Saturday, January 13, 2024 – Salamanca, Spain
Jan 15th, 2024 by rallyadmin
We’re up and out of the hotel. It’s going to be a long day. It’s a slog down the motorway. There’s not much traffic but there’s not much to see. The occasional stork nest on the top of a transmission pole but no storks. Probably still too cold.
We pick up some rain when we go through the northern end of the Pyrenees that gets pretty intense for a short while but as we descend the south side of the range, the rain stops and eventually clears. Closer to the Spanish border the sun comes out and the temperature finally rises.
Everything goes quite uneventfully until some time after we’ve crossed the border into Spain. We come to a toll booth, a peage, and when the revs come down on the Clemos’ Freelander, the engine dies and won’t start again. Shades of last year. We pop the bonnet and start poking at the fuel injector connectors but nothing seems to matter. We wait about 30 minutes and the Freelander starts again and after a few test runs up and down the toll plaza, the car seems to be fine.
It doesn’t make any sense that heat would be the issue but there is a known problem of diesel fuel getting into the crankcase by bypassing the piston rings and thereby thinning the fuel. We’ll have to sort that out tonight when we stop for the night so we get moving hoping that letting the car cool some will allow us to get to our destination for the night in Salamanca.The truck behaves and we get into Salamanca. Elaine finds us a reasonably price hotel just off Plaza Mayor and there’s underground parking right across the street. WE have to queue for the garage (it’s Saturday night and there are a lot of people about.) It only takes about 15 minutes to get the car in and parked and drag the bags back to the hotel.
Back out for dinner. We find a nice restaurant not far from the Plaza and end up having a very good meal of what is supposed to be a traditional Spanish meal (escalope a la milanesa) which looks and tastes like weiner schnitzel. Then back to the hotel.
Tomorrow, the last push to Tarifa.
Obi-wan