Random pics from euro vacation

So Mrs. Crankwalk and I had some friends who live in Spain getting married and we wanted to make a vacation out of it. All over England coast to coast, Wales, and northern Spain for the wedding.

Here is some of the mostly car related content:

Liverpool:

At a friend's house in L'pool, Budweisers and the Leaf:

Llanrwst, Wales:

Our rental Kia Rio turbo diesel 1.6 with a 6 speed gave us roughly 65 mpg imp. over a weekend.Pretty impressive.

Gilling East:

Gilling Castle (Our last name is Gilling so we always wanted to go):

White cliffs of Dover (Cue the Eric Johnson):

Random stuff on the street in London:

Dalai Lama was in town (2 hp):

So many cool old E36 M3ty French cars in Spain. I get so excited about about old Renaults and Citroens that I didn't even look twice at new supercars rolling by.

Luarca was the most beautiful town in Spain I've been to:

crankwalk wrote: Gilling East:

I wouldn't park near a crosswalk frequented by zombie children!

Anyone notice the nose to nose parking? Not sure if it's allowed here but I've never seen it. Only ever seen it in the U.K. but I've never been on the continent.

Great pictures! Glad you had a good time..

My son's restaurant sent him to Spain to "learn the culture", loved it. He said he could live there very easily, especially liked Majorca.

Crankwalk, any idea what it cost to ship something home?

Dan

Remember UK gallons are larger than US gallons so their MPGs are also greater.

RossD wrote: Remember UK gallons are larger than US gallons so their MPGs are also greater.

Yep thats why I noted Imperial gallons. Still very impressive numbers for city/hwy 50/50. I wish I could get a tdi vauxhall corsa 3 door here.

914Driver wrote: Crankwalk, any idea what it cost to ship something home? Dan

If we are talking a car, probably a ton since its not as common as the importers from say Japan where you can share a container with lots of people doing the same thing. Trying to bring home a blown out Citroen Saxo would take some tomfoolery that probably wouldnt be worth it.

Nice pics! Thanks for the vicarious travel!

crankwalk wrote:

914Driver wrote: Crankwalk, any idea what it cost to ship something home? Dan

If we are talking a car, probably a ton since its not as common as the importers from say Japan where you can share a container with lots of people doing the same thing. Trying to bring home a blown out Citroen Saxo would take some tomfoolery that probably wouldnt be worth it.

Actually it's not that expensive.

First, you don't ship a vehicle by container unless you have access to a loading dock. It usually only makes sense to use a container if the car is (really) valuable or you have enough of them to fill a container. But even a container from the UK to my doorstep here in NV only ran about ~£3k and IIRC they got cheaper since.

For normal-ish cars you ship them RoRo, and RoRo to the West Coast is in the £1k-£1.4k range. East Coast is considerably cheaper. And no, it's not like I've been eyeing up odd kit cars with a view to importing one or two from the UK.

I guess I was talking about my situation. I live in Alaska, have access to a loading dock that takes connex, and it would be more than the cost of whatever E36 M3ty French car I wanted to bring here.

I shipped my R32 skyline to Savannah from Japan (body then driveline beside it) via container when I lived in Atlanta. It was still a considerable amount of money ten years ago. Not quite the same as the purchase price of the car but around 40%.

So I've done it before, it's just not worth it to me at this point anymore.

In reply to crankwalk:

For some reason I was expecting more "National Lampoon's European Vacation", but it looks like you had a really good trip!