After a long chat with Carlos, the owner of the ‘Aire’ in Leon we headed on our way towards the mountains, promising to be back to visit the caves and more of the area. Carlos was so friendly it felt like we had become family over the weekend, he insisted that we call him if we have any problems at any point in Spain, whether motorhome related or not….a top guy.

We were planning to take the scenic route to Oviedo, but as it has snowed recently and on Sunday morning it was -2 when Keith went for a run, we decided to play it safe and go on the toll road which to be fair wasn’t too bad….

However, following a 4 km tunnel we soon arrived into a slightly more dramatic cold and wet looking mountain range ….

We were heading to Oviedo as somehow or another Mika is now 12 months old and needs to be serviced. We tried several places near Madrid and in Salamanca but unfortunately with the ‘crisis’ Spain doesn’t have many motorhomes, even less Burstner approved service centres and even less who appear to want to deal with us. We had been advised that there was a place between Oviedo and Gijon who we had been trying to contact but they had been closed for annual holiday. for the last couple of weeks. Finally when I did manage to get through, the lady who answered the phone to me wasn’t particularly helpful, but assured me that if we came into the showroom she was sure they would be able to sort it (whatever ‘it’ was) out…… not what I would call a promising start, but nevertheless we decided that we were best to give it a go rather than bypass it and leave it until Portugal.

The ‘Aire’ in Oviedo was about 6kms outside in the same direction as the motorhome place, so we arrived on Sunday afternoon, went for a wander around the ‘suburb’ before it started to rain and settled in for a quiet night. When we arrived at the motorhome place (Caravanas Principados) on Monday morning we were surprised to see three Burstner 55 motorhomes in the showroom … things were looking up! The guy who we spoke to was much more helpful, in fact apologetic that he couldn’t fit us in this week, but would be happy to put the service in the diary for next Monday (17^th).

So, with a week to kill in one of our favourite parts of Spain we decided to walk into Oviedo for the afternoon and then we agreed we would move to Gijon for the rest of the week.

Oviedo is a university town with a beautiful old town. In the summer it is a little touristy and can get quite expensive – but at this time of year you can get some lovely food, cider and wine at very reasonable prices. We stopped for a glass of wine whilst out and about and a large glass (to be fair it is just what they decide to give you) was 1 Euro 10 each – cheaper than coffee.

Before heading off to Gijon, Keith cooked up a delicious breakfast of Morcilla, Faranato, Baked Beans (we still have a couple of tins) and fried eggs….. luckily I had been for a run in the morning as there was enough lard to sink a battle ship – but incredibly tasty. Unfortunately the Faranato had a few spots of mould on the outside (must be something to do with the warm weather we are having) so we will need to finish it in the next few days.

Gijon is only 20kms from Oviedo, but it is on the coast and it was nice to see the sea again. Like Oviedo, we have been here three times and love it, although thinking about it we weren’t quite sure why until we remembered the food, wine and cider 🙂 It isn’t a particularly beautiful place, as although it has a very long promenade covering two bays and a very pretty old town, it also has a massive port and a lot of industry and has apparently recently been named as one of the most polluted cities in Spain.

We parked in an Aire almost on the beach next to the Port for the first two nights, which once the traffic died down (and the helicopter stopped hovering above us) was actually quite peaceful. The walk into the centre was about 3.5kms, but there were lots of local shops, bars and restaurants close-by so we had everything we needed on our doorstop and better still, no tourists. To give you an example of the kind of food you get here we went out to one of the local restaurants for lunch on Wednesday where 9 euros a head gave us a litre of wine, A starter of Chicken Soup with noodles, then a choice between Spaghetti Carbonara or Baby squid, tomato and potato stew, following that a choice between Chicken escalope or Sardines with chips all finished off with a choice of homemade desserts or ice cream or yoghurt and coffee. I chose ‘Tart du Turron’ which is Nougat Tarte ….. probably one of the best dessert I have had in a long time … coming close to my Tarte au Citron 🙂  I can’t really explain the flavour / consistency without making it sound a bit sickly, but it had a very light sponge base, an almondy/ nougat cream mousse which was light but nutty topped with a caramalised nutty crust …. as I said difficult to explain, but yummy.  Keith opted for chocolate cake which was definitely laced with something and was also delicious. It was surprising that we could actually walk out of the restaurant .. I have no idea how they manage to eat this kind of food every day, although it does explain why a lady we met in the laundrette in the morning said she put on 8kg when she first moved to Gijon 🙂 …..

As we are only supposed to stay on the Aire for 48 hours we decided to move to a car park at the other end of town for a night where you can park motorhomes overnight. Whereas the Aire and the Port are at one end of one beach in Gijon, the car park is right at the other end of the other beach in a park looking out over the beach… very tranquil (if it had water and waste facilities we would stay here longer than just a couple of nights).

We headed out on Thursday night to try out some of the local ‘Sidra’ bars on this side of town and including a slight diversion to a wine bar for a couple of glasses of very nice ‘house red’ each at 1 euro 20 a glass, we managed to feed ourselves and have plenty of wine/cider for under 15 euros … now, you wouldn’t call the bar snacks particularly healthy but we had a good variety including chicken wings, chorizo, tortilla, Jamon and Cheese on baguette and chips – we will endeavour to eat more vegetables tomorrow 🙂

On Tuesday night Keith made good use of the sparking new Spanish Satellite box and watched the Liverpool vs Real Madrid game whilst I almost threw my computer across the motorhome as Firefox was playing silly buggers – a problem finally resolved by un-installing and re-installing it….. I can see why people hate technology.

As agreed, on Wednesday morning we headed over to ‘Caravan Sitmon’ who parked us up in a garage, plugged us in to their electrics so we didn’t get too cold (it was 2 degrees), and piece by piece dismantled the fridge freezer/oven unit so that they could take the oven out and have a look at it. After about an hour they disappeared off with the oven into the workshop, and a little more than an hour after that they returned with what looked like a working oven (or at least it had a closed door) 🙂 …. it was looking good as they started to fit everything back together we were feeling pleasantly surprised that we would actually be done and away before lunch … amazing.

However…. when we went to check the fridge freezer/oven unit once everything was back in place there wasn’t any power to the unit – as they hadn’t touched the electrics the engineers were a little surprised, but straight on the phone to Madrid where after a bit more diagnostics they found that somehow during the process of moving the unit the main control box had gone …. luckily we didn’t have too much in the fridge or freezer :(. So, now fridge, freezer and oven-less we were in the hands of Dometic Madrid who were sending out a new part. The guy who owned Caravan Sitmon was incredibly apologetic, but it was just one of those things – it wasn’t their fault and thankfully he really pushed Dometic to send the part as quickly as possible. Meanwhile he offered us a secure place to park up between the family buildings (they have two blocks with each sibling owning flats above the garages/workshops and sharing the long stretch of grassed land behind the buildings for the dogs to run free on), electricity and a place to empty the toilet.

As we now had at least another couple of days to kill we boringly (but necessarily) managed to catch up with the washing (down to the last pair of socks….) and then on Thursday caught the bus into Salamanca and spent another day wandering around and exploring it further. Thinking we would at least be waiting until Friday afternoon for the part to arrive we were surprised to see the engineer arrive at 10am tools in hand ready to fit it. Amazingly (we have got used to the laid back Spain) we actually took longer to pack up the motorhome than they did to get everything working and sort out the paperwork. Somehow he had persuaded Dometic to cover everything under warrantee despite them telling him that hinges weren’t covered and we left without paying a penny, just leaving a bottle of wine and some chocolates to say thank you.

As it was fairly early, we decided to set off for Leon which is just under 200km north of Salamanca. We had found an ‘Aire’ online which looked interesting and the guy who owned Sitmon had also printed out the details for it as it is one of his friends who runs it. Unfortunately when we arrived there wasn’t anyone there… we obviously should have phoned ahead. Several phone calls later and a trip to a café in the centre of Leon, we picked a key fob from a waiter and settled ourselves in for the night making our first batch of rolls in a few weeks (now the oven is working), in what is basically a secure parking lot with facilities about 7km outside Leon on the edge of an industrial estate!

In the morning, after checking in with the owner of the ‘Aire’ we headed into Leon on the bikes. Leon is a well-proportioned city, split between an old walled part, and a really nice new part – both with lots of shops, bars and restaurants. Initially we walked towards ‘Hostel San Marcus’ which used to be for the pilgrims and military to stop and rest their weary feet, but now has been restored impeccably and from what we saw of it, is the most beautiful hotel/museum. If you are looking for somewhere special to stay… I would say this is the place. If you don’t have the budget but are passing through Leon definitely go and have a look – the room to the right just inside the entrance to the hotel has the most beautiful carved wood ceiling and the courtyard is stunning.

As it was so cold we felt that it was important to stop off in a couple of the bars to warm ourselves up whilst we were exploring and the ‘Barrio Humedo’ was heaving with people taking in a drink and ‘tapas’– the atmosphere was great…. just didn’t really want to get on the bikes and cycle back in the rain 😦

We met a lovely English couple in Caceres who were on their way to the Canary Islands for the winter and they had just come from a little place called ‘La Alberca’ and said that it was an interesting town with shop after shop of ‘Jamon’, so as it was roughly on our route back to Salamanca we thought we would give it a go.

We knew that the weather was due to change on Sunday, but thankfully we managed to enjoy the beautiful scenery whilst driving up to La Alberca which sits at about 1050m above sea level. The winding roads twisted through the valleys and then up the side of a mountain giving us a fantastic view of an autumnal mixture of colours and textures of trees and shrubs. When we arrived, we parked in the ‘Aire’ which is a large car park just above the town which was very quiet with water and waste facilities for when we needed them…. all free of charge.

Optimistically, we set out to walk with camera over the shoulder walking towards the grey clouds which were closing in on the trees above us. Within ten minutes it had started to rain, thankfully we had the waterproofs in the bag so we continued up to the ‘view point’ …. Unfortunately only to ‘view’ very little 😦

On our way back down the hill it stopped raining so we continued down to have a quick walk round the town – a proper higgledy piggledy mountain village with shop after shop of ‘Jamon’ legs hanging from the ceiling – I did joke and say that if we are going to get stuck in the mountains somewhere I think this is the place … lots of the best quality ham, good cheese, some interesting breads and cakes and good wine …..

We settled in for a quiet night and woke to a dry morning although the grey clouds were looming in the valley. After our normal morning Tabata exercise we headed back into the town to buy some Jamon Iberica de Bellota (That is ham from Iberican pigs which have been fed only on Acorns), Morcilla (Black Pudding made with breadcrumbs and spices), Salchicha (Dried Sausage), Farinato (A local speciality which sounds disgusting when I tell you that the ingredients are breadcrumbs, pig fat and spices, but is actually quite tasty), and Rosquillas (which are shaped like a donut, but cooked in different ways to either turn out like a tasteless Yorkshire pudding with a bit of icing on top, very light short bread or a bit of a stale slightly greasy donut ….. we would recommend the ‘very light shortbread’ version which had a very slight Aniseed flavour …. although I am sure you probably guessed that we weren’t quite so keen on the other two from my description!

We got back to the motorhome as the clouds were settling in just above us, covering the forest. And just as we were talking about going for a nice long walk the skies opened and wind start to blow ……. Three games of settlers, several cups of tea and hot chocolate, and one book finished later and it was still raining so we settled in for the night and switched to wine 🙂

We decided to cook some Morcilla and Farinato to eat with our ‘French’ style dinner of Cheese, meats and bread – throwing in a tomato salad to make us feel a little better about the pig fat we were consuming …. Delicious – the Morcilla was particularly good with a really lovely spiced flavour.

The rain and wind continued through the night and for once the weather forecast was correct – unfortunately – it was cold…. So cold we actually turned the heating on. It must have dropped to nearly zero over night as at 10am this morning is was still only 3 degrees…. We were lucky it wasn’t snow, or were we….?

Once we emptied and refilled the necessary bits we set off back towards Salamanca to see if the Satellite unit was ready and find out whether we could get someone to look at the oven door. The box hadn’t been activated when we arrived, but they pointed us in the direction of a Domestic service centre where we found an engineer who started taking the oven door apart but soon stopped after he realised he wasn’t getting to the problem, made a call and told us to come back in the morning when another engineer would be able to disconnect everything and take it apart bit by bit to get to the cause of the problem …. My worry is that there were parts of the conversation that included ‘disconnecting the gas from the unit’ and ‘taking the fridge freezer unit out’ – both of which are completely reasonable …. but Keith and I both looked at each other and we were both thinking the same ….. ‘we really want to get this fixed, but what problems are they going to introduce when they start taking it apart’ and ‘is anything going to be working by the time they tell us that the part will take 2 months to get in and they can’t put it back together until they get it’?

…. Confidence – to be fair the guy who was looking at it talked the talk and looked pretty knowledgeable about what he was doing, so watch this space….

We got a call when we were leaving the Domestic engineer to say that the unit was now active, so we headed back to pick it up and as it was now getting dark, decided to stay the night on the entrance to the campsite we stayed at last week as it has now closed for the winter….

Toledo – 29/10 – 31/10

A couple of people had mentioned Toledo to us and reading up on the history it sounded like an interesting place to visit, so despite not originally planning to venture this far inland as we have a week or so to explore slightly further afield we thought we would pay it a visit.

Looking at the options for parking we found a campsite that sounded below average with an above average price, but after looking on the ‘Aire’ website we found that we were able to stay overnight in the car park opposite the bus station, there weren’t any facilities but it suited us perfectly for a night or two.

Toledo was hovering above us on the hill top, with the river snaking around it like a moat, protected by a beautifully restored wall and each entry point by double gates.

Despite the beautifully restored castle (now a youth hostel) on the opposite hill top and dramatic countryside around it, the town itself still shone brighter with so many beautiful buildings and warren-like roads twisting through the old town. Watching some of the cars driving through the streets made us wonder how they even got there in the first place … a little like when someone dislocates their shoulder to get out of a strait-jacket … there must be a trick in there somewhere.

Toledo is apparently well known for making marzipan biscuits, swords, knives and historically being one of the first cities where Jews, Muslims and Christians lived together alongside each other dating back to the 11^th century. There is still evidence of a large Jewish presence with several synagogues in the Jewish quarter, although as with most Spanish towns there was a church, cathedral or monastery on every other corner …. The church is responsible for making a large percentage of the marzipan biscuits which help feed (excuse the pun) the tourist industry …. I am sure there is something wrong with selling sweets to children (ok, and adults) for the benefit of the church, but I will leave it at that…

The cathedral is however impressive – unfortunately the sun had started to close in on us on Wednesday and they were preparing for filming on Thursday …. So the photos aren’t quite as good as I would have hoped…

Caceres – 31/10 – 2/11

We arrived at the ‘Aire’ which is about 500m outside the town centre and were thankful we arrived when we did as we got one of the last two spaces and as the afternoon/evening went on more and more motorhomes came and either parked round the corner on a bus stand, or disappeared off into the wilderness.

The Aire is situated on a municipal park / sports area, so Friday night, being Halloween we had lots of curious kids pop their heads round for ‘truc o trato’ Trick or Treat. They were very friendly and after we had disposed of all of our child friendly reserves they were polite enough when we said we didn’t have anything else and disappeared.

Whereas Toledo is pristine and well renovated, Caceres feels a little more like a real town – although, walking through the old walled city it still feels like it has been put up for a show and no-one actually lives there.

Although the Aire says you can only stay 24 hours, we decided to move the motorhome to do a different spot, hoping that as 1^st November is a National Holiday no-one will come round and we can spend a bit more time wandering around Caceres and try out some tapas bars tonight 🙂

For those of you who are curious ….

• The 2 euro bottle of wine without a label which we bought in Salamanca was average upon opening, but turned into a good table wine …..
• The calf muscles were good enough to do another run two days later and I have now done 5 runs in total and I am up to 12 minutes of fore foot running ….. going well so far and I am still smiling 🙂

It is amazing how much can happen in a couple of days 🙂

As some of you will have seen on the map, we have back tracked a little and are now extending our journey further south than we had planned as we need to be back in Salamanca to pick up our new satelite box next week – Spanish TV here we come 🙂

It took us longer than expected to sort everything out on Monday morning so we didn’t actually leave Salamanca until late afternoon and with the clocks changing at the weekend we were up against it to arrive at our destination before dark…. but the sat nav decided to try and make the journey more difficuly, and longer than it needed to be.

As the skies were getting darker we turned off of what was already a very windy mountaineous road onto a single track, through the center of a village holding our breath each time we passed another turning and the road got narrower,  then after about 1km onto a road that looked like it went to no-where, and guess what …. it went nowhere.  The Sat Nav said 6km and 40 minutes to the destination, now I am not a rocket scientist, but short of swimming across a river pulling Mika I wasn’t sure how 6kms could take that long in a vehicle.  I started to gain confidence as we drove down the road and 40 minutes quickly turned to 30, then 20, then 10…. obviously the sat nav didn’t know the speed limit on the road so over estimated it …. we were both a bit happier And we had passed a vinyard or two … things were looking up until the Sat Nav told us to go straight on a dirt track.  Ignoring the idea of a dirt track at disk I carried on, time to destination changing to 20 minutes …. I figured we would just be able to make it before dark (we have been eating a lot of carrots)… and then we came across a cattle grid and a fence saying ‘Private Property’.

A discussion as to whether we really thought it was property property, and whether we could try it or not ended up in a five point turn and a journey back down the same road, looking hopefully to the left to see whether the dirt track the Sat Nav had originally pointed us down was actually a mirage and we missed the beautifully tarmacked road with flashing signs pointing towards the campsite … alas no!

So, rather than persevere with the same campsite we decided to try another (it was dark by this point) and thankfully within 30 minutes we arrived at Camping La Enfermeria which is just outside a small town called Pelayos de la Presa.  All of the campsites in Spain to this point have been open until about 9pm each day …. for some reason, apart from a dog barking continuously there wasn’t any sign of life (it was only 7pm despite being very dark).  Tired and hungry, we parked in the car park, settled into making some dinner (Bean curry …yum) and listening to the dog barking – deciding that we would deal with whether we should be parked where we were in the morning.

Thankfully the dog stopped barking by about 9pm and Keith managed to find the campsite manager who said we could stay where we were and talk to them in the morning.

The reason we were trying to stop in this area as it looked like it would be good for walking/cycling .. so this morning we set out on a walk through the countryside …

you have to admit … it is quite beautiful.

After a nice long walk Keith set in to chopping onions and preparing a quiche whilst I started the washing. When Keith tried to close the oven door after pre-heating it, it wouldn’t close.  It has dropped and now when you try to close it, it hits the ignitor button…..ah well, no more baking for a while 😦

We have been trying to find a Buerstner service center as we need to have the 12 month ‘habitation’ check carried out in the next few weeks, but the one in Madrid can’t even look at the problem for three weeks, hopefully the one in Gijon will have a shorter waiting list when it re-opens after holidays next week! Suddenly the need is a little more urgent … I wonder how many times one of us will bang our head on the oven door in the next few weeks?

….. We can’t decide if time is flying past or, going slowly … but we are definately beginning to lose track of it 🙂

It has been 10 weeks since we set off in the motorhome from Bagnoles de L’Orne and it is difficult to believe that we have crammed so much in… yet there is so much more to see!

We had heard from several people that Salamanca is somewhere not to miss, so we thought as we were ‘roughly’ in the area we would have a look and see what was so special.  We arrived at Don Quijote Campsite (16 euros all inclusive) late afternoon and settled into a quiet evening. The campsite is about 6 kms outside Salamanca and it is right at the end of the season, so there were only a few of us on the campsite including a British couple (Janet and Tim) travelling through Spain for 8 weeks or so with a Teepee … great fun 🙂

On Friday (I’d like to say morning, but I think it was about 12:15 by the time we actually left) we set off into Salamanca to have a look round – beating our own record of how much time it can take us to get out the door (I think that was partly doing the clothes washing, and part swapping stories with Janet 🙂 ) ….  the cycle ride in was along the river pretty flat and we soon found the market once we abandoned the bikes.

The indoor markets in Spain are a completely different level to France – they are cheap and have an abundance of fresh meat, fish and fruit and veg – whereas in France you pay a premium in ‘Les Halles’.  The market in Salamanca had a disproportionately high number of ‘Carniceria’s’ where they sell both fresh and cooked/cured meats. … I am not going to complain, but it was difficult to choose!

Once we had stocked up on food (Keith has turned into a Mule with his back pack) we continued our wander through the old town, admiring the beautiful buildings along with the red stone that everything appears to be built in here…..

I think it is a little like Oxford or Cambridge in so far as all the university colleges are situated in beautiful buildings as well…. quite impressive

All in all, if you like architecture …. its fairly nice to wander around – if you don’t, it is still nice to wander around and there are lots of nice looking restaurants and bars but as you can imagine, lots of tourists.

To cleanse my language palate between France and Spain I managed to finally start (and finish) ‘Born to Run’ which is one of the long distance running books that I bought before I left my last job in Worcester.  It talks about technique, history and the evolution of running, so coupled with ‘Eat and Run’ (The hint is in the title) which I read last year has finally swayed me to try and switch to forefoot running.  For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, different people run in different ways, striking the ground with either the heel, mid foot, or forefoot first.  Research in the last five or so years shows that heel strike (my current approach) causes more injuries, and that in fact we should be moving (back) towards barefoot as all the support provided in trainers actually weakens the foot and over time is likely to lead to more injurys……  Anyway, not wishing to bore you, following my calf injury last year it is something I have been thinking about for a while, but as I am running more – I have decided to bite the bullet.  It isn’t something you can do over night … and as Keith found out a couple of years ago when he first started, you need to build it up slowly or you soon find out that you can’t walk, let alone run as your calf muscles and achilles cramp up and go on strike.  So…. Saturday 25th October was the beginning of my new approach to hopefully injury free, running.  For my first run I built in 8 minutes of my 34 minute run on forefoot in two minute bursts……. my calves hurt a little today, but we have also been on a long walk…. roll on tomorrow I am ready for you 🙂 ….. I will let you know how I get on, but if my initial run is anything to go by, I felt so light on my feet I am expecting to be running further and faster in no time ……. patience 😉

Anyway, Saturday was the ‘big match’ Madrid vs Barcelona …. so after my run we headed out to explore the local little village to see if there were any bars to watch it in (whilst also buying an unlabelled bottle of Rioja for 2 euros… just curious to see what it tastes like) and fell upon a motorhome/caravan accessories place.  We are still trying to see if there is any method to pick up Spanish TV as they have restricted who can get it on Satellite and we may have found a solution….albeit not completely legit.  The chap from the shop told us to come back on Monday morning and he can check it out further, so with a smile on our faces we headed back to the campsite for an afternoon of cleaning Mika (sometimes she needs a proper scrub) and then on to the bar on the campsite to watch the game.

Despite the cold air the sun was shining and as we left the village and headed towards Segovia all we could see was blue skies, low mist and a few mountains popping out the top of the mist and the odd clump of trees shining a gold/red colour … absolutely stunning.

We headed for an Aire which was right next to the bull ring and despite the lack of signposting the GPS was correct and directed us into a nice little parking area with the facilities to fill up and dispose of water and empty the toilet if necessary – all F.O.C.

We wandered into Segovia and were immediately struck by the beauty of the aquaduct – possibly one of the more unusual structures that I have seen and it stretches out from one side of the town to the other… totalling 818 meters and providing 170 arches, the highest of which is apparently 29 meters 🙂   It dates from either the end of the first century or the beginning of the second … and thankfully they appear to be keeping the structure in good order!

The rest of the town was equally beautiful with monestries, churches and cathedrals scattered in every direction …..even a synagogue to my surprise…However, I was more surprised to fall upon a kosher restaurant – needless to say I am afraid I didn’t go in, and it would be difficult to remain kosher here as every other restaurant / bar is offering up suckling pig on the menu ….. which smelt delicious …. I am definately not a good jew 😦

There is an enormous cathedral (in the background below), which apparently is the last gothic cathedral to have been built in Spain and a proper fairy tale castle dating from the 12th century

The town sits within a wall and is on top of a hill, so after we explored the town itself we walked through the valley surrounding it where the trees were just turning autumnal colours … very pretty.

After returning to motorhome for dinner we headed out to a local bar to watch the liverpool Madrid game.  The bar was packed and we had forgotton that as you near Madrid every drink comes with a free tapas…. I was full, Keith was happy 🙂

In the morning we headed towards Avila which is also a roman walled city and were planning on staying on another aire, but it had been taken over the a fairground.  We parked up closeby anyway and had a walk around as the ‘Romanesque’ wall was pretty impressive.  We both commented on the quantity of churches etc, but I have just read up that it has one of the highest number of churches (and bars and restaurants apparently) per capita….

With no place to stay we continued on our journey to Salamanca.  En route however, we were surprised to see 7 or 8 large vultures on a bridge going over the road.  Most of the land around here appears to corn and potatoes …. only very few cattle or sheep – but I am guessing something was in its last days.  It does make you wonder though …. where do Vultures live throughout the year, how do they know so quickly that something is dying and how far do they come to find a feed?

Dave… perhaps you know the answer?  They are beautiful creatures … although they do remind me of undertakers with big jackets 🙂

After visiting Haro Keith thought it might be nice to come and see Bourges as it was one of the main towns on the route to Santiago del Compestello … so we headed off towards it. We stopped along the way at Santa Domingo de la Calzada which is a walled town on the pilgrimage trail and unsurprisingly has a beautiful monestry and church…. I feel a bit of repetition coming on over the next few days/weeks!

We got to the campsite (Fuentes Blancas – 16 euros a night all inclusive) just outside Bourges mid-afternoon and struggled to get in the entrance as there were so many people trying to get parked to go into the bar/restaurant which was part of the campsite and is right in the middle of a national park. After a bit of wiggling, we parked up and went for a walk through the park, admiring the Spanish in their Sunday attire despite the 25/26 degree heat.

Monday morning I set out for a run round the park and not only was I surprised by the cold … it took me 3km’s to get any kind of warmth into my hands…. But also by the quantity of people out for a morning walk. Not wishing to be age-ist, but at one point I felt like the entire retired population of Bourges was walking towards me – I felt quite threatened 🙂

We then set off for a walk into Bourges itself and as the sun broke through the clouds it started to warm up and show us what a beautiful city it is.

The Cathedral is gothic in its style and the detail is stunning, with certain parts looking a bit Sagrada Familiar-esque.

Following on from this mornings activity, we are a little concerned however about the habits of the pensioners in Bourges…. Whilst walking just outside the town centre a little old lady came up to me and quietly asked me if I liked Jam. She explained she only had one jar, but if I wanted it, I could have it for 1.50 euros. I am not sure if there is an underground cult in Bourges using the pensioners to pedal ‘Jam’ … or whether she really was sincere and wanted to sell me a jar for 1.50 euros. I politely declined …. So we will never know, although part of me really wants to go back tomorrow to find out if she is still there trying to offload the same pot onto someone else 🙂

Pesquera Del Duero 21/10 – 22/10

We set off from the campsite just before mid-day (we are just trying to balance it out for all the people who decide to get up and leave at 8am…) and headed in the direction of yet another area of Spain that produces wine ….. we are spoilt 🙂

The area is situated in Castillo de Leon – just East of Vallodolid and it is between 800m and 1000m. The vines, like Rioja have a beautiful red tinge to them differentiating them from the green leaves we saw in France making them look very autumnal…if I can get a decent photo I will post it up.

We had selected another small independent vineyard from the Espana Discovery book – Bodegas Vallarin – and this time we weren’t disappointed. Despite arriving during lunch time (15:30) the owner accepted us in, talked us through the wines they sold and we bought another 6 bottles (two of each of three different varieties) of varying price and level…. This is going to be an interesting tasting session! She was incredibly friendly and chuffed that we had chosen to visit their vinyard and said that we were more than welcome to stay and she also pointed us towards a trail/cycle path which stretches for 39km along the river.

Unfortunately this bodega doesn’t export as they are quite small…. But once we have had a chance to try them properly I will add them to the blog ….. just in case you are passing by 🙂

We left Bilbao and headed towards Rioja doing chores along the way in the form of picking up some ‘accessories’ for the motorhome and shopping. Both of which took longer than expected – there is something about going round a supermarket in a new country that means that it has to take at least three times longer than normal to get round.

However, once on the road we headed into and then over the mountains to our first ‘Espana Discovery´ stop over … or so we thought. We pulled up outside Bodega San Sixto in a small town called Yecora just before 6pm to be told that we could buy 12 bottles of Rioja for 21 Euros or 6 bottles of Rioja Crianza (slightly more mature) for 18 euros, but we couldn’t stay. When we explained that the book said we could stay – in typical Spanish style he shrugged his shoulders and pointed us in the direction of the town and said he was sure there were plenty of places that we could park up for the night without being disturbed – but he couldn’t help us with anything except the wine.

So we decided to opt for 6 bottles of Crianza ‘Campo Lengo 2012’, paid our 18 euros at the front door and went round to the back door to pick up our goods. We drove in the direction he had pointed us and came to a stop as the roads quickly narrowed as they twisted and turned and there was no way we were going to be able to get through. So, we had to abandon efforts and submit to another hours driving through Rioja countryside to arrive at Haro, which is apparently the capital of Rioja.

The campsite is called ‘De Haro’ and is 16 euros a night all inclusive. It was packed with Brits. We couldn’t work out why it was so popular despite the views being fantastic ….

but after speaking to a few people evidently it is a good stop over before you go back on the Santander Ferry and is conveniently located for stocking up on wine 🙂

On Saturday morning we headed into the town for a look around, buying some ‘Pimientos de Padron’ (the little green peppers that the Spanish serve as a tapas with a little salt) from the market, which the lady described as being a little hot ….. we cooked half of them on the bar b q later and they were delicious…. but the last one almost beat me as it was so hot…. we shall see what the others are like tomorrow 🙂

In the afternoon we headed off for a 30km cycle ride through the countryside covering some of the same ground as the Pilgrimage of Santiago de Compestello, crossing vinyards and through some beautiful countryside with the mountains as a backdrop. We later tried to go to do some tastings, but we surprised that the wine that they sell in the ‘bodegas’ in town is all the 10 euro + (and +++++ in some cases) – perhaps my lack of taste, but I am perfectly happy with a Rioja which costs 5 euros (or less) and don’t see the need to spend 20 or 30 euros on a bottle, so we abandoned the trip and went back to the motorhome to drink cheap Rioja and eat some appetizers before dinner … our own little tasting J

A little while ago … well about 70 years ago to be precise during WW2, a young gentleman in the American Navy came to London and made acquaintances with my grandparents. It was around the time when my mum was born and his wife was also expecting. Somehow (I am sure either my mum or Barbara are going to add some information here …) my mum and his daughter (Barbara) started to be pen pals and the letters flowed between New Jersey and London. Never having met, when we shipped our Motorhome to New York in 1987 (you can do the maths), they met for the first time and since then we have all stayed in contact on and off with me making frequent trips for work to NY and my parents visiting New Jersey and Barbara on work trips to London, but as we all travelled less with work I hadn’t seen them for a good few years and my parents even less. When we started the blog I emailed Barbara and Vic to let them know of our travels and received an almost instantaneous response to tell us of a trip to Spain, starting in Bilbao on the 15^th October …… so here we all are, fate making us meet in Bilbao for a couple of days of culture and good food and the obligatory few glasses of red wine!

We travelled from San Sebastian to Bilbao via the coastal route, which to say was a little windy would be an understatement, but the views were stunning. If you are planning to travel to this part of the world and aren’t in a hurry – we definitely recommend it.

Bilbao has grown over the last twenty or so years into a beautiful city. Despite Northern Spain (and Bilbao specifically) having had a bad reputation due to ETA they have invested a huge amount of money in developing Bilbao and making it an attractive place for people to visit. Pays Vasco is still hugely independent and like Catalunya (and Scotland) it would like to be governed separately from Spain, but the violence and bombings has all but disappeared. It is definitely more common to hear their language (Euskera) (it is a language, not a dialect) which is taught in schools, than it is to hear Castillian (or Spanish as we know it), but they do all speak Castillian as well.

There is no doubt that the Guggenheim has had something to do with the increase of popularity of the area, but I think it was probably the beginning of the snowball. This is the third time we have been here and even in the last 7 years it has changed dramatically. There are still bars that look like they are run by ETA with pictures on the wall of their fallen warriors, but they appear to be few and far between … or they are now in back rooms so the general public can’t see them. The city is has a beautiful – although still a bit rough around the edges – old town and a nicely refined new town – a really nice place to stay for a long weekend/few days.

The campsite we are staying at (Camping Portuondo) is about 30kms outside Bilbao in a small coastal town called Mundaka as the ‘Aire’ looking over the city is unfortunately closed. It is a ‘Premier Class’ campsite and the views are spectacular and it has a very expensive restaurant on site ….. not what us campers are used to at all.

When we arrived they were switching their hot water system so we managed to get a discounted rate of 11 euros a night, however the normal full price is 28 euros inclusive. There is a bus stop on the doorstep and a train station 1km away – so travelling into Bilbao was pretty cheap and easy … it just took about an hour 😦

It has been lovely to catch up with my parents and Barbara and Vic over the last couple of days …. Hopefully the rest of the trip is as enjoyable for them…. Just a shame that we couldn’t arrange much sun shine for them … I hear it is coming this weekend 🙂