León to Astorga and the Camino

Posted on June 17, 2011 by EllieGee

Gentle bimbling from the Picos via some of the Cordella Cantabrica mountains and flooded valleys brought us to the road to León, and in to the city for late afternoon. After finding the dedicated overnight campervan parking area (a corner of a car park on the edge of the city centre – with handy shopping mall with great loos), we started to wander through the city. If you buy drinks in a bar in León, you automatically get free Tapas. It’s just the way they do things. Very civilised. The food varies from bar to bar, some you get a choice, some you don’t. Who are we to say no to that?

We ended up not buying dinner, but still feeling very well fed. At €1.50-€2 per glass of Rioja, we bar-hopped our way round the old town – munchies partaken of ranged from hams and sausage on bread, via fried potatoes with garlic mayo, to hot battered calamari.

León has been our first encounter with the main Camino de Santiago – and there were plenty of pilgrims in the old town. On foot, on bike (none on horseback that we’ve seen so far), they included a group of about a dozen lads from Pennsylvania – who were repaying the hospitality shown to them by the towns they visit by singing and putting on shows of circus skills throughout the towns of an evening. We saw them in one of the quieter squares – sea-shanties to the strains of the bagpipes, and juggling clubs between four of them stood on the shoulders of the others.

We also saw them along the road, then later in Santiago itself – grubby but unbowed. Guys, in the unlikely event you read this, we salute you.

León itself is a wonderful city to spend some time – as well as the main cathedral, the basilica of San Isidoro, with the Pantheon of the Kings of León, was very well worth a visit. The cathedral itself is home to one of the most extensive collections of stained glass windows – much of it being restored at the moment. As part of that restoration, there’s access to a platform 16m up in the cathedral nose-to-nose with some of the glass. The workmanship that went in to the windows belies the fact that the original craftsman would have no expectations of any person but them ever seeing their work close up.

From León, we headed on to Astorga – an ancient (predating the 3rd Century) city, with a cathedral with a very different feel. Much lighter and brighter, yet much more closed-in internally, it can only be visited on payment of the entry fee to the cathedral museum. What felt initially like a bit of a scam soon turned into pleasant surprise – we weren’t expecting the museum to be quite so extensive or interesting. Since a combined ticket for entrance to the bishop’s palace (by Gaudi) next door was only a euro or so more, it seemed rude not to – again, well worth the visit. Astorga continued to delight us as we wandered into the Plaza Mayor – to find that a very large marquee filling the square was actually a large chocolate exhibition. With plenty of free tastings… Astorga is well known as a centre of chocolate manufacture and we are still feasting on some of our purchases as we write…

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Picos de Europa

Posted on June 17, 2011 by EllieGee

The Picos aren’t big – the whole national park is only about 40km by 40km, and they aren’t exactly stand-alone, running almost seamlessly into the Cordilla Cantabrica range on one side and the Basque mountains heading towards the Pyrenees on the other. But… wow.

We spent a couple of nights in the Picos, one at Fuente De (apparently, there was some debate as to whether it should be Fuente de Deva or Fuente de Eva, so both sides agreed to differ and they just called it Fuente De, or “Source Of”). This isn’t so much a village, as the end of the road. Potes, main town on that side of the Picos, has a junction with a side road heading 25km off into the hills. Where that ends, there’s a Parador hotel, a cable car, and a camp site – except that’s up past the end of the road, down a dirt track, over a brow, through a gate… As you can imagine, it’s quite well situated… Unfortunately, the mountains themselves were being a bit coy, and playing peek-a-boo through low cloud cover. The campsite was quiet and idyllic run by a friendly mountain man and his beautiful ‘cloud’ dogs, the site also hosted a ‘refugio’ for walkers in a lovely multi-level stone cabin.

The following morning, we had a bit of a wander through Potes – surprisingly un-touristy, with none of the chainstore outdoor megastore and jumper emporium feel that you’d expect in a similar town in the UK. Instead, it just felt local. Sure, there were places to get proper walking boots and high-tech clothing, and the ubiquitous naff t-shirts and tat, but they were subtler. Then up and over a 1650m pass to the other side of the Picos. The way up the pass was wreathed in thick cloud, to the point that at one stage a pair of oncoming headlights suddenly turned into a large roadworks truck… Once we crossed the top of the pass, though, it cleared. Totally. Almost instantly. Blue sky and amazing vistas were revealed. A few more passes later, we found ourselves on the way pausing on a precarious but wider bit of lane for lunch, watching one of the many birds of prey circle lazily round. We’ve been surprised by just how many we’ve seen, all the way down through France and Spain – but this was one big bird. Obviously, we’re used to seeing the Red Kites common in the Chilterns, and are almost becoming inured to the many hawks and eagles we’ve been seeing – but this was a Griffon Vulture with a tremendous wingspan. Ten minutes later, binoculars firmly glued to our faces, we finally lost him.

On, round ever steeper and narrower roads, with the brakes on the van making their presence known through ever stronger smells, until we reached Cain, at the head of the Cares Gorge. We didn’t walk the entire gorge, just a small section – but the sheer rock faces either side provided some real drama and the path cut through rock tunnels dripping with water. Goats bounded around, grazing up trees and without the vaguest concept of gravity, adding comedy value.

The second night’s campsite at Santa Marina de Valdeón was equally tranquil and surrounded by green hills and overcast when we arrived. We woke to bright sunshine and tremendous views of the Picos – the green hills of the previous evening clear of cloud revealed breathtakingly beautiful mountains in the photos included here. Sitting in the sun with strawberries for breakfast just gazing at these views – this is what this trip is about!Picos de Europa at St Marina de Valdeon morning

Posted in By Country - Spain, Travel stuff, Wildlife stuff | 1 Comment

Catching up

Posted on June 17, 2011 by EllieGee

We have been out of access to fully update the blog for a while as you may have noticed. When we have had access it has been unreliable and/or we’ve been too tired to write. So here’s an update of where we’ve been and what we’ve done in the last couple of weeks since we last updated. It’s not been all plain sailing … we’ve had ups and downs. Ups include the amazing Picos de Europa mountains, the cities of Leon, Astorga and Santiago de Compostela and lots of fabulous scenery in between. But some parts of northern Spain have been less than thrilling, especially the coastal bits, and this has been a huge disappointment. Off season and less than perfect weather aside, it has been hard to be a tourist in some places. We look to go off the beaten track and the off-season tourist numbers have been pleasing, but when there isn’t even a layby to park in for a quick picnic lunch and tourist information centres are all closed until July for a whole region it becomes tiring and irritating and has meant us missing places that could have been good to see. It seems that if they want to boost local economies in what is a relatively poor region, then they could do so much more for little outlay.

That gripe is as maybe and we want to ensure the blog is truthful and is representative of our own opinions. We have had some amazing times, which we will outline and illustrate more below, but the main ‘event’ that has marred this part of the trip so far is the ‘night of the squillion flying-biting things’ or ‘the ordeal of being eaten alive in hell’… People who know us well, would say that we are prone to exaggeration on occasion, but I can vouch for the fact that Adrian had somewhere approaching 150 bites on his back, arms and face. I have had fewer, but with more than 20 to my face like raised red blotches – and they’ve been phenomenally itchy – you can understand that we’ve both been less than happy. We’re still here though and have not packed our bags – and we are writing this sitting in a campsite on the beach at the edge of Baiona in Galicia with glasses of wine in hand, free WIFI access and the sun has come out after a very wet day. Things are looking up. The bites are even beginning to itch a bit less.

Posted in By Country - Spain, Personal stuff | 3 Comments

Still alive…

Posted on June 17, 2011 by AdrianC

In case you were wondering.

We’ve been somewhat lax over the last week, compounded by intermittent web access. But the  next installment is on the way, honest.

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Rhythm of life on the road

Posted on June 5, 2011 by EllieGee

We’ve been spending a lazy Sunday at a lovely campsite near Comillas, west of Santander. It’s been lovely to have a little downtime – we’ve hardly had any so far. Adrian fitted new gear selectors to my bike and tweaked his own bike to work better (the brakes now work!) following advice from Jono. As ever, the bit that was feared hardest (adjusting the gears) was easiest, and the bit presumed easiest (fitting new hand grips, having had to cut the old ones off to remove the old selectors) was a nightmare – par-boiling them first was the key… We then went on a slow bike ride around the nearest villages. We’d hoped to make it into Comillas but the long never ending hill got on our nerves and tested our, ahem, level of fitness too much for our chilled out Sunday so we turned round after a while and whizzed back down the hill to test the local sidra (cider) and calamari at the village pub instead. Oh well. Back at the site, I repacked some of my stuff to make the clothes I’m needing most at the moment easier to access and putting away other stuff for later in the trip (yes of course I have too much almost needless to say). I’m ever amazed at just how much stuff this van has been able to accommodate with room to spare. While I was packing, Adrian did some initial drawing practice (one of our aims on the trip is to improve our art-related skills) and started reading Laurie Lee’s ‘As I walked out one midsummer morning’ about the writer’s journey in Spain in the 30s leading up to the Spanish Civil War.

We’ve got our daily routines going with packing up the van for the road, filling water, emptying grey waste water, tying our Indian elephant hangy bell thing back and closing the roof vent, our vague direction and approximately the right page in the atlas found, our main general chores for the day such as finding a cashpoint, petrol, bakery, supermarket or internet connection agreed. As well as blogging when we can as we go along, I’m also keeping a logbook – a basic daily write up of the route taken, kilometres driven, when we fill-up, shop etc and the highlights of each day.

We’ve mainly been staying in campsites so far, taking advantage of the lower off season rates and discounts, and space, and this one has been one of the best so far. The standard of cleanliness has been quite impressive throughout though value for money does vary quite a bit. At most of the campsites we’ve been able to choose a pitch and spend the first half an hour organising the van, opening a bottle of something and checking loos and showers.

We aim to do more wild camping as we go on – but we are slightly affected by our decision not to have an onboard loo. We don’t have space in the van for a separate loo cubicle, so would have had to have had a ‘chemikhazi’ in the middle of the van hidden under a stool (so to speak) right where we eat and sleep. Far less than ideal for us, although some other T25 owners do have this set up. So we need to wild camp in remoter more hidden places – our preferred choice anyway – rather than the aires or basically car parks where rows of fridge freezer style motorhomes are allowed to stop for the night. We do have an emergency ‘ploo’ on board though and are of course extremely discreet and sensitive to our natural surroundings when camping wild!

Most of our fellow travellers are so far tending to be older couples, many from the Netherlands, who have been touring southern Europe for weeks or months and are now on the way back home for the summer. An English couple here on the site got the boat to Santander and are into their third week just at this site! We hope to meet more ‘like-minded’ souls as we continue.

We’ll most likely head off again tomorrow from here in search of the Picos de Europa – a mountain range and national park an hour or so south west of here – one of our key destinations in Spain.

Posted in By Country - Spain, Personal stuff, Travel stuff | 2 Comments

Cave art ancient and modern

Posted on June 5, 2011 by EllieGee

In two days we’ve experienced the two extremes of art history. We spent much of Friday in Bilbao at the Guggenheim – several hours both outside and inside the museum. The building itself is the show stealer and will always upstage any exhibition there I think. They have excellent audio guides included in the entrance price which tell you all about Frank Gehry’s vision for the building and how he was inspired by fish scales, following playing with a carp in his grandmother’s bath as a child, to create the thin titanium panels that cover most of the exterior. Although we caught it in the gap between two major exhibitions there was more than enough to get our heads and feet around with some thrilling and challenging installations.

The following day we headed for the hills again going inland west of Bilbao and south of Santander and our highlight was a visit to the caves at Puente Viesgo where the promise of amazing stalagmite and stalagtite formations and prehistoric cave paintings had lured us. One of the things we really wanted was to get to see cave paintings on this trip, something neither of us had seen before. There is a limit of how many people can visit the caves on any given day to protect the delicate environment, so another bonus of the off season was that we got to see them with a small group and a great guide who kindly sprinkled the Spanish only tour with English words for us. He really brought to life how the paintings were thought to have been created using charcoal and ochre, with the lines often working out from natural lines or cracks in the stone itself – buffalo, deer and horses are depicted, and lots of hands. It was very special to be so deep underground with this ancient art and a miracle that it still exists for us to appreciate today. The rock formations defied belief that they could simply be created by a force of nature over thousands of years – extraordinary.

What a contrast to our time at the Guggenheim then little more than 24 hours before. And yet, at the Guggenheim one of our favourite installations was Thomas Hirschhorn’s Cavemanman. The artist has created an intriguing series of caves out of transient materials like cardboard, masses and masses of packing tape which covers most of the surface including the floor, aluminium foil-covered mannequins, books, posters, videos, cans, shelves, and so on, that you can walk through and around. So visits to caves ancient and modern have given us insights into where people began and where they are now – I’m sure we’ll spend at least some of the rest of the trip seeing things that fill in the gaps in between.

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A Basque and Bilbao bimble

Posted on June 2, 2011 by EllieGee

The road has taken us quite a few kilometres since we were last able to post. Every day on this trip flies by and every day is so full it feels like a week in itself. So having crossed into Spain only yesterday morning, it already feels we’ve been here ages.

We drove straight from Pyla, on small roads, to Bayonne, via a lunch break overlooking an amazing surf beach, miles of sand. The wind seemed a bit strong, as the lone kite surfer made it look very hard work as he fought his way up the beach, just to be dragged back through the water with brief interludes of standing.

Bayonne

An afternoon getting lost on foot in the centre of Bayonne wasn’t enough – a laid back, beautiful city with a nice vibe and gorgeous tall old shuttered buildings lining narrow streets, and intriguing bars. We’d have loved to stay longer, but wanted to cross into Spain.

Yesterday was spent bimbling through the Basque country. A lovely Menu del Dia lunch in a fishing port, then tiny mountain roads towards Gernika, before trying to find a nice wild-camp spot. There weren’t many – all the roads are just too steep, with few pull-ins or similar. We ended up alone in a look-out point overlooking the ocean. Could have been worse…

This morning started with an early trek to the hermitage of San Juan de Gaztelugatxe, a small church on a rock off the shore. 200 steps, once you’d fought your way through the undergrowth down the hillside from the carpark. We could see it from the camping spot, and it was very well worth the effort – beautiful, surrounded by waves crashing against the rocks.

San Juan de Gaztelugatze, between San Sebastian and Bilbao

After checking out and rejecting a couple of the few campsites near Bilbao, we headed straight for the city on the main road. A toll tunnel was signed to the centre, so we took it, and emerged with great surprise on a fantastic new bridge right next to the astonishing Guggenheim museum. We parked easily, and spent the afternoon wandering through the city. We’ve found a decent, if crowded, campsite (they’re much scarcer here than France) and will catch the bus back to the city tomorrow, to go round the museum properly.

Guggenheim Bilbao

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Out on the salt pans

Posted on May 30, 2011 by EllieGee

Salt collecting in salt pans is an industry/activity that was new to me this year when I visited the salt pans near Tuticorin in South India and saw the striking bleak landscape and harsh conditions for the workers. To come across this activity again on the west coast of France near Guerande in the Loire-Atlantique region where it has been going on for centuries was even more fascinating because of the inevitable comparisons and contrasts with the Indian salt pans I can draw on.

As we passed through the French salt pans it was as cold and windy as the Tuticorin pans were hot and dry. The French workers obviously work long hours and the set up is as a collective, whereas until recently the Indians had been bonded workers whose families were tied in generation upon generation to low wages and indebtedness to their bosses. The French workers have stout boots and poles long enough so they don’t need to step into the pans to rake them over. At Tuticorin, workers stand in their bare feet in the pans on the harsh sharp salt grains for hours on end, and have no eye protection to protect from the glare. Neither have they had the healthcare necessary to address the results of these working conditions. Local development organisation Social Change and Development (SCAD) has helped to address some of these issues, but conditions and wages continue to be tougher than European sensitivities can imagine. In France, the salt industry is celebrated with pride, a museum and picture postcards of the quaint colourful wheelbarrows used by the workers, which – as in India – include women. No heaving of heavy sacks like the women in India, though, I would guess. The Indian workers earn around 200 rupees a day (from memory) – less than a fiver and this would barely buy you a small decorative sack of Guerande salt from the museum gift shop.

As you can see from the poses in the images below, the process is essentially the same and is timeless… but in such a different environment in so many ways.

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Dune in June. Almost.

Posted on May 30, 2011 by AdrianC

We’ve moved on quite a long way since we last posted, heading for Northern Spain & Portugal. The only events in our calendar where we know where & when we’ll be are both in July – a wedding in Derbyshire (we’ll fly back for that) then the big 2cv meet in Orleans two weeks later. So it seems to make sense to have a look at Iberia before it gets too hot & full of flippin’ tourists.

Hot. Ha. It was 31degC here yesterday… So where’s here? Right at the foot of Europe’s biggest sand dune, the Dune du Pyla, a little south of Bordeaux. 100m+ tall and 3km long, it totally dominates the view from this campsite… And we climbed it! We’ll admit to a certain degree of cheating – there’s a ladder most of the way up. In our defence, it’s very necessary, since this side – the inland “rear” – is much, much steeper than the coast side. It’s far closer to vertical than horizontal in places, with the rungs of the stainless steel ladder almost completely hidden under the drifting sand. At least, that’s our story, and we’re sticking to it. Descent is, umm, considerably easier (and much more fun) than the ascent. Today, we cycled into Arcachon, about 10-15 away. Not exactly a flat route, and somewhat wearying – but we did the shopping we intended to (I didn’t think the first mechanical failure of the trip’d be the bikes, but new gear selectors are ready to go on Ellie’s ex-Peak Park cycle hire machine), and the guy in the SFR shop weaved his magic on the MiFi mobile-internet-to-wifi router. I’m losing my magic touch with technology. That’s both my phone & the MiFi that I’ve just not been able to get on the ‘net at all, then had both suddenly work completely as soon as I go into the shop with ’em… Shame there’s no signal here on the site. When they set the price at €5 for 1 hour WiFi (€9 for 2hr, €20 for a week!), they obviously knew they’d got a captive market. Hiho.

Then I went back to Arcachon on the bike to retrieve the MiFi, which I’d managed to leave in the shop. And got lost. I can report, though, that the “Ville d’Hiver” (Winter town) is very nice indeed – big villas, sat on top of a large hill… And all the signs to Centre Ville seemed to go further up, up, up… We’ll see whether the plan to climb the dune again this evening for the sunset comes off or not. Right now, it’s looking dodgy, as my knees have utterly locked into place and this gin’s going down very well. (BTW, it didn’t.)

But enough of that. What’ve we been up to in the interim?

We left the Carnac area what feels like last year, bimbling gently south on the back roads, and ended up near Guerande – where sea water’s been evaporated for the salt in the same way since before Roman times. More on that in another post. After a night in a camp site right above the beach, with a fantastic view of a wind-blown sea, up and down through the Charentes, to another site just south of La Rochelle. A short walk brought us to the beach, with a fantastic view of the sunset from long wooden benches deliberately erected at the top of the sand. Anybody’d think it happened regularly there… Then onwards again, through Pineau de Charentes vineyards and the most beautiful villages seemingly grown out of the landscape rather than built. Then the vineyards remained, but their intent changed – past Royan (where I had a couple of childhood holidays many moons ago, in the neighbouring resort of St Georges de Didonnes) – with a ferry over to the Medoc. We thought about crossing, but didn’t – the fares, at €40 for a 15min crossing, seemed just that bit too high for comfort – so down the mainland through the Cotes du Blayes. At Blayes, we looked again at the ferry – €20-odd seemed better – so we went for it. Then we found out about the fare for the second adult… Thick end of another €10. Hiho. Can’t get off now. A trip through some of the most exalted wine territory in France, and past Chateaux whose names might’ve been familiar if our budget stretched more to quality than quantity, and the municipal campsite at Pauillac. The banks of the Gironde estuary were lined with small ramshackle fishing huts, with nets on the end of long poles.

From there, the Medoc descended into farce, as a road closure, then a missed turning due largely to astonishment at the sheer volume of stationary traffic heading the other way meant we failed completely to avoid the suburbs of Bordeaux. I think we left St Aubin de Gironde seven or eight times before we found the right road. We knew instantly it was the right road, since the traffic was absolutely stationary. Eventually, and after a small detour to the northern edge of the bay, to see the dune from a distance (obviously greater than we thought, since it looked fairly disappointing), we arrived here.

Posted in By Country - France, Travel stuff | 5 Comments

Many menhirs

Posted on May 25, 2011 by EllieGee

We were sad to leave Jono’s idyllic campsite near Nevez, but look forward to catching up with him later in the summer at the World Meeting of 2cv Friends in Salbris, south of Orleans. We have headed a few miles further south to Carnac now, where we’re overnighting in a lovely but breezy campsite. A lovely dinner of herby lemon chicken casserole was conjured up in spite of faulty wiring to our water pump for our onboard tap and finding out that the mains hook up needed a prod during cooking.

The Carnac area hosts several thousand standing stones, or menhirs in Breton, and all in alignment. Quite a sight to take in and we enjoyed the cider icecream half way through the walk at the Kermario section. Like Stonehenge you can’t walk in amongst the stones anymore but must stay behind the fence but inspite of this, the sheer volume and area they encompass is awe-inspiring. You can get a feel of this from our new header image.

After we arrived at our campsite Adrian cycled into the nearby town of Trinite sur Mer to hit a cash point. He was back so quickly with great reports of the harbour and marinas there, we headed out immediately again on bikes so I could see it too. Huge flash racing catamarans sat cheek by jowl with ancient fishing vessels. A marina rammed to the gills with small and large boats of all sorts – a mass of masts. All fab in the early evening light.


As I’m sitting here outside with wireless access from our pitch, the weather looks to be changing – it has been fine and sunny most of the time up to now, but the clouds are looking a bit more set in. Feels weird to be blogging in the open air. We’ll see what tomorrow brings – the forecast is positive. We’ll be moving on round the Golfe de Morbihan towards Vannes at the end of our first week away.

It is beginning to sink in now that this isn’t just a week away … but a whole new lifestyle and life choice. We have no house or jobs to immediately go back to – scary? Yes. But exciting too. We’re still very much learning the ropes of this kind of travelling and of using our van… but it’s all very much about the journey and not the destination. After all we have no destination but the open road…

Posted in By Country - France, Food stuff, Personal stuff, Travel stuff | 1 Comment