The Rain in Spain....

Since the last blog we've continued east across northern Spain, then north through France.  We're writing this on the ferry from Le Havre, en route towards Portsmouth and home (14/03/12).

Spain started well, with a visit to Salamanca.  Although we've spent a fair bit of time in Spain, we realised this is the first time we've visited the Castillian heartland.  In most other places we've been there's been more or less of a local national identity, and often a local language.

Salamanca is a beautiful city filled with sturdy blocky buildings made from warm, golden sandstone, from the Spain's golden age of expansion, reconquest and imperial riches.



Its twin Cathedrals (one Gothic, one even Romanesque) are very impressive, but following our campsite owner's advice we spent much of our time exploring the ancient University and the excellent tapas bars. The old University has the most fantastic Plateresque façade – a decorative style of shallow relief and intricate detail based on the work of silversmiths. You can spend hours staring at it, noticing new things all the time, but for good luck you're apparently supposed to look out for the frog.



We also found that the Museum of Art Nouveau and Art Deco was free on Thursday mornings (just when we happened to be there; an unexpected stroke of good luck) so we spent an enjoyable morning wandering around the exhibitions there.




The Hassle Blog

The closer you get to Britain, the more the hassle mounts!

We were aware that we were probably getting close to the legal weight limit for the van.  Now we were on our way home we wanted to be able to pick up some more souvenirs without getting uncomfortable, unsafe or illegal.  When we bought the van almost two years ago it came with a tow ball – a nice extra.  We decided to buy a trailer.

Since we'd never used the van to tow, we weren't 100% sure the tow hitch worked, so before we handed over the money we plugged the trailer in and checked the lights.  All was well, so we paid, hitched up and continued east across the monotonous wheat fields of Castille (in driving rain, then thunderstorms and hail the size of chickpeas).

It was as we were about to set off from Burgos that we realised that neither the trailer nor the van's sidelights worked.  When we unplugged the trailer the van lights came back.  This was the beginning of a long and convoluted story wherein we tried our very best to do the right, legal thing, spent several hundred euros and three days at three supposedly reputable Spanish garages, where new lighting faults appeared and disappeared, auto-electricians shouted at each other, hacked at our wiring and showed no understanding of what was going on.

After a day at the Fiat dealership in Pamplona we decided we couldn't afford the time or money to continue to pay Spanish mechanics to damage our vehicles.  We left with no sidelights working on the trailer, and only working on one side on the van (even with the trailer unplugged).  We decided to drive only in daylight with the trailer unplugged and to head for home, where at least we could argue with mechanics in English.

That's been fine so far (which is to say there's been no fine).

What I think has happened is this.  In old style cars, when you used a light switch on the dash, it sent current down a wire to the relevant bulbs at the back.  You could add a few extra bulbs on a trailer without problems.  In newer cars the switch tells a computer that you want that light on, then the computer sends an instruction through the vehicle's network to tell the light to come on.  If the bulb draws less current than expected the computer thinks the bulb has blown and illuminates a warning light.  If the bulb draws more current than expected, it assumes there's a short circuit and closes down that section of the lighting system, which can only be reactivated by a garage with Fiat's special interface.  I've read articles about this technology, explaining how much weight it saves, but it's clearly not common knowledge amongst Spanish auto-electricians.

The other hassles were:

• a burst pipe in our house, damage to ceilings, carpets and the contents of the loft, and understandably very unhappy tenants
• an attempted burglary at the flat we're moving into when we get home.  Insurance claim, £100 excess, only one key for each flat
• The Companies House annual return for the flat management company was overlooked, leading to an automatic £100 penalty and risk of forfeiting ownership of the freehold

All this suddenly needed our urgent attention, even though it was from a carpark in Spain on 38p/minute cellphone calls and emails from a laptop with 20 minutes battery life remaining.


The Wine Blog Bit

So after all that it was nice to revisit La Rioja in the springtime.  Obviously there was no blazing autumn colour this time, just rows of bare twigs, but the landscape is still lovely and if you looked closely at the vines you could see felty grey buds just  beginning to swell.  Teams of workers are still out in the fields doing the last of the pruning.  We spent a bit more time in garages than we would have chosen to, but we found time for a night out in Logrono's tapas bars around Calle Laurel and to visit our old friends at bodegas Navajas were we started to load up the trailer.



Next stop was Blaye in the Bordeaux wine region, which we last visited on our way south in October 2010.  We caught up with some people, unfortunately missed some others, met some new people, saw some changes and collected a few more bottles.

We also collected a pallet of a hundred empty wooden wine boxes, as part of a cunning plan which may be key to our futures.  The following two days could have featured in the Hassles Blog as we struggled to repack the teetering tower of empty boxes in a less alarming shape, and also find space for wine and other odds and ends, balancing the weight of van and trailer and get the whole lot secure enough for the trip home.



Bordeaux to Normandy ended up as a long day of driving with not much time for sight seeing, but the van and trailer behaved well. We finished the day at a lovely, sleepy little town called Gacé, south of Liseaux. Gacé is well supplied with boulangeries, patisseries, and bars, and the kind townsfolk have provided a free parking spot for motorhomes right outside the Mairie. You've got to love the French!



Today we finished off our great adventure with Moules Frites, sitting in the sunshine at Deauville, and caught the ferry without incident.

Tomorrow, another long drive back to Cardiff to unpack, find our new front door keys, straighten out a few messes and start to reintegrate into society. Wish us luck folks!

The 'better late than never' Portugal blog

As we set off for home from Andalucia we decided we couldn't bear to miss out completely on Portugal, so made a loop to the west through Lisbon and Porto, and really loved it.

We found warm sunshine, welcoming people, granite cliffs and beaches with lovely, crashing Atlantic waves, cheap campsites (and plenty of wild camping opportunities), port wine and some beautiful towns and cities – how could we fail to enjoy it?

Our first stop was at Évora,  a pretty and very peaceful little yellow and white town with some impressive old buildings, the ruins of a Roman temple and a still functioning aqueduct.



This was also the first place that we encountered a tourist product that we later saw all over Portugal – a huge variety of things made of cork. There were pot stands and coasters, which we'd expect, but also cork postcards and a huge range of hats, bags, wallets, shoes, belts etc, all made of an incredibly soft cork, which feels just like leather.

After Évora we made a trip through the Parque National da Arrábida, where pretty villages snuggle into rich green forested hills that slope steeply down to the sea.   We ate far too much of the local speciality – choco fritos (fried big squid) and spent a night wild camping on a clifftop at Sesimbra with some friendly cats for company. The next morning we visited the old monastery at Cabo Espichel before heading off for Lisbon.  The monastery is out on a bare and windswept headland, with clifftop views out over clear blue sea.  We both felt there was a distinctly Atlantic atmosphere about this coast – at times there was something of Cornwall about it, but with baroque churches, red tiled roofs, blue wooden fishing boats and palm trees.



Lisbon was a lovely city break for us. It's a busy, lively town with some pretty areas, some ugly, ex-industrial areas, some picturesque but crumbling areas and some stunning monuments. The temperature was perfect when we were there, but in summer, when it's scorching hot, people must be glad that the coast and the mountains are within easy reach. We stayed in the Belem district, by the port, where some of the best monuments are within easy walking distance and the others are a tram ride away.



We caught the tram into the city centre and spent the day wandering,  In the evening we ate at a restaurant in the Bairro Alto listening to fabulous live Fado music.



Next we visited the coast again and stayed at a campsite at the seaside resort of Cascais, where it was so warm that we hung out washing out before going to bed and it was dry in the morning. It's very different to February at home!

Then it was off to Sintra for some exercise. Sintra is a very attractive but very hilly place. It was apparently a favourite summer refuge for royalty and their courtiers, so it was crowded with ostentatious houses and palaces, mainly Victorian.  There are some very smart mansions and fairytale castles, although many of the fine old buildings are now derelict – they have far more palaces than are needed in a skint twenty first century republic.

 

We followed signs up a cobbled hill to the Moorish Castle – high in the forest overlooking Sintra. It was rather further, and steeper, than we'd realised but once we'd started we couldn't give up. The castle itself, way up on the crag, has great views over Sintra, across to nearby palaces, the coastal plain and out to sea. It is very restored (Fernando II was very fond of it's romantic ruins) and we had a lovely walk around the battlements. The only disappointment was the lack of a café, but the town made up for that (see the pastry blog).



That night we had planned to visit a recommended free motorhome spot at a famous surfing beach at Ribamar near Ericeria, but the place must have been overwhelmed with visitors and they have put up 'No motorhomes' signs.  We carried on until we found a deserted carpark overlooking a sandy cove. We spent the night with the sound of the waves and a hooting owl to serenade us.



Next stop was the spectacular walled town of Obidos where we climbed up and walked around the ramparts. From here we could see the surrounding countryside, but also enjoy the view across the terracotta rooftops of the town - like a mini Dubrovnic.



We spent a couple of happy hours in Obidos before setting off for Fatima where we spent the night in a motorhome parking area only a couple of hundred metres from the cathedral and its incredible shrine complex. As non believers we were rather astounded by some of the things we saw here – in particular the shops selling a mixture of tourist tat and religious stuff.  A typical place would sell wax feet and heads to be used as offerings, giant candles, statues of saints and Our Lady (green is popular), Sporting Lisboa football shirts and cockerel tea towels.  Once place had wax intestines – I'm sure it makes sense if you're Catholic. 



Our final Portuguese city was beautiful Porto. We arrived at Vila Nova de Gaia on the opposite bank of the River Duero, where the wharves are crowded with port wine warehouses and traditional river sailing boats.  Our first sight of Porto was the view across the river to the multicoloured town, studded with baroque towers, draped over the hillside and framed by spectacular bridges.   Since Porto is a city built on a hillside, our legs got another workout, but it makes for an extremely picturesque landscape.



The wine blog

While in Porto, we obviously had to take a tour of one of the wineries, and sample their products – well it would be rude not to!  We were particularly impressed with their white ports – not something we encounter so often in Britain.



Apart from the fortified wines of Porto, Portugal makes a wide variety of table wines – red, white, green and sparkling.  Wine shops and restaurants offered a bewildering range of local wines, most of which were completely unfamiliar to us.  During our brief visit we made little progress in making sense of it all, but we can say there's plenty of variety and a wide range of quality.  The green wine, 'Vinho Verde', is a young dry white wine from the north, slightly sparkling in one restaurant we visited, and very good.

The pastry blog

Pastries seem to have a very prominent position in Portuguese culture and are the subject of much regional rivalry.

In Lisbon we read about a famous cake shop which took over the local monastery's recipe for 'Pasteis de Belem', the most famous version of a famous pastry.  The shop and café comprised a warren of rooms, all lined with blue tiles, with big glass windows to see into the kitchens. The pastries were delivered to our table warm from the kitchens; crisp filo pastry cases, browned and buttery, filled with a soft warm custard delicately flavoured with cinnamon. Delicious!



Sintra also had a historic cake shop, selling the local speciality 'Quejadas'.  We found the shop easily as it was the one that looked like it hadn't been redecorated in a century and had a big queue of people inside.  The quejadas turned out to be small tarts with a dense crisp casing, a sweet mealy (rather than custard) filling with a nicely browned top. We bought some to take away, as well as  some puff pastry rolls that everyone else seemed to be ordering, and they came so beautifully wrapped that it seemed a shame to open them.



The puff pastry rolls turned out to be Travessieros, they were encrusted with sugar and half filled with a sweet yellow goo, possibly pumpkin based. Very nice.



And then...

After not quite enough of Portugal we forced ourselves to head back into Spain and off eastwards.  We've made our way through the wheat fields of the Castilian meseta roughly parallel to the Duero / Douro river.  That route will take us into the Ebro valley and La Rioja, before once again crossing the Pyrenees into France.  There's a growing feeling of being on the way home, planning the practicalities of reassembling something like a normal life. 

There are some things we're very much looking forward to, but we wonder how we'll manage with the climate, the Olympics, the 60th Jubilee and finding that we understand what the people around us are saying all the time!