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
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!
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