This has proven to be one of my less intelligent ideas about moving to Spain and that was the initial intention to keep my right hand drive UK registered car.

Right hand drive cars in Spain are as much use as a chocolate tea pot and have very little value second hand. If you decide to import your car, it ends up being a right hand drive car of very little value on Spanish plates.

The idea was good any way. Two seat, sports convertible with sports suspension. Ideal for Spain, not. Try driving the back roads and lanes here. My head was in constant contact with the roof.

OK, the plan was simple, drive through France quick so we did not have to see it for very long. Use the toll roads, nice and fast, plus plenty of fuel stops. I wont say plenty of places to eat, because I can only compare the food served in some service stations as disgusting.

A tip for doing the journey is to carry several credit cards.

About half way through France my credit card got rejected. The only one I knew the pin number for. No great problem, the navigator came to the rescue until his card ended up being rejected a couple of refills later.

A call to the bank after the first card rejection had shown no errors their end. Luckily my card was back up and working again.

Another trick is to carry a pocket full of Euros for journey across France and Spain.

When your in France they like to get one up on those travelling to Spain. If your looking for signs for Zaragoza, they spell it with an S. I knew there was a reason to hate them So we had a detour or two and a nice little chat with some French police who like pulling up English cars.

We crossed the mountains between France and Spain without any hitches. You could tell we were in Spain, there was nothing on the roads but the petrol stations were open well into the night.

At this stage sleeping in the car that night had seemed a good idea at the time of planning but turned out to be one of the worst ideas ever. Tall blokes and little cars don't mix when trying to get comfy.

Notice no comment about driving for five hours. In the lorry a stop for an hour put you back an hour, so your journey time constantly became longer. In the car, a stop for an hour was soon made up by playing with the accelerator.

Ever notice how the Spanish drive like the possessed on the lanes outside of towns and the motorways then become angels driving to the speed limits in the towns. They have no understanding of one way roads, double parking or general road sense in towns, but they do know the speed limits.

With in four hours of driving in Spain, I found out why. The police like hiding speed monitoring cameras and giving out speeding tickets in towns. For those of you who have not had the pleasure, once was enough for me. You get an instant on the spot fine at the officers discretion. In other words, you pay cash on the spot. Mine was reduced from 100 euro to 70 euro.

Hence the need for carrying cash with you

The rest of the journey was uneventful apart from the gps deciding that we were in fact a bus or taxi and thus we could use the roads only designated for them through Zaragoza.

My earlier comment about English reg cars in Spain. In the UK my car at the time had a second hand retail of about £11k, in Spain we were lucky to sell it on for £6k.

I even tried one dealers, trading it in, in part exchange for a brand new Jeep Wrangler and the dealers told me to go away, sell the car and come back with the cash.

Plus there is the six month rule with English cars legally being in Spain and other bits like MOT and road tax. You can not register your car through the DVLA to a Spanish address, it has to be registered to a UK address> Another problem was my insurance. My UK insurer would only insure the car to a UK address and a limited time out the country. Which was of little use when your moving address from one country to another.

There are insurers in Spain who will insure English cars as long as they are legal, IE road tax and MOT