Perhaps it’s because we are amateurs but we discovered that Self Levelling Cement doesn’t!

You have to push it around a lot with a long thing like a rake which gets all clogged up in the process.

Tips for Spreading Self Levelling Cement

1. Add more water than they suggest
2. Never try to mix and spread more than two bags at a time
3. Buy the special whisk fitting for the drill.  It’s  worth the money although we did have a very cathartic fit of giggles as three of us tried to smash up the lumps and stir with long sticks like the three witches in Macbeth.  There is a 20 minute window before the stuff starts to set.

No pictures yet – we’ll see how it looks in the morning and perhaps I will take a photo…..

Meanwhile I am very pleased to have solved one of my long standing problems – at least in theory.      I am going to register my UK camper van in Spain and it will join the club of right hand drive vehicles which have Spanish number plates. First step is to get my registration document here changed to show it is no longer a panel van. Second step – or steps as I imagine it will involve a lengthy bureaucratic journey – is to get it approved in Catalunya.  Then at last we will both be able to drive it (UK insurance won’t cover a Spanish national driver) and most importantly I won’t have to travel back every year to get an MOT.

I will report back on progress but for the moment I am so pleased to have found a solution.

Update on the RHD van decision

Another thing which is not so easy as they say is dealing with car registration in Spain.

It is now 2015 and I never did register the van in Spain.  The following year we took a long journey up through France to Scotland and then back down to Cornwall.  Because I was never able to get my partner’s name on the insurance I did all the driving and ended up with tendinitis in my ankle from too much clutch control on the Scottish mountains.  I couldn’t drive back to Spain so we bought a LHD car in the UK and drove back together in that. Since then, the van has been garaged in Cornwall and we only use it over there.

I had such a lot of trouble getting the LHD Spanish car into my name once we got home that I would never recommend you try to bring over a UK car. The system here in Spain is much more complicated and bureaucratic and unless you enjoy the adrenalin rush of endless stress and uncertainty then I suggest you buy a car over here.