more and more disjointed. Wish these poxy lights would change and GET OUY OF MY ****ING LANE!!!!!
If you put your hand in a fire and become badly burned you never, ever,do it again. You never forget the pain, anguish and suffering you went through. Likewise if you cross the street without looking and get hit by a truck it tends to leave an indelible mark on the mind. Won´t do that again!
So why does the alchoholic never remember the pain of withdrawal? Maybe I chose to forget and in forgetting absolved myself of blame for the awfull consequences. Who knows? I don´t. I havn´t had a drink since and today, the day I am writing this I am not going to have one.
Tommorrow arrives when it comes.

Stay safe. Keep dry. Good to talk.