harry:
I used to run along the coast ,there was a bit of Mway going into Barna . I remember trundling on the cobbles by the Central Rail station & past Ramblas & Parrallelo to Zona F. The only time I used the Columbus gates were if I was solo & going to eat at Franco’s on the Parrallelo .We would park on the pavement outside Franco’s . The boss there was Angelo from Italy & a real rough diamond. I knew his brother who worked for a Swiss firm ,red & white trucks Oberentfelden nr. Aarau , he had a bad accident in Spain.
Yes in later years I used to run up through the docks and park near the gates ,used to go and have a quick look in the Loch Ness,Big Ben and Kentucky Bar and eat in Mason David or the chicken barbecue in the Ramblas.
Mason David ,slap bang in Quartier Romano . The waiters used to throw the tips in a big copper cauldron above the bar & all night you would hear the coins twanging as they hit the side before going in .After that it was the Texas Bar to catch up on the news. The Chicken Bar was for special meals .Fantastic place, entrance was thru the v. busy hot kitchen. Lots of timber beams. Always worried about the fire risk there but the food was great!
LOL that queue down the mountain. We always had forward clearance at the Zona Franca so generally didn’t stop unless I was out of time. I sailed past that queue more than once.
I remember one night I arrived at La J at about 0200 and I was knackered but I could never just get out the driving seat and go to sleep so I had to go and wind down for an hour in the one place that was open at that time, a ‘bar’ that was just tidying up. I had an hour in there and the undivided attention of some half dozen girls who all wanted to drink with me for some reason.
LOL anywhere that had the name ‘bar’ on it was dead suss. Anybody remember Torreblanca?
We always used the coast road cos the gaffer was a skinflint and it was even worse once we’d tipped cos we nearly always had to go down beyond Valencia for oranges coast road all the way. Castellon, Sagunto etc etc.
Spot on Harry, getting off topic a bit about La Jonquera ,but its still Spain , another place I used to eat was Castelldefels (sp) there was a nice little restaurant there on the sea front,until the Eric’s arrived and parked all over the place and they put a truck ban on the place.
This is me next morning on the Mosquito Disco’s parking…wrecked!
Do you mean Max’s Swiss place? he was a two faced little sod. When I first went to C de Fells it was all beach & park anywhere. The last time I went there it had pavements & No Parking signs & Max was catering for the Irish labourers that were working on the Olympics & had no time for truckers. Good place to park was on the Mosquito Disco park . Get lashed up v. cheap ,have a great night & wake up about ten in the morning & crawl back to Z Franca to see if the trailer was cleared .
Off topic again,but still, Cant remember what was called ,but not bad food and a good nights sleep there before going to ZF to see if trailer had cleared, my mate Hughie Hill who used to do traction for GBE ( or as it was then GB Express had a White identical to that ) . Off topic again , you mentioned Sean Moran a while ago ,when I hit the dizzy heights of Transport Manager several years ago (before I retired ) I took on his son Chris on the merits of his father ,I was not disappointed.
I got stuck in some sort of dispute or another there in the late 80s, ended up parking on the side of the old road under a flyover a mile or so from the parking, I did all my Pesetas on a bocadillio di lomo, so not wanting to go to the bank & have a draw on my visa, I went into a bureau de change/laundrette & changed up some Belgian Francs that I had in my wallet, the old boy behind the jump handed me a big wad of Pesetas, he had given me the rate for French Francs instead of Belgian, at the time it was 600bf to a pound & around 10ff to the pound, of course being the honest bloke that I am, I pointed out his mistake, he got the right hump & started goobing off, from my limited spanish he was saying, that’s the rate, like it or lump it, so with a clear concience I went straight to the bank & did a maximum withdrawal on my plastic & went to another bureau de change & got as many Belgian Francs as I could, then went back to the first place & changed the lot up, the old boy was laughing to himself as he thought he was striping me up on the exchange rate
The bar gals never made that mistake. They knew the rate from Romanian into Bulgarian & all in between! LOL
Altho I was on a Belgian ferry once & the bank guy gave a Irish driver pound rate for a large sum of punts & had to put out a tanoid announcement to get the money back.
Rick, the dumbasses keep asking me whereabouts in Australia I’m from I gave up trying to explain & now tell them I’m from Sydney & that my name’s Mick Dundee
newmercman:
Rick, the dumbasses keep asking me whereabouts in Australia I’m from I gave up trying to explain & now tell them I’m from Sydney & that my name’s Mick Dundee
Mark, thats funny. Since January 1985 I have been trying to explain to dumbass Americans I am Welsh not Austrailian. I tell them I am Tom Jones, but they say I can’t be as he is from England ! They think the whole of the U.K. is England LOL.
However lets not forget that every other American is of Irish decent, or they believe they are!
You are being kind using the word dumbass.
Back to the topic had a couple of great nights out in La Jonquera, no dumbasses there.
more’s the pity, I would’ve cleaned up if it was 
I gave up trying to explain & now tell them I’m from Sydney & that my name’s Mick Dundee