I thought I'd start my blog off with today's Marbella experience...

I bought my girlfriend a new Range Rover sport for Spain.  Knowing what the roads are like down here I was quite looking forward to bashing a few potholes and going places my sports cars simply do not allow. Today, I remembered a Cuban bar I went to on my boat about four years ago and I decided to find it in the truck. 

I found the bar, we had a little walk around, but it wasn't how I remembered it so we got back in the Rangey and I spotted a rather appealing sand track which led to another bar. I was feeling more than invincible so rather than take the road, I selected 'sand mode' I started slowly on my first off road experience.  Everything was going well 100 yards in until I reached the bottom of a dip and started on the slight up hill. I got about 10 more yards until the car stopped and we started slipping sideways.  I jumped out the car when we came to a stop and worked out using my petrol head, that if I jumped back in and accelerated really hard, we would be out of this mess in no time.  Now considering I studied physics at college, this probably wasn't the cleverest thing to do.

Guess what... I managed to get us further into the sand to the point the wheels were half buried.  At this point I waved for some help from a passing van on a nearby road. Luckily there were three Spanish guys in it and despite not understanding my slow, loud English, they were keen to help.  We managed to dig the wheels out and found some wood to lay on the sand.  With Vicks driving the car and us pushing we managed to get free and turn back.

I thanked the guys for their help and headed back to the main road.  We were however going back up the sand track we drove down and managed to get stuck worse than the previous time.  Again, luckily the Spanish guys came back to check we were okay, when they realised we were stuck again they all got behind the car and helped me push it up the hill.  My sandals came off, my feet were burning, I was getting sprayed with sand as I was stood behind the rear wheel, and by this point I was sweating like a pig.  It wasn't a good look.

Finally we were free and I thanked the guys in the way of a crisp €20 note. They were over the moon until they realised they had parked their huge van on the sand and... ..it was stuck. I tried to help them shift it but it was going nowhere, they had to call for serious reinforcements. How bad did I feel? 

Taxi to Nikki's next week then...