Good to be back on the wide-open road again

WE DROVE across the bare Meseta, the tableland at the centre of Spain, on a Sunday morning, the sky big and blue overhead and snow-capped mountains on the horizon, rising above a band of blue mist.

As the sun burnt through, cars on the road far ahead winked in the sunlight and it was good to be back on the road again, as we used to be.

Aranjuez, Ocaña, Manzanares, Valdepeñas: now the road bypassed them and we were in a proper car, gliding along the wide and empty highway at 120, 130, 140km/h, passing the slow-moving, small convoys of French-registered bangers, driven by Moroccans making the long trek home for Christmas, roof racks stacked with bicycles, TVs, washing machines and God knows what, the kind of wagons in which we plugged across the pre-motorway roads of Europe all those years ago.