Escape to sunshine

Just enjoying this book which is about travel in an 8hp car through France to Spain and Portugal and back to England in 1952.
Just arrived at Spain in my reading and its difficult to imagine that this journey was started in the month of February as you do not get any sense that the weather is a worry. Having travelled to Devon in a 10hp Riley Lynx back in the mid sixties the mileage the author and his wife covered makes my journey seem like a trip to the Supermarket. As I today make the journey to the Poitiers region quite regularly I marvel how they covered 300 miles in a day in such a car.