Border France – Spain – refueling refused

After a quiet night in a housing estate in France, we start the day by recording a video about our current pitch and some technical details of our Terra Love. We then continue our journey on the highway. We are surprised by the high toll charges in France, which amount to around 35 cents per kilometer. “Never mind,” I say, as we have left the country road to travel a few kilometers south. “It’s nice to feel the sun on my skin after the long winter,” says Tanja with a satisfied smile.

We cross the border from France into Spain, and the joy of being back on the road is as great as ever. Shortly after the border we discover a petrol station with cheap diesel prices. “Let’s join the queue,” I suggest, pointing to the numerous trucks waiting patiently to fill up with cheap diesel.

After an hour, it’s finally our turn and we want to drive onto the petrol station site when an employee of the petrol station stops us and tries to bring order to the traffic chaos. “Do you have a fuel card?” he asks in Spanish. “Fuel card?” Tanja replies, confused. “You can only fill up with diesel here with a special fuel card,” he explains kindly and sends us away. Frustrated, we continue our journey and find another petrol station where the diesel price is around 1.62 euros. We fill up our 200-liter tank and continue our journey. “Spain, here we come!” I shout happily.

At a fast food restaurant, we try to upload our videos again. “Maybe it will work out in Spain,” I hope. A few years ago this was never a problem, but now fast food restaurants seem to have stopped uploading data. “Why?” wonders Tanja. “I think they want to save costs. You get internet, but larger data uploads are not possible,” I explain. Unfortunately, the network is extremely slow here too, so we can’t upload our video for YouTube.

We continue our journey towards Bilbao and finally leave the highway to get to the port. Our aim is to find a suitable place to spend the night along the coast. It is already dusk when we discover a promising, idyllic spot right on the beach. The sound of the surf and the salty scent of the sea air surround us. “It’s great to be back by the sea,” laughs Tanja.

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