Wicked Road tripping – never enough! Take two: Malaga to London in 8 days

 Such a good Wicked road trip, but after seven days travelling around Holland, Belgium, France, and England, it had to end. Or so I thought...

My flight to Madrid, Spain was relatively straightforward – easyJet is so easy to catch that it feels more like taking a bus than a plane, and all customs in the EU don't involve much hassle (except for England, which makes it a bother to get into!). I met Bec at our hostel – we were psyched up for a roadtrip around Spain, and I was rapt to see her again. The plan was three weeks with a little Barina sized car, exploring Spain's nooks and crannies. Bec had put a deposit down on the rental and we just had to rock up and pay. Or so we thought...

Both of these assumptions turned out wrong. When we arrived at the car rental company, they wouldn't accept any of our Travelex Visa cards for payment... and would have had to pay triple deposit with Bec's Australian Credit/Debit Card – they wouldn't accept cash, either. In short, they were snobs – we had four different ways to pay them for the rental, but they didn't like any of them. We would lose the deposit because we couldn't pay them, even though we could pay them in four different fashions. Bastards. Trying to think it through, I delayed the hire until the next day while we worked out our options.

Never one to like snobs, I proposed we ditch the rental company and go with something a little more casual, where there's no pickiness about payment – a Wicked rental. I thought I remembered that there was another 1 pound special from Spain to London. I checked it out – indeed there was! Wasting no time, we planned out a quick route and shot an email through. The next day, we were at the beginning of my second, and Bec's first Wicked! Road trip.

Spain hadn't been high on my to-see list, and from the few days I was there, I don't see much in it. We had an awesome backpackers in Malaga with Oasis Hostel, but outside the hostels there is little to see or do.

In direct contrast to this, when we arrived in Portugal late on the first day of our road tripping, I was VERY impressed. Beautiful white washed villages introduced us to the country, and things only improved from there. By noon on the second day, we were in Sintra, which is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen – a lush green city, with palacial grounds all over it and small winding alleys, in which cafes and restaurants nestle. A visit to the Quinta de Regaleira, one of three palaces with extensive palace grounds, had me the most excited – beautiful gardens overgrown with pine trees, wells with winding staircases and undergrown tunnels, ponds and marble statues, all with a healthy dusting of moss and tree ferns. The icing on the cake was the secret doorway at the top of one of the well staircases – I almost imploded with mirth.

After spending a good four hours exploring the palace, we set off in search of Alcazar do Mer, a seaside town set atop cliffs over the sea that I'd seen in a postcard whilst purging the alleyways of Sintra of their secrets. It wasn't far, so I thought it would be worth seeing. The drive there through rainforest and narrow winding roads was lovely, as was the beautiful view of the town from my eyrie on a seaside cliff. After a day of exploring the wonders of southern Portugal, I was as tired as a ten year old after a day at Movie World, and slept hard.

The next morning, we set off to head through northern Spain to France. On the way, we passed through some of the most beautiful little Portugese towns, with cobblestoned ways as their main streets, and old men sitting in groups in benches, watching the days go by and staring at us strangely. I had the most ridiculous conversation with a gentleman when I stopped to ask for directions – we had been driving through mountainous pine forests for about an hour and I was worried that we were lost. He only seemed to speak Portugese, of which I speak none (It sounds more Russian than Spanish to me – although I don't speak any Spanish, either). In the end, it turned out he didn't speak any English, although he had some French. While he tried to tell me where to go, he would speak six out of ten words in French, and then the rest in Portugese. The directions that I understood were solid, however, and we got through the pine forests in Portugal to Spain soon thereafter. Reaching the border to France by late that day, we were tired and slept well – a long day of driving. We stayed in a forest on top of a hill in Erentera, a little Spanish village. Unfortunately, it was a Sunday, so we had to scrounge food from petrol stations and corner stores. A streetside market stall along the drive supplied us with fresh peaches, tomatoes and garlic for a ridiculously meagre price, and we amassed enough random supplies to make a nice spaghetti bolognese with spicy chorizo sausage – luckily we found a petrol station that sold chorizo, or we would have had to eat plain pancakes.

The next morning, I was in the mood for pancakes anyway. Without any topping for them, I made dutch style pancakes with apple cooked into them, and then made a peach coulis from some of the peaches we bought at the market. It turned out delicious! With such a good start to the day, we were ready to tackle France. Avoiding the toll roads was the hardest part, although we had good practise in this from driving through Portugal. As it turned out, the non-toll roads are nicer and show much more natural beauty anyway.

The highlights of france were having to turn around after 100 kms because a marked bridge didn't exist and the ferry cost 50 Euros. Luckily, it turned out that the way back was filled with French chateaus perched above endless fields of grapes – stunning. The next day, we arrived in Fougeres, which is an ancient French town with a castle dating back to the days when Brittany was a separate country. It's the biggest fortress in Europe, and the most well preserved castle I've ever seen – even the slate roofs were still intact. It looked to me exactly like someone had pulled it out of a fairytale, and turns out, I wasn't far wrong – the Melusine tower was reputedly built by a fairy mason in two weeks for her husband. When he saw her true form (a dragon), Melusine flew away. The castle was beset by invasions thereafter, although it is said that Melusine has been seen from the high towers – and a sighting of her forebodes ill for the castle and its inhabitants. These rumours are probably true, as the Melusine tower is the best preserved, and has the most exact architecture, more amazing than I would have believed possible back then.

After Fougeres, a short hour's drive took us to Mont-St-Michel, the most wondrous town in France. It's built on a rock in the ocean, with a great abbey garnishing the town and providing the spectacular sight that makes it so renowned. The winding alleys and huge abbey were spectacular. We had to leave before high tide at 6.15pm – the tides at Mont St Michel have the largest difference between low tide and high tide in the world. When we arrived, the water was kilometres out on the flats, while when we returned, it was surrounding the island. The flats have so many pools of quicksand, and the changing tides so dangerous, that it used to be a prison for France's criminals.

Arriving in London, we immediately took a bus to Cardiff, Wales – I had seen enough of London last time I was there, and the Glastonbury festival is on, making the cheapest dorm bed 66 pounds per night, while the second cheapest was 133 pounds. I don't really understand, as the Glastonbury festival isn't even in London! Wales isn't much better – our hostel is 25 pounds a night. Tomorrow, it's off to Scotland – Woohoo!