Not the best day!

our final stop today was Vigo, Spain. The day started well with sunny skies and warm...ish. It was also the most attractive location, particularly compared to the rather ugly Canary Island ports. With only a 4 hour gap between arrival and departure, we went ashore as soon as we arrived at 11. After visiting a gift shop we headed up the steep lanes towards a park at the top of the hill. With wheelchair accessible paths getting scarce tracy and the boys climbed to the top while I continued on the road hoping it might get me to the summit from another direction. After about quarter of a mile, I noticed the tell tale signs of the dreaded puncture in one of the main drive wheels. This was seriously bad news, particularly as I was by myself in spain. I managed to turn the chair round and nurse it back to a point not too far from where I had arranged to meet tracy half an hour later, I just hoped they would spot me. My off road chair is a brilliant bit of kit especially with fully inflated tyres and it has improved my independence immensely. Although it is called the All Terrain wheelchair, this really only refers to where it is capable of going and in this respect it is truly unbeatable. However you can't really prevent pneumatic tyres from getting punctures so ironically by the nature of the terrain one is capable of travelling on, a puncture is actually more likely than on a less capable chair. Nevertheless, we now had the challenge of getting 200kg of wheelchair and steve the mile or so back to the ship. although I always travel equipped with spare wheel, tubes, pump and tools I drew the line at carrying a bulky jack. We were faced with having to reinflate the tyre, go as far as I could, before repeating the process. So tracy, with the help of two kind fellow passengers who had come to our assistance started the first of probably 10 tiring stages. We reached the boat an hour and a half later where we were finally given some help and got the wheel changed.


With little time to recover, Tracy took the boys to the ice skating session they had been promised where..... Jake fell and smacked his head! So not the best day. With Jake ordered by the doctor to have a quiet evening, we were grateful for the Rasa agreeing to child mind while we had a quiet meal and go to watch an Elton John tribute performer, who was very good. We continued to finish the day on a better note as the boys joined us for the Rock Britannia street parade.