Alice Roberts revisited - I can wish!

I made a bit of a mess of this first time around so here goes again. On October 12 2012 I saw someone I greatly admire and frankly rather fancy turn from the years of pixels to persona. My fears that I might be disappointed were unfounded – the truth is that the charm, polish, and, IMO, beauty on TV are not an act; with Alice May Roberts it seems the joy of what you see is what you get. Phew!

Having got that out of the way (or my system) how did she do with her exposition of the effect of Ice Ages on the lives of the megafauna, early man and us – homo sapiens? Very well indeed and for a very important reason.

When Birmingham University created the chair of “engaging the public with science” and awarded it to then Dr Alice Roberts, anatomist, anthropologist of Bristol Uni and the BBC they got a bit of stick. And a few (misogynists?) even challenged her right to the post. Codswallop. Never has there been a time when engaging the public with science was more crucial. One only has to see, hear, even feel the activities of the fundamental Christian and Islamists et al to see how critical it is to improve public understanding of our world, our place and our origins. Dawkins can rant but something more subtle is essential. And here she is; Credible, communicative and charming. Who else then would Birmingham choose? I'd say she was a coup.

There is a fine line between a worthy but dull lecture and an enjoyable evening out. This was part of a Royal Geographical Society series and Alice delivered a solidly enjoyable, entertaining and informative discourse on the role of the ice ages in the development of man. That fine line was trodden with consummate skill and charm by Alice Roberts at Kings Lynn (how lucky they are to get her too.)

This was not only marked out by the accessibility of her content and delivery but her enthusiastic commitment to being correct and having evidence. Time and again she showed us what had been found, told us what was believed and then toured the doubts that nagged at her and would lead to further investigation. Along the way we entertainingly learned that gaining the knowledge and the insights is not a comfortable business. The BBC does not provide central heating on the Russian steppe or 5-star hotels on the ice shelf. An honestly nervy Alice explained how she learned to handle a rifle where there were Polar Bears (although I cannot imagine her using it even in anger) but picked a cliff edge pitch for her tent to put her colleagues between her and the bear access point. We heard too how she shared a frankly disgusting tepee affair with 11 snoring geezers! Our sense of envy died a little on the word eleven!

But we learned too how climate works, how we are even now within an ice age, or possibly just leaving one, or even in the midst of a much shorter Heinrich event. Whichever, the point was that not responding to our own worsening of the climate change situation was not really an option. And talk of “refugia” – last safe places for creatures overwhelmed by climate change - was given a scary climax with the fate of the Neanderthals. These probable cousins but certain companions as the ice descended from the north appear to have ended up clinging to Europe on the Rock of Gibraltar; I've been ther so know how they felt. Whether they just died out or modern man took a hand is not certain. Either way they are no more.

No more too are the mammoths – for which Alice has a fondness that should worry her own naughty terrier. But many miles north of Gibraltar the last few were similarly struggling on an Arctic island. Indeed the very last hung on until about 7,000 years before the modern era. Just missed them then.

And we got a preview of the CGI for her new programmes on BBC – arriving next year and then it was questions. And if anyone had any doubt of her commitment to veracity it came soon enough as the questions took her outside her own comfort zone: “I am very sorry but I haven't a clue” she said. To the truly sharing mind the acceptance of Homeric frailty is a proof of competence. Loved it Alice, but then I'm biased.

Amazing luck for me - a full display over St Jean de Luz by Le Patrouille de France - effectively the French Red Arrows using NATO Alpha Jet trainers - terrific

Air show St Jean by Le Patrouille de France

Waiting for the rain to stop - again; June 10

As I write this we should be about 400 k north of sarlat on the banks of the Loire east of Orleans. We are not because it rained all night and most of today. We do not, if we can avoid it, do wet starts. The awning came down late Friday because it was dry and the forecast was not. Saturday saw us enjoying a fine day in Sarlat street market and a good, if not brilliant lunch in one of the myriad restaurants tucked into the narrow lanes of the town. Foi gras figured again but I think my main course was the most unusual I have had here - this time anyway. I shall call it surf and earth since it was Noix de St Jaques braised with superb Ceps in a bullion of many ingredients including basil and rosemary and parsley. Utterly delicious.
Anyway we are, as I said, still here. It is Sunday so we shall miss out on our easy ride use of the HGV rest day. And Monday in France is a bit of pig on the roads, although by paying up for the autoroute we can still avoid the majority of poids lourds.
But maybe this is a good moment to look back on this trip - all these three and four month joints are now described as trips. Since they are not holidays and hardly journeys (too many destinations?) trip seems to encompas the process. No one in the UK will be surprised that rains features heavily this time. We had a sunny crosssing and the Picos Europas were burning but after a week it all went umbrellas. Out of Asturia and into Galicia and confident that the climate records showed some bright sunny days amidst the inevitable Galician showers. Wrong. There were days when we saw no sun, no moon; it may well have been No-vember. It rained on Foz and it settled under the van. We slewed off over trackways of ground sheet pads in four wheel drive - backwards!
Unto the Costa Compostella as it grandly calls itself. This is the west coast of Galicia and it is a superb calmed down version of Norway. Rias instead of fiords but the same amazing interplay of sea and land. Lovely - especially when you can see it. To be fair the climate was maritime so the clouds were often blown away and the sun did shine. The site was disastriously tight for pitches and manouvreing space but somehow we got off.
Now it needs to be noted at this point that we had beenn dealt a rough hand. Our decision was that chucking cushions the length of the Bailey each night of 90 days to set up our rather narrow single beds was not ideal. So we had opted for twin singles - full size basically. And a decent kitcehn. And a virtually fukll-size fridge. And a superb L-shaped dining area. And that meant 8.3 metres and twin axles. So we fitted a motor mover to solve the issue. And it broke down after the first use! I am beginning th get some idea of how to manouvre in reverse but it is a slow learning curve - in fact it is the curve that is the problem of course.
So a tight site in Ribiera meant a sleepless night before we edged off. Then in Cabrera we had loads of space on a rough site and lousy weather. Then came Haro in La Rioja and the weather was great, the site an easy open parkland affair - and I managed to clip a tree. Not serious but....
Big decision to scrap the expensive long crossing and cruise through France. Better site and better weather all the way to today.
More on this later....

Here we are in Chipping Sarlat... guys are swimming... gals are sailing June 3 - 4

Yep, we are back in Chipping Sarlat - or Sarlat le Caneda as it is properly known. But it earns my sobriquet for being in Dordogneshire, the Cotswolds of France and itself being the superb equivalent of Chipping Camden. We love both places and for almost identical reasons.
Sarlat is bigger by a fair amount - very nearly a real city. It has what is called a cathedral but I am not quite convinced the French definition is similar to our own. Big church it certainly is and was home to an Abbot - Eveque in French. But for us Sarlat has some very specific beauties to proclaim.
First it is built of the local stone, an almost orange sandstone that ages to a grey-apricot. Indeed if both old and damp it gains a deep almost black brown. When I say built I mean virtually every inch of it - wherever you turn there is this apricot glow.
Second, the local architecture was and remains beautiful. It is not clever or intricate but the stonework is pure and simple, the windows deep set and crisp, the doorways of every shape and form and size, the roofs... ah the roofs. If not of amazing lauze stones they are of rich terracotta. They curve and cascade and are pierced by small mansard windows, themselves little gems.
Third, all this is crowded in. The lanes are narrow - and cool in summer. They meet at strange angles, sometimes with tiny squares, sometimes with larger ones. Many are cobbled. Most are impossible for traffic - those that are are have been largely pedestrianised.
Fourth, this is a smart town that is proud of itself. The buildings are almost entirely well-kept. The shops - too many touristy of course- are also smart and imaginative. The pavements cafes are huge in number, great in style and not too horrible in price.
Fifth, it is actually a walled town with a fair amount of wall intact. But importantly this means the central largely medieval area has its own character and, like Norwich, this is a bustling,busy and cosmopoitan affair. It also has kept out the bigger chains.
Sixth, for all that La Rue de la Republique, the 19th century main throughfare is full of top class shops both international and mostly local.
Seventh, it has a very fine covered Salle de Marche but also sports two market days each week - a medium sized affair on Wednesday and a massive, indeed one of the largest in France, on Saturdays. And if that were not enough once a month there is a Sunday Brocante Fair.
And if there is a finally it is this - it is friendly. France does not actually get my vote as friendly nation - Spain, Portugal and Italy top them in that order. But Sarlat seems to be an exception. Maybe their success in attracting vast numbers of tourists and their cash helps cheer them.
Downsides there are. Too many tourists. Too many of them Brits, too many of them in motor coach herds (no TGV yet). The traffic can be tiresome although parking if you do not mind paying is pretty easy.
We came here first 21 years ago and briefly. Last year we stayed nearby for two weeks. This year we are virtually in town for two weeks. We shall be back next year. I just wonder if we could afford the little place at the end of La Rue Brouile, the one with the tiny roof garden and the odd little corner window....

We campers are a funny old lot - and that includes us - May 26 and on

Our experience of camping sur la continent is reaching moderate proportions so we may feel entitled to discuss the behavioural patterns of the average camper with mild authority if not a litle humour. In fact I was totting it up and in all we have now spent a total of a shade under 40 weeks in about 30 camp sites in France, Spain and Italy. Not exhaustive if at times ezhausting. I have not counted rented accommodation which would total well over 60 weeks as the exchange with the host environment is very different.
To begin I shall attack the home front. Brits abroad do indeed speak ENG---LISH; that is very loud and slowly. There are some like us who essay a little French (Janet's is rather good actually) but for most of us it would not even have graced our French essays! Franglais and Spanglish is the usual fare; in Itay we tend to fall back on ENG-LISH. This is in contrast to our Dutch and Germand travellers who stick to Dutch and German for the residents and English when they see our registration.. They seem all to speak quite decent, even good English. They seem also to assume this will be true of the French and Spanish but are quickly disillusioned if not dissuaded. But if you greet them as I do on a French site with Bonjour or Buenos Dias in Spain you get a very odd reaction, as if you had somehow committed a great sin and needed to be re-trained immediately. Indeed, some German visitors will not forgive me if I suggest they are positively uncouth when addressed in anything other than English, or a tentative Guten Morgen or whetever.
Arrival on site is also revealing. In general the English are close to unique in accepting the pitch to which they are directed without comment. I admit we do not but with this van? No choice - I choose! The Dutch and Germans will allow themselves to be shown round but will then choose their own spot. The French in France of course will tend to do their own thing and why not. Ditto the Spanish in Spain although we did not see so many of them - they seem to prefer their self-constructed, semi-permanent, not-even-vaguely-mobile mobile units with huge awnings or solid sun shades, terraces, and various garden storage kit. All wired, all drained.
Spanish sites can be a bit tight for space compared to French and especially English sites. Italian are somewhere between but, like Spain are full of permanents. But Spanish sites have, as I said elsewhere, the best loos, indeed entire servicios, of all.
The continentals prefer their motor homes, especially the Dutch but they rarely stay long anywhere but on the Med so they arrive late p.m., set up, gather together, talk endlessly, eat sparingly, sleep early and disappear soon after the morning dew. The Germans are similar but less inclined to group up so the chat is quieter. Sadly neither language is very pretty to listen to and, like us, they laugh too loudly and not often. The French and Spanish do not group at all but they tend to be cheery, laughing a lot especially the Spanish in Spain - don't see enough of them out of their own country to comment. The English of course do tend to congregate but converse? That English reserve seems to forbid more than a hello and a wave. Dogs of course are great ice breakers but the usual limit of exchange is - where you been; where you going; when you going; where you live. That's about it really.
Life long campsite friendships are unlikely on the sort of tour we take as for most of the time our campsites are either other people transit camps (sun-seeking southboud/ sun-drenched northbound) or too far off the beaten track anyway out of season. Usually it is the Dutch who want to exchange email addresses, aklthough I have exchanged recently weith a Brit. And there was the charming couple from Warrington on their first tour who asked and got help and advice but then suddenly left without warning. They were so worried about tripping over their (huge UK like mine) satellite dish that they ringed it with the empty 5 litre water bottles that I assume they had gathered on their trip. By the time we met up at Haro in la Rioja they had seven of the ruddy things round this dish! They must have entirely filled the inside of their motor home when they travelled!
Many of our fellow campers don't seem to go anywhere much. Obj=viously those who only stop the night have no time. But whenever I talk to them it turns out that either they have often stopped one night on this site or it is their first time in this area. How can they just pass through? The whol point of a caravan or a camper is freedom to explore. So why don't they explore? We have begun to notice that the Germans seem always to shop in Lidll - that's about as barren as seeking out a Tesco when in France! We have been in a Lidly over here and it is EXACTKY the same as in the UK. same layout, same stock, same tedious set up and same total lack of chech out staff howvere busy it is. Mind you, we coukld save a bob or two and it would make a change - it is Greman and we hardkly ever use them at home!

Its the storm's they don't warn you about that are worst - May 21

We are sitting here this morning in the middle of a very nasty blow. Well rotten storm actually. And worse, like the Great Storm of 1989 (was it?) we were not warned about this one. It started off last evening, after a wet day but not one which caused me to consider installing the side and front sections on the awning. By midnight I was well aware this was a mistake. I had fitted the storm straps and reasonably well secured the canvas that was up. But 20 square metres of canvas exerts a pretty hefty tug. I did not get much sleep, what with actually checking every couple of hours that we were still attached and in between listening fretfully at the unhappy sounds of the canvas and frame flexing.
By 5 a.m. I gave up and in what turned out to be only a slight and temporary lull managed to fit three of the side sections and secuire them - well sort of; saturated and very poor ground we have here now. Pegs it will not hold. Two at a time and facing opposite angles is a little better.
Janet provided cheer and tea and a fine cooked brekky but I declined her offers of physical assistance on the grounds that one wet twit is worth two in the caravan.
By 10 a.m. I was off to reception to see what if anything the French Meteo could tell us. Fist item was that the storm had NOT been forecast anyway! Indeed the previous day suggested wind speeds of maybe 40-45 kph. Ho bloody merde as they might say! By this morning the up-dated forecast acknowledged overnight and morning speeds up to 65kph - a bit more like what we are getting. And I am no bad judge having spent an interesting night on Porthclais campsite, Pembs in 1981 with Janet and the girls literally holding our big old frame tent to the ground. Come the morning and we stepped out to find we were the ONLY sirvivors of about 20 the evening before. Readers may recall that this was the year of the Fastnet race tragedy when several yachts sank with significant loss of life. That was a 60-80 mph gale and I would judge this one here as actuially about 50-60 mph - NOT a mere 65 kph!
Many replacements of yanked pins meant much mud on knees and an increasing unlikelihood that the new pins would hold anyway. I have some 12 inches long and they didn't work either!. Finding some in the mud will be problematic too!
The forecast for this afternoon is 20-25kph so if that is proportionately correct things will calm down. Sunshine? Maybe Wedesday but then it could last through the weekend. The moment the canvas is dry of course it has to come down. Which is why we had, hopefully,left the four large zipped in window/door units off. Ho bloody etc.

Dodgy practices among the continental trailer crews?

Another spring spent caravan touring in France and Spain has given us cause to question whether the standards set for European trailing are strict enough. That will sound strange given that France and other European coutries have decided that trailers should be seperately registered, giving them their own number and their very own bureacracy. That might make sense if these European trailers and even motor homers followed simple safety rules. But they do not.
For a start the vast majority of caravans are being trailed by entiely unsuitable vehicles - way too light Citreons are especially noticeable but there are Vauxhalls, Renaults and Fiats as well. Worse still the majority of caravans are seriously low at the front, with the rear axles of the tow car also depressed. Watching them on the road their performance suggests the appearance is not deceptiive - they are over loaded and nose heavy for their tow vehicles.
Motor homes too are often seriously down on their rear springs and those with motor scooters and motor bikes on the rear are the worst. Interestingly those towing cars behind are less likely to be so depressed at the rear. And once on site when the 'garage' so-called is opened it is not uncommon to see it crammed with vast quantities of items, many very heavy. These vans usually have motor movers (40-50kg), carry their awnings on board (40-50kg) or have gutter fitted awnings (ditto). In fact usually the van seems crammed to capacity while the tow vehicle may contain little beyond the driver and passneger - madness, given the load cap[acity readily available in the main vehicle.
And then there are the on-site practices. The most offensive is the number of motor homers who empty their toilet cassettes into the drain provided specially for them for grey water. Do they not realise that this drain will rarely be connected to the sewerage system whatever type it is. They are dumping sewage into grey water drains that may well feed back into recovery plants. And then they use the hose, which is provided to re-fill their water tanks with clean water, to flush out their toiletcassettes! This is not so much a risk of cross contamination but a virtual certainty. I suppose we are used to the continental practice of allowing grey water to drain onto the pitch rather than use a containment but this all goes one entire step further.
And then there is the power cable. Firstly they will almost always connect to the mains before they connect to the van, thus running live cables across probably (this spirng definitely) wet grass. Bui t it gets worse since many of them do not use proper connectors - they have unearthed domestic two pin plugs (I am not talking here about continental two-plus-one plugs). And often the cable itself is just a normal domestioc one, probably rated at no more than 6 amps and definitely not properly earth bonded.
The time has surely come for the UK to take a lead in establishing some serious standard for camping behaviour before we are forced to accept a bunch of inadequate rules from Brussells - or worse, a totally unreasonable and daft demand that we register our trailers. What benefit that confers I am at a total loss to understand. The so registerd van is stioll required (rightly) to carry both its own and the towing vehicle registrations. If the purpose is to ensure safety compliance with some testing procedure I am in agreement but it takes nothing more than a current certificate to be displayed in the window of the trailer or in some suitable window if a transport trailer. Franklly it is typical of Europe that it should intsall a whole new bureacracy for such a process -and as a Europhile this is where I part company with the entire project.

Neither France nor Spain - c'est Basque n'est pas? May 18

We have fallen rather in love with the Basque country and most definitely this part of it. We have been here before but did not wuite make the connection then. It was neary 20 years ago and, it seems now, in another life. Certainly in another caravan, one which would have fitted inside this and kleft room for another! We took it to Sallies de Bearn as the middle week of a three week run down through France. In those Devon days we sailed to Roscoff in Brittany so our route took us through Brittany, the Vendee, Charenhte, Bordeaux. Down we went through Gers and Gascony and up the Landes. But for one week we stopped not far from wehere we are now.
We visited Lourdes, St Jean Pied de Port, crrossed the Ronsevalles pilgirm pass toPamplona and loved Bayone and faded Biarritz. All without uite cottoning on the the fact that this is Basque country. Now we know it stretches from Bayon to San Sebastien and inland to Bearn and Pau and Pamplona. Effectively it is the hugely habitable bit of hilly land which fronts the west end of the Oyrenees onto the Atlantic. Driving around its lush green valleys and hillsides and seeing the richness of the marine harvest there can be no surprise that people have lioved here for thouwands of years. The Basques come from no one knows where and have a unique and apparently technically beautiful language which has its nearest cousin in Berber! The people are thick set, dark of hair and slightly of skin. They are immensely strong and proud - a favourite sporting activity will involve the movement by hand through the air of large lumps of rock, wood or other people - they are brilliant at rugby. They are friendly in the Spanish way.
Their towns are smart and clean and they are proud of and care for their very fine old bluildings. Architecture is simple but grand, with stone features and plastered walls. The red we see all around us on wood and shutters and doors is a rich, dark burgundy which is known as Basque Red. In St Jean I thought it might have been local policy that ensured such unity of style and colour but it seems it is just the Basque way of doing thing.
The Basque country is called Euskadi - pronouned I am told OO-SKA-DEE which just means Basque lands or land of the Basques; not quite the same politically of course. Theit language had been dying in much the way Welsh was going when a new generation decided it was time to exert their influence. Some chose the violent course that has hit the headlines but others chose the political dialogue route; whichever they have made a lot of progress. But it does seems a tough order to achieve their real aim which is a Basque homeland. After all persuading one nation would be tough but they have to oersuade two - France and Spain, not the easiest to agree to give up a valuable and attractive chunk of land. Euskadi has a flag - a red ground represents the people, the cross of St Andrew in green represents justice and the standard cross of Christ in white signifies faith. If this very attractive flag is to take its pklace in whatever survives of the European Union they will have a land about the size of Wales which somewhat eually ambivalent weather - they joke that tourists take a while to get used to the Basque seasons - its sunny in winter and rains all summer!
Our nearest town is St Jean de Luz where today (May 18) was market day. The halles is very fine and open every morning; the Fridsay street market qiite good. A better one we are told is on Sunday at nearby Ciboure. We shall see.
The weather has been fantastic until today, well last evening really. We have had high 20s for four days, clear blue skies, terrific sunsets . The heat made me leave the car doors open for rather too long and this morning the battery was flat - well too low to spin 2 litres of diesel! Help came from the site people with a tractior and my own jump leads. France is way dearer than Spain but their fish stalls are still amazing - last night it was crab and scallops, tonight it will be ray (no skate left here either). The Poissonerie hall at the market is fantastic - we shall return many times if the money holds out. But what happened to all the crevettes? They all seem to come from Ecuador now - nothing Scottish or even French!
Site is very good and fairly quiet - just the nightly procession of French and Dutch motor homes, on and off in 24 hours usually. The site is worth more than that frankly. It is on the Basque Corniche - that is to say it is 20 yards off the road. You cross and are confronted by a sensational view west over the Bay of Biscay but here called the Golfe du Basque. Sunsets are de riguer. There is a lay by nearby and every evening it fills with locals, many young couples, who walk hand in hand along the clifftop. Look south and there is Spain 25 kilometres away, look north and the bay of St Jean de Luz is followed by the cliffs of Biarritz. Turn round and the foothills of the Pyrenees run away south east, La Rhune at 940 metres is a fine pyramidial peak, further over a mesa at about 1200 can be seen with three smaller hillocks surmounting it. La Rhune is reached by a rack and pinion railway - we saw the price, 14 euros each and decided to drive if we can find the road. There has to be a good one since apparently it is topped with restaurants and gift shops. Discovering that made up for deciding NOT to fork out the price of a decent lunch to ride up.
Instad we drove up into the hills and mountains, saw some sensational towns, villages, farms, valleys some in France and some in Spain - this is border contry. We and came down much pleased. We shall return here.
But the forecast for now is a bit dreary - we may benefit from some maritime variety. We are already benefitting from a maritime repise anyway. The site may be lovely and way down the hill there may a new toilet block but the one up here is like a smartened up Porthclais! Oh

Adios Espagne; bonjour la France - er, vive la difference? May 12

We left Haro in fine weather for a fairly short run into France, stopping at a corniche campsite near St Jean De Luz, on the 'French' part of the Cote de Basque. Our departure was not perfect - it appears that I clipped a tree with the rear offside edge of the van, sustaining slight but annoying damage. I felt nothing and was entirely unaware, indeed congratulating myself on the exit when Janet appeared from the loos and spotted it with some alarm and so ending my smug content! It serves to remind me that what is happening some 12 metres behind me may be very different from what I expect - that long overhang does swing a very long way!
The new site in some ways is wonderful. We are 50 metres from the cliff edge and fabulous views west. To the east are the hills and mountains that begin the rise to the Pyrenees further east. The pitch is a generous one - in fact I skewed up the position slightly, partly becasue it is not quite square but it is no problem. Overall I am improving in the handling of this monster, honest. And the weather is superb, despite poor forecasts. of course this is coastal and therefore more variable.
But this site serves very well to point up the amazing difference to be found between UK, French and Spanish campsites (and Italian for that matter). And these differences also servie to illustrate some national characteristics. In Spain the sites are generally tightly packed but they are very well equipped and seem universally (well 11 out of 11) to have brilliantly clean and well arranged toilet facilities. They are in large, well ventilated buildings, one for each gender and there are copious spotless WCs and showers and wash basins with mirrors, shaver points etc. Open 'park' areas as in the UK are rare (Haro had one) but otherwise Spanish sites seem fairly similar to the UK. Except the UK sites almost always only have camping and caravan touring pitches - nothing permananet (although non club sites do). Caravan and C and C Club sites are as spotless as in Spain. Buit France is usually very different in details. Often, as here, the toilets and showers are uni-sex and as here are in old converted buildings. They are clean but rather tired. And there are rarely enough loos (for some are still Turques!).Shaver popints are rare too. Given they are effectively 'outdoor' facilities bad weather can be a major issue. Very odd it seems to me, that this shoulod continue to be so since there are legions of French campers using the Spanish sites - don't they ever complain? Prices are higher too in France. depite the bad comparison.
Last night we walked the dog along the clifftop and I also watchedf the sun go down. The cliffs are amazing - these are ancient bedding plates which have been tilted up to about 70 degree from horizontal. They are young plates, like soft slate but much thicker and they weather rapidly. The resuilt is an amazing 'beach of serrated plate edge like a giant cheese grater. The waves, even when small, crash into the plates, which run along the shore line, and in places large sections can be seen to have been snapped off like enormous tiles. But the cliff is even more bizarre since the cliffs are often sheer and continuous plates angled straight down about 30 metres and smooth as a levelled floor but at 70degrees! If you fell you would skid straight to the bottom without bouncing once. Get it right and you could live! You'd be sore of course - it isn't THAT smooth!
Today (14th) was explore day so se went down to the twin harbour towns of Ciboure and its bigger smarter brother, St Jean De Luz. We spent most time In St Jean,very smart in that chic French riviere style. All pavement cafes and posh shops and lunatic prices. But such fun you hardly notice that drain on the wallet. And France is indeed tres cher, oh yes. Comopared to Spain everything is 10-20 per cent dearer here. The food is probably comarable in quality and quantity but the menu prix fixe is around 15 euros (10-12 in oain) and that is for just two courses and bread - wine/beer/water is extra and so is a dessert!
The welcome here is different too, although St Jean is so close to Sopain and so many are basques that the difference is less apparent. Even so the suny, chirpy welcome of the average Spaniard is not so common - the French are more loike the English; a bit reserved, mildly suspicious. But as ever a bit French does warm them up and after six weeks struggling with our poor Soanish it a pleasure to be able to have partial conversations - even if we do still toss in the occasional Gracias and Por favor! (Interesting, too how Gracias sounds even more embarrassing when wrongly used to a French person! The correct usage is "grassy arse" as might be said of a careless cricketer!).
But the biggest difference is in the developments - nothing in St Jean goes above six storeys and even those are mansard roofed to keep the profile down. For the most part three storey is thelimit and it keeps everything very tidy and appealing. The French too continue to de,monstrate their touch for style - these smart towns tend to choose a colour scheme that is almost universally to be seen on the first and second floors in town centres. Here in St Jean it is a dark burgundy red teamed with a soft off-cream for all window frames, ballustrades and wooden fetures. The streets look very fine as a result. I suppose in the UK it would be seens as interference by the panners and others. Janet says we couldn't get away with it because unlike here miost commercialproperty is owned by big business interests. May be so.

Segovia - Hurrah! And the N110 - double hurrahs! - May 5 and 6

A week of rain and shopping and wet washing had driven us to the point of being very low on Thursday (I shall have to re-visit what I write!). But on Friday we thought - what the hell lets go to Segovia. Brilliant decision. But before the wonders of a super city the route there...
First we climbed up and over the pass through the Guadaramma, the range of mountains north of us. This is a cool 1444 metres with a tunnel to take the edge of the last climb - its called Puerto Somosierra which sounds great but just means the pass at the summit of the mountain range. The sad little eponymous town deserves better. So do the motorists. If you arrive from the north the road is brilliantly smooth right up to but not beyond the marker which tells you that you are now in Madrid. 55 k from the city and on the residue of a once good road smashed to pieces and ignored by authority. Shame on Madrid.
To reach Segovia we turned onto to N110 and it was a revelation - not just a brilliant piece of road building but superb countryside and towns and villages. A complete change from the tawdry, over developed Madrid province. Our spirits lifted as village after village revealed delightful Spanish buildings, smart, cared for and not swamped by over development. We stopped at a superb cafe/bar with attached hotel, restaurant and even a fine shop selling homewares, Indian and African artwork, pictures, carvings - just a lot of fun and not massively expensive even if rather out of our range.
And then Segovia - walled, gated, medievel and later. A fine cathedral (PHOTOGRAPHY BANNED!) a very good alcazar of a castle on the end of the promotory. Super shops. Good food. And I parked 100 metres from the cathedral for 2 euros for four hours! Although it drizzled intermittently mostly the sun shone and the quality of the place and its architecture just lifted us up anyway. The cathedral was less bling than usual so more enjoyable for us. The sculptures and artwork were very impressive.
The castle was very fine, if seriously over-restored. In fact it was virtually destroyed by fire in 1862 so what we see is a restoration but looks more like a recreation. We did not go in as time was short it was big and the Spanish idea is to start you in one place and force you to do the tour to the end! No short cuts - we are Spanish! Time was restricted as there was so much more of Segovia to see. We walked ourselves into the ground.
But in the cathedral I picked up an English language guide to the city - anything other than Spanish is like gold dust. This was free for a donation but it was so good that I crammed a five euro note into a tiny aperture. Mean too, these Spanish? Anyway at the back it had a few itineraries for tourists. Ansd one took us along the N110 which brought us here. And wow were there some goodies to visit. We chose Pedraza a small walled town with castle and many churches, mostly ruined. It was built in the same apricot sandstone that enhances so many buildings on this side of the Guardaramma (the other side is grey and off-white granite). That is to say all of it was in apricot stone. Houses, mansions,villas, shops, churches (ruined as well) the walls, the castle - it is an absolute joy. And it has a magnificent arcaded main square that is breath-taking. And a tavern that must once have been a coaching inn, with cobbled entry, mounting blocks and the most amazing bar - see the picture, do.
Re-invigorated by all this and with the weather at leat slightly better we decided to spend the next day, Saturday, exploring the eastern arm of the N110 towards Soria off the aforementiond hell-road, the A1. And did we find more joys. First and rather ironically we found the town of Riaza. This is where we could (should?) have been camping. But R sadly judged its extra 200 metres as a bit much to rick. in fact its position offsets that disadvantage and anyway, it next to Riaza. And this is a town almost as lovely as Pedraza - similar in many ways although short of the castle.
Impressed we motored on to Ayllon - and this is even better! Another arcaded main square but this time bigger with even more impressive mansions ariound it. And the arcades were here supported not by fancy pillars of stone but woinderful 18inch round tree trunks. Dark, grainy oak that had clearly been there up to hundreds of years. Bliss. And to set it of an amazing red sandstone cliff as a backdrop.
Happily sated with real Spain, authentic Spain and places that were proud and handsome, we headed home to fillet mignon avec sauce Robert washed down with good Rioja.
But even so we shall use Sunday to down the awning and will leave on Monday for Haro and the valley of the Ebro - actual Rioja land!
A PS to that was a run on Sunday to the east of the A1, a little frequented area that turned out to be outstandingly nice. Good country, good mountains, an amazing reservoir feeding Madrid (natch) and a long and peculiar canal which we assumed may have also served as Aqueduct. Returned to formerly empty bar us campsite to be greeted by no less than six Dutch caravanning couples - and we thought it was just the motor homers who travelled in oacks!

We are not on holiday and that makes a big difference

Most people think we are on holiday right now. That these three month excursions are just elongatd vacations. We wish they were frankly. It all startdd with R wanting to escape the infections of English winters. In fact that never happend because it would have meant being away across Christmas. But plan A was to hire houses in warm southern Spain and effectively use our holiday savings to pay for the costs of travel while using the variation in living costs to finance the small residual cost of an empty house in the UK. But being stuck in one place was not quite as much fun so the caravan re-appeared in our lives.
Last year should have seen us in Spain for part of the trip but the car gave us pause and we stayed in France, having a fantastic time in new places and terrific weather. This year was to be a similar sort of jaunt in Spain but now it has been the weather that has played up.
But we are not on hioliday. We cannot afford to eat out very often, reserving that for the odd special visit. We have to keep the place clean and tidy, wash and iron clothes in very adverse circumstances and husband our cash since while this is not quite as expensive on a weekly basis as hiring a house, costs over here and esopecially of fuel and food have wiped out the differential that supported the house in the UK. Whether we can do this again next year is problematic. Sadly a return this far south is hugely unlikely - France may benefit providing its cost base does not intrude.
Of course wine is cheaper here although not better. The local Riojas are good but not outstanding unless you pay; the white are only good if you pay a lot. Food is no different in costs and rather variable these days in quality. What Spain is good at is cheaper and better of course - oranges (citrus in general), pork, tomatoes, cured hams, some veg, short-life bread,...
I am listening to the third downpour of the evening. We dined well on the first really decent cooked crab we have found (Galicia only sells them fresh; ditto lobbie and this is a caravan!) and also some excellent prawns which would have given France's best a run. Galicia offered nothing so good I fear. odd that - famous for it? Huh!
Have I mentioned that this is another crap camp site? Oh well try this - there is claimed to be washing and tumble dry machines. Tokens and key from the shop on site. It is closed uintil June. But it opened for the May Day celebration so J bought some tokens. Went to use them today and the shop was shut so NO KEY! Fortunately the miserable Madridian patron turned up so she persuaded him to open up. Washing machine worked but tumbler drier hardly did anything. And it is very wet. We now have two plus weeks of half wet washing and the rains are forecast to last until Satiurday. We planned to leave Sunday....
We made it to Escorial (see other blog) and hope tomorrow Friday to get to Segovia. We are too pissed off to bother with Toleda or Avile - both 150k each way - so will head north west towards France on Sunday. Forecsat for France? Not much better. We may even come home early at this rate. rain in your own home is less dreadful than rain in a foreign land that does not know how to handle it and does not want to bother anymore.
We shopped today. 200 euroes worth. i wondered what the Spanish thought - 24% unemployment and a crap economy and these silver hairded and barbarically tongued pensioners are buying up the place...

A few random thoughts on brollies and stuff - May 1

This will be known as the brolly holiday of course. It is a piece of equipment that gets little exercise in dry Norfolk and during our trip last year was even less evident - we had after all a scant four days of rain during three months. It is the opposite here. So far it feels as if we may have had only four days of real sunshine in our near five weeks so far. Happily we brought plenty - two folding for Janet and one for me plus one of my trusty golfing brollies.
Everywhere we go the locals walk with brollies at the ready. Even those with walking sticks carry a brolly in the other hand. I have to assume that anyone needing two sticks or a Zimmer frame is forced to stay indoors.
Continental camping is not like British camping. Even when you find a site that look brilliant on its web site it turns out a bit less enticing on arrival. This is because of some major differences between us and them, if you will forgive the differentiation.
First, the Brits will caravan and even camp in all weathers. Over here the season is short, very short in some cases. So most sites are forced to accept the idea of permanent campers. These are not usually of the mobile home that never moves variety nor even in many cases 'cabins'. They are most often ordinary caravans, with ordinary awnings very firmly attached. They have virtually fixed and permanent ground sheets and a newish departure - a second tent of about 1.5 by 1 metre which it appears contains extra storage and or cooking equipment. Often these have their own power and water supply. The whole is enclosed in a three-sided privacy screen usually of something like leylandii which, given the climate remains reasonably short in stature. They are all different and of varying degrees of tidiness.
Second, although land is plentiful and actually cheap over here camp sites tend to pack us all in. So you rarely see the British 'park camping' environment. Usually pitches are small, back to back and fronting fairly narrow service roads.
Third, the combination of poor soil, too much sun, not enough rain and over-use of ground sheets means that most sites are grit and mud rather than grass. Where shrubbery and trees are found they are often scrubby and anyway get rough treatment from the campers.
If you combine these features you get a fairly unattractive environment. Add in the continental desire for a bar/club/restaurant with copious outdoor seating, a small supermercado (sometime open) and of course a pool, paddling pool and children's play area and you get the idea. These do not present as leafy glades of tranquility and peace where the aged traveller can settle in for a quiet time.
Aha and my ever loving reminds me that they also seem to spend most of their time on site, inside their vans and awnings. They do sometimes venture out to cook whole chickens on small barbecues but are currently forced back pretty smartly by the rain.
Today (May 1) is a Tuesday but everywhere has been packed with Spanish people 'en fete' and every bar, shop and car park packed with them having fun. It is a bank holiday - Labour Day, honouring the working man. We are of course less than an hour from Madrid and the escape to the country must be a beguiling proposition - have you seen Madrid? We thought Naples was harum scarum but Madrid eats it for desayuno as they would say if they knew the phrase.

One man and his Jamon and its goodbye to Sanobria - April 29

The nearest town to our camp is at El Puenhte and it was there bwe had one of those seminakl moments that make trips like this special. We needed milk (not the fresh kind; that is like gold dust) and were drawn to a shop at the end of the town's plain tree lined street markets. Eloy el cuna de Jamon it said. And insidee there was indeed Jamon - it hung from every available space and was in every stage of aging. The vast majority was Iberico of course. Aha - el cuna! The cradle! But more than the Jamon there was chorizo - short, fat, long, curled, red, purple. And from each Jamon he had ever siolod the coloured tie which is passed through the hock to hang the joint from the rafter he had cut and kept, laced together in a made and proud bundle behind his counter. Eloy, we assumed, was Jamon fat, cheerful, keen to talk (it meant selling) and unable to speak threew wordd witho9ut smiling or laughing or both. of course our weak Spanish meant we knew not what had amused him so. But we laughed or smiled out of neighbourliness. It worked took - he sold us Jamon, a huge and delicious piece of Monchego made with raw milk and finally the milk. I took his picture and that of the Jamons. Just like a ruddy tourist!
We had settled on leaving this site on Sunday and so we did but unexpectedly we were sorry to go. It might have been too cold and too high but it was beautiful, quiet, authentic. Maybe we shall return.
We left to head east almost to Madrid, to a place called Cabrere off the dreadful A1 but close enough to Segovia, Escorial, Avila and maybe even Toledo. The drive was anything but ordinary. Once again I was mildly shocked at my weak undertstanding of Iberian geography. This plateau that I thought was pretty much 500 metres and occupied about 70 per cent of Spain is almost entirely double that in height. We did drop to 800 now and again but only to rise higher soon after. By the time we reached the Sierra Guadarama or the Monte de Madrid we were ready for it but 1400 metres is a long way up even from 800. The drive up to the pass - Puerto del Somosierra - was steep by autoroute standards. Given my nervousness after last year's events and that I had a 300 kg heavier van behind me I admit to being a bit tense. But we crested at 50 m.p.h which was at that point technically illegal.
The site we arrived at is everything we hate in continental camp sites. It has about 300 permanent units, most of which are no longer caravans but cabins and about 50 scrubby plots for us itinherants. But it will have to do for a week or so while we do our targets and maybe even essay the park and ride into Madrid - not my favourite idea. There is some amazing contryside nearby - including a range of hills called the Cabrere (goatlands) which are a craggty double for the hills of the same name that are the backdrop to Mojacar, where we wintered twice. But the pitch we have was a drive in, drive out job so my recalcitrant motor mover will not trouible me here.
Our route back through France is under discussion; we both have favourite places so there will be some horse trading!

Zamora - a town on the edge when el Catolica re-emerged - April 28

Our stay here in Salabrina area has been interesting in many ways. The chill reported earlier is still uncomfortable but the van is well heated and while we had not equipped for this sort of weather modern gear is easily layered. And it is very lovely here.
But we had promised ourselves one particular run - to Zamora; much less romantically here it is "Thamora" but it is an amazing place. Still entirely walled to 10 metres in the most wonderful soft honey stone it lookes sensational. It has a splendid castillo guarding one end with a fine moat and brilliantly fitted out with walkways to reach all major area without damaging the stone.
But it is the cathedral that entirely takes the breath away. It is not large and it is not at all traditional but it is amazing and it is filled with sensational Spanish Renaisance sculptures, painting and carvings. Zamora is a bit special since it was at the front line when the Castillians decided that Spain was really theirs, the Moors had to go and war was the only way. By 1200 they had secured the northern part of the peninsular and so Zamorsa was at the front edge. It had been a great power in its own right but now the Castillians held sway and today Zamora reflects the fact that it was most certainly a contender.
The cathedral says it all. The honeyed stone is used to huge effect in the main sections and they are fortified. We enter through a side aisle that houses an interesting museum of artworks of astonishing quality and value, even if religious in tone. And then starts a journey of wonder. This cathedral is the sum of its part, not a whole work. There are I think 16 chapels around its chancel, short choir and knave. Each is a work of the highest art. No significant bling here - this is carving, and sculpting and graving and painting of the highets order that needs no gildfing to magnify its worth. And it is in the finest condition. Each is protected by an ornate and masterly grille - arched over and gated to huge effect. An entire artisan skill that seems to be especially Zamora's.
There are wall paintings that other cathedrals would kill to own and tapestrires of great stories, brilliant imaginings of Helen and Troy and Paris and much more. They fill walls forty feet long and twenty high. They are not faded and have lost nothing in the years. For Zamora was in a sense passed by. The high Castillians went their own way; Zamora retained its own way. The brilliantly executed high altar here is a thing that even we atheists could appreciate as art - no significant blig anywhere to be seen. This was quality workmanship, unadorned. And yet elsewhere were more astonishing altar workings that had come and gone to other churches, returning as museum pieces. One was about 20 feet wide and 20 high and entirely in silver gilt, brilliantly worked in the Platereseque style for which Spain is most famous. We could onl;y wonder at what it would have looked like with its scores of candles lit and little other light to kill the sparkle.
And then we saw the choir - 40 feet long, 20 high and forty wide. Three decks of misericords. And all exquisitely carved. We missed the fact that some of the under seat carving of the misericords depict nuns and monks doing what every schoolboy has always assumed they did but which, at least in my school, the masters strenuosuly denied! But we were too busy admiring the quality of the carving in the orther hundreds of location!
And there is one further interesting feature of this wonderful building. It has Romanesque origins and they are mostly hidden by all this later brilliance. Except for its domes on what would have been the Romanesque apses. The honeyed stone gives way here.These domes are built of the whitest limestone you will ever see. They are not large, they are not high - they are ornate and crystalline abd wonderful.
Zamora sjits on the Duero river which wanders off into Portugal which is startlingly close by. Our drive here and back was across miles of this amazing high plateau that is Iberia. Vast fields of wheat with trees retained to aggravate the harvester but presumably aid the pollination or pest control. It seem strange to see such fertifility at 1000 metres. But there are vines too.
We spot the presence of an ancient abbey which our guide book says remains in outline only. We arrive. It is closed. But it has walls and arches and towers 30 feet high? Did her ever come here? We think not. The storks occupy the high points regardless of the scribe's incantations.
Returning we decide to spend the next day exploring the local area and so find ourselves on the far side of our lake. Equally beautiful, equally well supplied with parking, picnic and access. But we visit Ribadelago Vieja and ditto Nuevo. The former swept away with 144 people in 1959 when a hydro electric dam up the river Tera gave way. Ribadellagio the old is entrely new. Ribadelagi the new is entirely horrid. There is a memorial to the lives lost with all 144 names inscribed upon it. It was erected in 2009. Can you believe that?
The usual array of story boards tell of the lakes and flor and fauna and ice age that made it all. And they mention the bursting of the damand the deaths. And they show a pictuire of the dam. They have had the grax=ce to leave it as it was when it had slaughtered all those people down below - smashed ans breached and vacant. In Zamor, a temple to the ambition and the art of man; in Ribadelago a temple to the crassness of the same people.
We have decided Salamanca is a tad too far - maybe next year.

Into Castille y Leon and up a mountain or two - April 26

My close reader will observe from the title that something is not quite as planned. The itinerary had us heading south into Portugal but we are going east into central northern Spain. The reason is pretty simple - cost. One way and another this trip is working out a bit meaty so some sensible re-consideration was needed. Easy saving was to scrap the Santander to Portsmouth ferry - the return was set to cost £750. By turning across Spain early we can still do much of what we wanted and reach France at end May for a leisurely trip up the west coast. We shall save a cool £500 in the process which will fund another trip somewhere in the UK in September.
So here we are at Lago de Sanabria. Slightly surprised to find ourselves at 1100 metres too. I thought most of Spain was a 5-700 metre plain with sierras up to 3 and even 4,000. Not in this part it seems. We left Vigo and climbed steadily to 1200 metres and give or take 2 or 300 metres there we have stayed. Our temperatuires have followed in the opposite direction so we are now into single figures again. But the countryside is superb and the villages and towns have at last stopped looking like Prince Charles's worst nightmare.
The brilliant new campsite in is an oak wood alognside a glacial lake formed 100,000 years ago. The site is on the morain to the south west of the lake - actually on the morain; the scree of boulders and grit scraped out by the glaciers and forming a not very natural but inevitable dam behind which the lake formed when the melt started 90,000 years ago. Geography lesson over. It is the first site where we have been able to easily manouvre the van into position and have absolute confidence of an easy exit. Hurrah! We shall stay four nights and move on Sunday. Today we did a bit of shopping in a really nice little town and then followed the mountain road up, steeply, to another little lake at 1,800 metres! It was snowing and there was very old and thick snow in the gulleys. Unlike Andalucia there was no almond blossom to provide counterpoint. It was 1C and pretty damn cold. We looked around a bit but were quickly chilled and returned to 1100 metres and 5.5C.
We shall visit a couple of famous towns - Zamora, fortified and very fine, and possibly Salamanca although it is 150k each way. If not then maybe Braganza which is in Portugal.
Janet today managed to discuss with a young lady from Bulgiaria, in mixed Spanish and English, the brilliant little tarts we were served with our morning Cortados. The young migrant of just 8 months tried three locals before finding one with enough English to convey that more tarts would arrive at 5 p.m. if we wished to return. It was a 1 gallon round trip - they were not that good!
Olly still does not like waves - our lake is sufficently ruffled to have some - but finds them more to his liking since he can drink these...

No wonder we Brits called it The Groyne.... A Coruna - April 22

I have been to Coruna. About 55 years ago as a young lad I dreamed of visiting many places but one of them was La Coruna. It featured in school history. It featured in some of the books I read. And it even showed up in or or two comics. It seemed somehow to be at the other end of a lot of British - or at least English - history. To me it also seemed to be the objective that had made some English heroes, not least Sir Francis Drake - El Draco to the Spanish. His exploit at Cadiz is best know perhaps but he nearly took Coruna. And this was also the scene of one of the greatest rearguard actions of all military history - Sir John Moore and a detachment of British Redcoats fighting Napolean's army to give 15,000 bedraggled English troops time to board their ships and escape. He died of course. All real heroes did it seems.
The death of heroes fits nicely with how I have felt about visiting Coruna - anticipation killed off by the sheer mediocrity of what the Spanish have done to the city. This is high rise hell. Must have been quite a place in about 1955 when it all got started. But now? It is a criminal wasteland of architecural and planning brutality.
It is an incredibly impressive harbour in much the way Plymouth is. But where Plymouth Sound is beautiful, Coruna's is besmirched on all sides. The docks are extensive but mostly idle and untidy. It shared with Plymouth an historic and ancient city centre. Where Plymouth's was blown to bits by bombs this has been muddled and meddled with by developers and planners. And where Plymouth carries its historic past proudly Coruna appears to have forgotten hers. In fact they share so much history they should be twinned.
Coruna honours two heroes. One was John Moore who of course was fighting for the allies of Spain and England against Napoleon. The other was Maria Pita, a woman of Coruna who got embroiled in the battle with Drake's brigands, grabbed his colours and so rallied the men of Coruna that Drake was beaten off. So her story goes and inded there is a huge and magnificent square named in her honour, and properly adorned with her effigy, with an English marine under her heel and surrounded by brilliant bronzes of her legendary exploits. The huge plaza is about 300 metres on a side, three of them four storey colonnaded and galleryed late 18th century symmetry and facing a huge, ornate and quite breath-taking triple domed City Hall. And too there is a square we did not find to honour Sir John Moore. Yet there is no signage, no finger boards to point the visitor's way. We stumble upon one, fail to find the other.
But Coruna has even more - this is also where Phillip's much-vaunted Armada was assembled - 130 ships of the line, 30,000 troops and who knows how many support vessels, all committed to giving England a big smack. And of course it was at the other end of this connection, from Plymouth, that Drake and Howard and Effingham sailed to take the Armada on, hopelesslyoutgunned but happily benefitting from the Atlantic's capricious ways as the Spanish were swept almost uncontrollably past their planned rendezvous, forced to shelter while Drake's fireships plunged among them and then foprced out into the wastes of the North Sea, gale-driven north to straggle home - some anyway - via the Irish Sea. But as we walk about do we get directed, encouraged, enlightened? No. Not a mention. Not a line on any board. Nothing to tell us that this is where that great catholoic adventure started. Boards there are but of such parochial content as to almost deliberately insult the names of the illustrious heroes of Coruna.
In fact they gave more direction to the much re-engineered magnificence of the Torre de Hercules, a Roman Pharos that still does service as a lighthouse to this day. It stands on an eminence facing directly at America (if only the Romans had known!). It is in superb if over restored condition, seven storeys high and in mellow marmalade stone. Seen from the land in does all that it should to stir the heart. Seen from any other angle it struggles to overcome to aweful banality of miles and miles of high rise, most of it barely 30 years old. Horrors. I'll keep my childhood dreams thanks. You can have Coruna - no wonder the English called it The Groyne even if thei intent was more geographic than descriptive!
But maybe I shall return one day and find it was all just out of eyeline all the time. I rather hope so.

To the end of the camino and the gates of salvation - this is Santiago de Compostella - April 19

One of the reasons we are here in Galicia is Santiago de Compostella. They write that it always rains in Santiago so it seemed not to matter which day we went. It vas raining when we left, it rained while we were there but left off for most of the time. So a good day by Santiago standards.
Principal destination, even for us atheists, was the cathedral and the praza de major. The city was as billed -smart, well heeled - though we saw less of it than we hoped (blame the weather). The cathedral is an impressive structure but the bling is unreal - so many people could have been saved from starvation if they had just held off a bit with the gold! And as for the cherubs! They are monstrous large, ugly and over dressed if a cherub can be. What flesh is visible is a sort of ruddy red, the rest if bling gold. The whole thing is uncomfortable to view. And then we spot them. A queue of would-be pilgirms - but they look like ordinary tourists to me - waiiting in line to climb up behind the altar and behind St James statue (not you understand in any way actually connected with the disciple) so they can kiss or otherwise obscenely genuflect upong the holy one. I realise i can actually film them as they pass behind his holiness's bum; see Picassa for the result. And weep. Apparently my remark about his bum is horribly close to the mark - they do indeed hug him from behind and it marks the end of their pilgrimage. Unless of course they have a spare 240 euros about their person.Then they can acquire the right to watch the astonishing incense burner being swung 50 metres down the knave! You can Google than and wtch the vid if you want! It has only broken free of the chain twice...
Unlike Lourdes this place is not blighted by plastic Mary's filled with Holy Water or puddle wash -who knows? But otherwise it is an insult to sanity. The cathedral is fine - sadly someone in the 18th century decided the exquisite west front carved by geniuses in the middle ages was just not up to the mark. So they blighted it with a ghastly Plateresque frontage. By some miracle they di not however actually destory the original.So it sits, wuietly beautifulo some ten feet back from its nemesis. As ever for us the scaffolders are in.We get this everywhere. Florence, Rome, Chartres, Notre Dame, Westminter, St Pauls,  St Marks, Rouen, Rennes, ... wherever we go the builders are in. However we got a general idea of what was ruined. Pilgrims used to touch the statue of St James which stands at its centre. Whether they will again is unknown.
Away from the centre we walked the dog through the university grounds - very beautiful with some wonderful buildings by the Chirruesco brothers - I think (I'll check).

L'Espagne autentico, as in La France Profonde - April 18

Of course with our very limited language we cannot really find the Spanish equivalent of La France Profonde; we struggle enough in La Belle herself! But travelleing as we do, with two week stops along the way we do have time to ignore the tourist trail and stike off into the back lanes. The first noticeable feature is that Spain remains clean and tidy for the most part, which sadly other nations' backwaters do not always achieve. The architecture remains generally very plain and even ugly, if entirely servicable. The churches are smaller and for the most part retain little 'romanesque', having undergone more sectarian changes than most of France of course. And the heavy 'marianization' of Spanish catholicism means fewer male icons  to fill the innumerable architectural niches of our own and even France's frontages  (where spared by reforming zeal of course!). So the churches are generally smaller and plainer than we are used to. But they do still dominate village centres.
For a country with so much space to use and such a small population comparitively the next noticeable thing is the way the dead are crowded together. Tiny cemeteries are crammed with large and even huge mortuaries, in turn equally crammed with the charnel or ashes of the ancestors. And then the houses of the living are usually crammed together with only a few scattered larger properties. Most of these villages show no sign of ever having had defensive works of any sort. The littering of ours and France's countryside with castles, forts, donjons, bits of wall, old mottes and abandoned baileys is absent. Indeed to some extent these Spanish settlements are smaller than we are used to. The 'big village/small town' is more or less absent. Its either a pretty big place or a very small one. Or even hardly a place at all.
Agriculture is small scale for the most part. Plots of land are either wasted or planted but big fields are generally missing. Of course northern Spain is a bit on the hilly side and i am aware that this is no way true of Estramadura or La Mancha where wheat fields are the size of small counties. But then that is a rich and developed environment; hardly l'Espagne autentico as it is here. They keep cattle, sheep and some goats but in small numbers generally. They grow cereals but again in small quantities. Judging by the general size of the horreos in which the grain was stored it has ben thus for at least 200 years. There are large, or rather long, horreos but they are rare enough to be tourist sights. The usual, three or four metres by one metre structure, with its steeply pitched roof and metre high piers to keep the grain off the ground, pests and predatiors are everywhere. In this western area they are usually stone; in Asturias they were wood and tile or slate. They are adorned with the protective symbols of the local religion - or cross as it is known.
This far west and thus south we are seeing the first grape vines, grown at waist height in the modern way but here I think to avoid ground frost and unwanted dampness as much as convenience in harvesting. No idea of the variety of course; probably white verdura or some red varieties of temopranillo or doura.
And they fish.Oh boy do they fish. Every potential harbour or port is a harbour or a port. Each is filled with the relevant mix of fishing craft. Sometimes big, usuall small. Even in the marinas most of the craft are actually small fishers. A lot of the fish here is line caufght - hundreds of hooks in the case of the professionals of course. There are so many craft that one is forced to realise the threat to our marine stocks. Then we notice how rarely many are at sea. maybe the quotas do have some effect then. South of here is Vigo with the largest fishing fleet in all of Spain - which means Europe in fact. We may get to see it, although Vigo does not get a good press otherwise and La Coruna would win out in a contest.
The people show interest in our passing, noting the registration - metriculato - and wondering  no doubt why the Inglis  so early! Most tourism starts much later in the year and a lot of the Brit contingent will be in motor homes which may not often venture onto these roads. The weather while wet has only suggested that 4x4 could be handy at times but I am daily pleased with having rear wheel drive not front - scrabbling in the Skoda would not have been as much fun.
But there is one crop that totally dominates and does appear in huge quantity - the inneffably aweful eucalyptus! Thousands of hectares of woodland across northern Soain and especially Galicia have been handed over to this tedious, rapacious and untidy creator of fire and ugliness. They are not green they are grey-green. They crowd out all below them bar a bit of gorse and heather.They shed bark continuously and this and theiur leaf litter bruns wonderfully well. They make fine papers in particular and of course eucalyptus oil - hence ho well they burn. Spain is Europe's lartgest producer. How wonderfulo the hills were before one can only guess - so far nothing natural has been seen. We live in hope.

The rain in Spain falls mainly on Galicia - April 18

Whatever Prof Higgins persuaded Eliza to recite, the rain in Spain does NOT stay mainly on the plain. Indeed and regrettably the evaporations of the Atlantic and the Bay of Biscay in particular do their precipitation mainly on Galicia. Or so it feels just now. This is not entirely unexpected as most reports do say that it rains on about 150 days each year in this north western corner of the peninsular. But three things persuaded me at least that we might be luckier than so far has proven the case. One, the area was in a drought before we arrived. Two, those 150 days are mostly supposed to be between September and February. And the tradition is that it rains on 150 days NOT that it rains almost continuously on those 150 days... Proof that the guide books could be well off the mark came from a Spanish lady in shop who happened to be brought up in Pimlico (!) - she apologised for the rain but said it was worse in JULY!
Umbrellas are a key ingredient in Galician life, obviously. They come in many shapes and sizes and spend much time being carried furled ready for the next shower. They do not seem to dry however. Thus it is that many are plastic, especially those used by small Spanish schoolgirls. These seem often to be those very deep clear plastic objects that permit forward vision. Carried by a six year old the bottom edge at the back can leave a wake as they walk.
Happily we brought our brollies, several folding and ione golf umbrella, the only asset of any value left to me by Worldcom as it happens. We did so on the basis of experience. Back in the 80s we holidayed for a week or two in Portugal but were so close to the Spanish border that we drove across to visit Seville. Wonderfulo drive over freshly stripped tarmac and exposed ironwork where the new A road was to go. Miles of it. But I digress. Arriving in bright sunshine in the Andalucian capital we parked beside the cathedral (oh yes we did!) and set off to explore. Out of said clear blue sky fell enormous drops of rain in vast numbers. Magically, along the road umbrella vendors appeared! So we made good our oversight. The rain of course stopped immediately. Maybe there is something in this Mary worship after all. And a few years later in early season we took a house above Cordoba with daughter Sarah and her family. It rained solidly for a week, such that we took to daily checking the water level in the large reservoir a few metres above our house...
So we know about Iberian rain.You don't get an Atlantic seaboard to the west for nothing. And up here in verdant Galicia the old saw is true - How did we think it got be so green?

Floating out of Foz and beyond Compostella to the wild Atlantic - April 15

Our departure from Foz had always been problematic once the rains started. Ten days of rain, the last 24 hours virtually continuous, had shown that the campsite has a problem - and we were sat in it. Mostly it is, for this much rain anyway, pretty well drained but in this corner of this one area a roadway has blocked what experience shows is a small, local stream. And our site was now a small local lake on its journey to the sea.
Not deep you understand although enough to squirt unpleasantly through our flooring. But this is a grassed site and it had only had one cut before our arrival. Thick, luxurious and not so much wet as imminently afloat. I hve to say i was less than confident. A straight tow out was not really on - too far and a bit uphill; even our 4x4 in low ratio would probably spin wheels. Going backwards gave us a tiny help from gravity on the shallow slope. But this  is a 1700kg van on two axles. However we do have our fancy flooring - 600mm squares of hard foam with 25mm holes spaced 40 mm apart all over.
So they were to be sacrificed under the car wheels - all four of course - and moved up like pyramid builders stone rollers by my personal pet pyramid builder herself. And it worked. There was water everywhere and a slight bow wave but at about 8mm per minute we rolled 15 metres onto the roadway, at an angle too. La Senora watched and was I like to think disappointed at the loss of a really good story to tell her friends. Oh and the flooring survived having 2000 kg of Kyron driven over it repeatedly.
So we set off to cross Galicia, passing Compostella and finally fetching up outside Ribeira, roughly between La Coruna and Vigo, within earshot of the Atlantic. Our campsite arrival was excellent thanks to good signage and the drive out along our peninsular (or is it an isthmus if between rias as it is? Geogrohers please respond) wonderful. The views were terrific and enticing.
And today, Sunday we saw it. First at a charming little harbour village facing onto the ria, so fairly gentle. And then the full majesty of the Atlantic at an amazing archeological site - Castro do Barona near Porto do Son. We have been lucky enough to see many neolithic sites, including the amazing Skara Brae on Orkney but this did not even slightly disappoint. It consists of two areas of walled enclosures in which sit a series of varied size ring huts also in stone. Which is why it has survived. It sits on a rocky outcrop, a bit like a smaller version of Tintagel actually. But the outcrop rises above and behind the 'village' so protecting it from the continuous westerly which assaulted us unremittingly. As our pictures show it is pretty impressive and rates among the best preserved in Europe. It is also a long hard walk DOWN to it and a longer harder walk UP from it. Nackered we retired to our campsite.
Earlier we had also visited a fine dolmen complete with capstone and been told by the charming site officer that it was one of 10,000 across Galicia all from the period 4,000 to 2,500 BC. Even the celts did not get here until 600 BC apparently. And we had picniced on smoked salmon and Philly sarnies at a fine Faro with views all the way to Spain's own Finistere (Land's End of course) about 40 kilometres north.
And the sun shone most of the day. After ten out of 14 days wetting on the Biscay coast this is luxury.

The van - three weeks in and time to assess; April 12

It is probably time to review whether our caravan decision was a good one. And the answer is yes, with some reservations. So this being me (RW) I shall start with the plusses which we both will agree on before I indicate a few problems of which I will probably be the major source.
First, the objective was better and easier sleeping - absolute winner.  The permanent single bneds are brilliantly comfortable and not having to make them up each night and knock them down each morning is a total winner. The kitchen is as good as the Bailey which we thought it might not match. The sitting and dining area (which is also the second sleeping area if needed (four berth) is more comfortable and better designed than the Bailey. The clothing storage is greater than the Bailey, although the wardrobe is one single large instead of two smaller singles. But it works very well. The systems are very good in performance, with a better toilet system than the Bailey. Water, electricity and gas servies are identical so very good. Being twin axled it tows very straight and follows the tow car very well (The Kyron is proving a good tug as expected. And Ssang Yong dealers are it seems everywhere in Spain - we even get parked along side other S-Ys!)
Downsides? Well it is very long, as in very, very. I thought it would be 1.5 metres lomger than the Bailey but it appears to be about 2.5 longer. And of course it is twin axled. On the road this is great but to be fair it can be a pain when OFF the hook. We had a mover fitted but it seems under powered to turn the vehicle (which was the prime objective!) This may be an issue on our return; as in litigation issue if necessary!
Design of the van is very good but to keep the price down Adria has used some less than preferable installs.No problem with the key bits - water, gas, electric, but windows? Cheap stays are unreliable. Vents? Two of the roof vents are very cheap and will be replaced when we get back. Main door is crap. To be fair it has been forced in the past (issue with the vendors to come) but it is not a good design. It uses a plastic on plastic lock and latch. Now in sunshine this will bind; indeed it nearly welds together!. But this would be OK if the outside handle gave as much 'swing' to the  lock as the inside. It does not. So twice we ended up locked out. In blazing sun, which was a bit of a clue as it has not been common! Eventually I found that, counter intuitively, pressing the door against the lock while actually pulling the handle got it open. So  I bevelled the nose of the lock and the hasp on the latch - ipso, it now works OK cos that means the under-movement of the handle is less critical. Of course since we did this sunshine has been absent! We shall see (we hope, if you see what we mean!)
 Decent vans are fitted with both fly screens and blinds and so is this. But I have to say I do not expect them to last all that long.
On site the size can be a bit of a pain and especially on the continent. Over here the accent is on shade for the summer which means hedged and tree lined pitches of about 6-9  metres square. Since all manouvres have to be carried out inside that space a van 8 metres long is abit of an issue. In the UK and on 5-star sites you can often drive in one end and out of the other - but not here in 2- star locations. So to be honest we are struggling a bit.
The first site we went to looked fine but had a really steep and u-turned entry. Committed on entry I had no choice so we set up. When we came to leave there is no doubt that wthout four-wheel low gear we would have struggled; even failed.
The site we moved to at Foz was, as I have said tired (although we now know the patron is in hospital having a heart op. Anyway Galicia rhymes with rain. It does, it does!  And this site, so wonderfully close to a super coastline gets rained on a lot. We arrived for four days of sun and thought it was great. Ten days later it had rained every day and every night and sometimes very hard indeed. Our pitch was it turned out ruined by having no drainage courtesy of the roadways. So we paddled about literally with water seeping up through our fancy awning floor.
A motor home stuck in the mud asked for help so, with 4x4 and a low ratio box and 'winter start' gearing available i tuugged a Kon Tiki out of the mud - got a beer for it;  sadly the good beer he offered me was not cold enough so his wife kindly passed over a cold can instead. It was rubbish! Gift horse thus toothless!
 I feared we might not get off ourselves. We had pitched so that with the wet a forwad departure was not possible so we had to back the van off. I made sure we had the best chance by using our fancy flooring as trackways for the tyres. We cruiised it frankly, although it was a slow process. So, flooded grass, the caravanner's nightmare is now a thing of the past
But for all that I/we love the van and will get a few of the niggles sorted and replace some of cut-price fitting in due course. And if weever get a decent sized pitch it will be even better but that is unlikely this side of the channel!

Up to Alfoz and down to Viveiro - April 11

This was an odd day since we had no idea at all why Alfoz was called Alfoz - and we still don't. The little village is up in the mountains behind Foz and sits in a wide and fertile valley which, like so many others, benefits from an effective micro-climate. But this village is different. For on the top of the only hill for miles, one which commands views all  the  way to the mountains all round is a Norman-ish castle keep. More to the point the archeoligists can show - and they do - that at least 2,500 years ago it was a place where a wide ring fort provided either a defensive or an animal stockade or even ritual prominence. Whichever, this a place which has commanded this immensely valuable valley for 2,500 years.
The pictures show that what remains is more in keeping with the Norman principle of domination - so what we see could be originally Visigoth or possibly catholic - what it certainly does not seem to be is Moorish.  Which might figure.
But all this lead us to wonder something we cannot find any justification for - was Alfoz the cause of Foz? Try this thought. Someone develops a highly effrective agricultural business in the valley - but they are scores of miles from anywhere. And to sell their produce they need transport. 20 or so miles down one of the roads is a port where they fish. So Alfoz does a deal to put a harbour in and then send their produce east and west along the coast. Thing is that Foz does not seem to have historically had much of a fleet (not far way Berula, Viveiro and even Ribadero have big fleets with what seem long histories). But Foz has had a larger than expected harbour. So what if Alzoz (which could be an abbreviation of upper Foz?) set up the Puerta de Foz as a route to market? Ah well, nice thoughts.
We then went on to a town west of Foz called Viviero. We tried to reach this from the east but hit a huge traffic jam. This time we arrived from the south and anyway there appeared to be no jam today. The town is on a major ria and at the point where a causeway was possible. A very grid-like layout and some interestingly placed gates suggests it was a roman centre - given the copper mines adjacent and the fine agri land inland (AlFoz) that makes total sense. But for evidence we would need to dig - hmmmmph!
The town is charming in a simple way - although horribly over-developed with the usual array of largely nondescript or evn downright ugly five and six storey apartment blocks. It is essentially a tourist town and not at all bad really. Adjacent is another surprise - the port of Celicia with a huge fishing fleet.
From there we visited a village called Sassadeo where, in thelate 18th century the local aristo founded an iron smelting and forging business, of which quite a lot remains.Along side the iron they found kaolin so he also established a decent sized pottery, emulatiung deliberatly the style of English Bristolware - but becomeing in the process recognised as innovators of design and colour.
And then we went to Berula which on the map I assumed would be a small fishing port. Wrong - after being shocked at the scale of over-development on our approach we bumped into a huge fishing fleet. We counted 18 large trawlers along with scores of crabbers and line fishers. And then we went round the corner and found ship building,  a massive timber (eucalyptus) export site and slate, stone and aggregate. No wonder it looked over-developed!

A major Roman town - but they have to tell us; Lugo - April 10

We may be in the province of Galicia but we are in the department (county?) of Lugo and that is the name of the small cathedral city which governs it. Now, for the benefit  of those who care, this cathedral has an honour (papally bestowed) which we are told is rare. They are allowed to have the consecrated host permanently on display. My assumption is that this was a deal struck to encourage pilgrims and thus enhance trade. But then I am not just an atheist but a heathen! Oh and we have no idea whether we saw it or not.
Lugo's major claim to fame  is its city wall. All of it. For it stands up to 10 metres or more high enclosing the entire central area. And it has 52 towers. The wall was first built by the Romans, then re-inforced on their foundations in the middle ages and amazingly has survived. There are some eight or nine gates of which it seems four serve for modern traffic, which circulates the wall on an anti-clockwise three and four lane road.
The cathedral is gothic with a rather plateresque west front - that is, the enhancement is rather like silver plate work. But the east end is an amazing gothic take on romanesque - all circular apses but decorated to within an inch of collapse. The overall effect is terrific; but maybe not actually beautiful.
But Lugo was a major Roman town, a castrum I believe, and so has been a place of governance for approaching 2,000 years.   It stands on a huge plain but surprisingly at 500 metres. Protected by encircling mountains twice or more as high it is a mild climate that has promoted good agriculture. And Rome, of course,  was a voracious consumer. Lugo today is in two  halves - one is prosperous and lively; the other will be if they ever finish the major refurbishment being undertaken. This is the older sector so there are some splendid buildings to be worked on.
Surprisingly we fould a menu del dia for 8 euros and very good it was. A delicious plate of jamon sec laid over thin cut tomatoes, showered with chopped mild onions and slathered with very good olive oil. Rough and excellent Spanish bread finished it off. My bacarlat al la plancher (cod) was excellent; Janet's middle cut of salmon a bit plain. A brilliant tarte de queso finished it off.Asking for a vaso of vino tinto produced an entire picher of more than two normal glasses. Water for Janet, sin gas. And for just two euros more two excellent  cafe cortado. That's 18 euros or about £16.
After a day dodging of showers and exploiting sunny spells we returned to Foz to find yet again it was bathed in warm sunshine - it comes with the change of the tide at low. By near high tide the showers resume. and  last all night...

A town like Foz, you might say

We have been on site for nearly a week now so we have seen a bit of Foz. Strange little town. Started out it seems as a port, taking advantage of a natural small ria. It celebrates little else in produce terms except that it served the famous camino, although it is a few kilometres off the route. This was one of the pilgrims' roads to Compostela and thus into the arms of the reliquary and sanctuary of St James, Santiago . But where else around here is not?
In reality the road to Compostela starts from many places and it is the one from Britain and France that commands our attention. The thrilling bit is the Pyrenees - they have to be crossed somewhere and many came over the high pass at Roncevalles. We have stood there and admired their grit. After that the routes vary but many came along the coast perhaps as far as here. After that it was across Galicia to the shrine which is south west of centre. So we too are, inadvertently, following much the same route.
Foz thus fed and hosted the travellers, weary by now but maybe starting to feel hope. And they would have fed them fish and provided the salted variety for their onward journey.
But Foz must have fallen on hard times more than once. The stream of pilgrims dried up many time and in the early 20th century fell to a trickle and Foz is not a natural tourist detsination - tourists of course being the modern evocation of the pilgrim; the one in search of salvation, the other in search of diversion or elevation. Foz offers little of either and today less so than in the past. Though it seks to show it has one - everywhere are splendid displays of large print pictures from their mid 2oth century past.
But the old charms have been swept away in that wholesale manner found all over the Costas - this is course is the Costa Verde (so how do you think it got so green....). Some of the replacements are in style - galleried and balconeyed and if a bit OTT at least done with bravura. The rest come in two forms - truly boring or truly ugly. And some are truly never going to be finished - the recession has stopped almost all work.
But Foz, which may have allowed too much development within has been wiser without. As I have said already, along the charming coast nothing has been allowed closer than 100 metres from the cliff edge. Along the cliff edge of several kilometres and many sandy bays is a superb promenade with lots of parking and picnic spots. And behind that a slightly too narrow road that, as a result, is its own speed bump.
The supermarket has not totally hit Spain as it has elsewhere so hypermarkets are rare. But smaller supermercados are many and of different proprietorship generally. Mercadona is here and we have seen El Arbo but the rest are unfamiliar and thus more varied. They have however proliferated to the cost of the smaller shops so few traditional butchers, fish shops etc remain. And the markets, as elsewhere in Europe, are increasingly just cheap clothes. Sad really.
Drove west yesterday (5th) seeing some nice little harbours and an amazing aluminium works and mines on a promotory. And then tried to visit Viveiro, reputedly still some medieval walls, gates etc. No idea as the traffic jam left us 30 minutes in the queue before we gave up and turned round! We'll try again. Bet it wasn't like this in the days of the Camino de Santiago!

Foz to Ribadera - the coast west 2-3 April

Having found the area of coast closest to us so Pembrokian we then went west towards Ribadera - and found more similar. It really is superb and access is not so much easy as positively encouraged. Makes a change frankly.
Our pictures (https://picasaweb.google.com/100050585701073430632/MARCH?locked=true) show better but one spot we visited is interesting. It tourist appeal - it is well signbed, served and touted - is a bit of an historic blip. Named for its comparison to the vaulted ceilings of ancient cathedral I am afraid the roof fell in a fair few decades ago. Today the similarity is hard to see but the former asupports for the arches survive as fine offshore cliffs parallel to the coast and impressive in their own right.
All along are sandy coves, craggy rock pools, secret nooks and caves - a child's nelight. Olly loves it and we agree. He charges about like a mad thing seeking all sort of smells that must colour his landscape amazingly. All we see is a flying tail or a swerve where he turned to change scent! He dodges the wet stuff, especially when it chases him.
Everwhere we go the cafe corrrrrrtado is brilliant and now about 1.20e but super. Clearly not from StarCostaNero! You get bikkies too if you roll your Rs right!
The towns are a bit sad. Partly it is the Spanish property crash and the recession but also it is the Spanish attitude to development. Foz is a prime example. Too much poor quality oversized development, much of its now abandoned. In amongst you can see it done well - there are some superb large commercial developments with shops and offices below and fine apartments above that echo the Spanish tast for galleries and balconies and twiddly bits. Some in Foz are super and will figure in our pictures; some are hideous and should not but will.
All along the coast are fine villas, many closed up for the winter. Most were built in the latter part of the 20th century but they echo local styles and colours and the planners have kept them back about 100 metres from the coast. They have ensured too that they stand in wide ground so they do not too severely affect the views. Where they are not detached it seems two large semis are preferred and then an even wider gap is left. Overall it works. Left to developers it would be crowding the cliff edge and shoulder to shoulder

Last visits: Asturias and el Picos - March 30

Yesterday we took the awning down which took a chunk of the day. It is not hard taking it down but there is a lot of canvas and a lot of poles. Still, given this was our first erection and detumescence of the beast - it is 11 metres long in canvas and 2.5 wide - we are pleased with the result. It sure gives a lot of space!
So this action commits us to leaving, albeit reluctantly. Each day we have escaped the smoke only to return to it in the evening. Curiously and possibly significantly since all the publicity and media comment and political accusation the number of fires seems to have decreased. Which it would if the allegation that most are set deliberately is true. Discuss. Even so it lingers in the valleys where we of course are.
Today (Friday) we went east along the Val de Sella and enjoyed some splendid gorge scenery - not wquite the Tarn bug pretty giood. And less traffic!
Our destination was St Vicente de Barquera, a large harbour town on a fascinating inlet - a rias or rather two rias since two valleys converge with two rivers to feed a very impressive estuary. The town sits on the confluence, a hilly crag topped originally by a fort but, with the coming of christianity the military made way and moved slightly down hill.
The resultant church was romanesque, then as a guiide book put it, pointy romanesque and finally given a Gothic frontage. Next door is a college of what seemed to be maritime administration but with our Spanish it could have been anything involving words a bit like that. Then the government had erected a rasther forbidding courthouse and gardia office. Next was the splendid 16th century and flamboyant, almost plateresque, ayuntamiento but in reality they had simply and rightly preserved the frontage - behind was 20th century admin essential! Finally what remains of the military might is fairly impressve but sadly shut chunk of 14th century fort. From all this the views are splendid.
We had ascended along a modern and well presented promenade with ample signs and information, although the Spanish make no concession on language to any EU nation - all is in Castillian and sometimes Asturian/Basque or it may even be Bable which is, I read Cantabrian. We found a nearly as easy way down through what remains of the olkd town. The Spanish seem to have have little affection for their past and preserve little. Maybe, given all that has happened in Iberia that is no surprise but it can be sad when so much of the replacement is 60s to 80s trash architecture.
So to Saturday and we known down the van's equipage and ready it for the road. There is just one issue that has troubled me. We rolled into this site when, though we did not know it, a key entry to pitches was blocked by a motor home. So I swing round into the first area, expecting to be able to roll out the end and out another route. Niot so. Which meant the u-bend on a steep down slope was now a u-bend on a steep UP slope. And I was towing an 8 metre van for the first time. To be fair I did forget that I had both four wheel drive and low gear ratio available. But I mentally planned the exit at least every day. In the event I selected low x4 and got the line right and left my postillion (Janet) agape and wondering why she had been left to walk uop this ruddy steep slope! I was just between embarrassed and proud!
And so to Galicia.

First thoughts from aother land

It seems our strange luck continues. This area is beautiful. The houses and villages wonderful, the food good, the wine good and cheap and the people, like most Spanish, happy and friendly - and proud. But there is smoke everywhere. It drifts through the valleys putting a blue haze on all we see. It clogs the lungs and everything is covered in a blizzard of white wood ash. Asturias is burning.
Not just Asturias but most of Spain it seems. The driest winter for years and some remarkable early sun have added to the usual risk - I read that 80% of all forest fires in Spain are started deliberately - well that's what itsaid. I see all around that where wood is cut - and they burn millions of trees - the underbrush is littered with the debris of twig and branch stripping. It gathers, it dries, it heats up in the blazing sun and it takes but a spark or abandoned bottle to ignite. With little wind it burns up the hillsides. El Bombero stands by, watching and calling up the helicopter water bombers when the risk gets too great. For the rest of the time they must, perforce, let it burn. And fill the air with its carcinogenic fumes. God help the locals - and the tourists. So we plan to move on early and aggravated. We shall hug the coast for clean air and less risk. My emphysema and J's bronchial asthma demand common sense.
But we have had good timesalready. Up the mountain to a place reputed to have started the reconquest of Spain (as in el Pope and co kicking out the moors). Covadonga is small and mountain hemmed. Here a chap called Pelayo reputedly killed 1,000 or possibly 12,000 or even in one story 124,000 Moors with the help of just 29 other Spaniards - or something! Anyway he is credited with the first victory over the Moors in Spain and thus gets the credit for rolling back the Islam invasion. Whatever.
Interesting sort of place. A small but bling filled chapel marks his burial (alongside the virtually ignored tiny hole in the rock which preceded the bling). And a 19th century tour de force of a church has been built to house the worshipful and provide a starting point for a trail up to the chapel. Lovely jubbly.
Onward then to something of a rare road penetrating well into the otherwise walk it or ride it fastness of the Picos. Lake Ecol and Lake Ecrina are pretty, very cold and surrouned by fair sized mountains backed to the south by the snow-capped might of their 2,500 meter plus big brothers. Dramatic and charming.
Down then to our smoke filled valley for some decent local wine, cheese and imported welsh lamb which we must finish now it has thawed.
Escaping the smoke on Tuesday we headed to the coast, following a charming river valley - the Rio Sella - to its esturial mouth at Ribadesella. Which disappointed greatly. But the large Rio Sella version helped to show why the Spanish call all these Rias - they are indeed what geographers call rias - depressed glacial and meltwater valleys flooded by the sea. Similar to but much gentler than the actual ice cut fiords of the north.
We then found a beautiful little rias with a wonderful sandy beach which should have been Llanes but was actually at Llames. So we re-navigated and found Llanes - super place. Working fishing harbour plus marina on rias (natch) of decent size, much commerce and at least one good resto where we ate a salad mixte, a huge plate of clamari romana and a big dish of croquettas cabrales - a rich mix of goat cheese and the Spanish take on mashed potatoes - pureed to perfection. And that plus a beer, water, bread and oils, and two cortado for 25 euro - not bad. Later learn that Kate and Sarah and co were here a few years back.
Tuesday, March 28
Today we were again forced to head for the coast. By 11.30 it was obvious the smoke was still a problem. So we drove to Cangas for some food shopping - amazing cheese shop! And took time out to see and climb the wrongly named Ponte Romano - it is medieval. Very cobbled,very narrow,very steep and with a huge central arch presumably to accommodate the vast melt waters of the nearby Picos.
Then on to a headland, Cabo Llastres. On the way we found a really nice little town having its entire main street dug up and replaced! Poor little Colunga. We did not stop - few will for a few weeks yet.
Found a splendid little cove near La Isla (not found!) for lunch - a delicious flakey pie thing with tuna, tomatoes and olives. And a bun, inside which a piece of chorizo had been secreted with some sort of tomatoey sauce - brilliant!
The drive to Llastres was short and the town super - a harbour crammed into a tiny space beneath tall cliffs but at the end of a fine bay (which included our lunch stop). A couple of harbourside restos provided coffee and beers. The harbour was still a working fishing port with medium sized inshore fishers. And in the marina a host of plastic day fishing boats which suggest the locals still see their opportunity to catch fish for the family as a necessity and a right. Good for them. In the UK such a harbour would just be filled with noddy boats and ski tugs! None such here.
We then overdid it. Llastres has a lighthouse and such promontories are cheese and wine to this photographer. So we headed for the fero (faro) and found ourselves on a completely beat up road that bounced us for 4k - to find the car park for two full - and their occupants 300 feet below us on the rocks fishing! The walk back for them scared the willies out of me just looking!
Back to the van and the other world - the risk assessment for the NHS reform has been published. Too late, of course. RIP the NHS - good thing is that this is what Cameron will be remembered for. You would think he was bright anough to get it would you not?
And reality number 2 - as you can see (via http://www.aljazeera.com/weather/2012/03/201232885144984680.html) I did not exaggerate. It seems much of Spain and Portugal is burning. And most of it is on our route! We need to take stock,given our health. The forecast is for rain in the next week. How much and whether it will be enough remains to be seen.
Our decision to head down to the coast near Ribadeo, in the north east corner of Galicia (yep, burning!) still seems the best. We may return from there to some of the Picos.Or not. Flexible - that's us caravanners!

Forest fires in Spain come early
http://digitaljournal.com/article/321077
or try this!
http://www.aljazeera.com/weather/2012/03/201232885144984680.html