Robbery Foiled

 Recently, we were travelling south on the AP7 around Valencia and stopped at a service station for diesel and a cup of coffee, when four men in a car parked blocking our exit from the parking slot. One got out and waved a tattered map at me ( Chas) and approached our door, mouthing for me to open up. I shook my head saying NO and produced our camera which I switched on. I then made a show of passing our mobile phone to my wife, Catherine ( to dial 112). At that point they knew that we knew that they were crooks. The big thug just stared at me in a pretty frightening way, daring me to take a photo, I presume. I was given menacing looks as they got back in the car and reversed back through the filling station, so we couldn't take their registration number, and sped off back onto the motorway.

We've heard about this sort of thing before and that had put us on our guard. Why would four Spaniards ask the way from Brits when they could ask in the filling station or the hotel having just come off the AP7 at exactly kilometre 517?

It was a ‘Mexican Stand-off’: if I had taken his photo he would have to have broken in to get my camera; if he left, I wouldn’t take his picture!

It’s worth noting that this happened on a section of the AP7 which is toll-free and has, therefore, lots of exits for fleeing villains.

Our Spanish really wasn’t up to reporting the threatened robbery, so we just carried on our journey. We heard later at Javea that another British couple had been taken in by  the same ruse, and had been robbed of all their valuables.

My advice is to just to be on your gard. Spanish motorway service areas are patrolled regularly, but we didn’t see any that Sunday afternoon.