Thursday, 23 June 2016

Heading east to Bilbao

We were going to complete this trip in an anticlockwise direction, which would have meant following the coast westwards from Bilbao, travelling first through the Picos de Europa and arriving in Asturias early in the holiday.
However the weather wasn’t promising when we arrived in Spain and so we headed south. This meant that the Picos were going to be last on the itinerary and as we would be making a fairly fast bid for Bilbao, it would be a snatched view only. From our final camp at Luarca, it would be a four hour journey on the motorway and the latest ferry check in was 16:30 so we felt there was time to detour to get a glimpse of the mountains.
Asturias is beautifully situated where the mountains meet the sea. The houses look alpine and the villages are scattered amongst the meadows and fields. Just a few kilometres inland, the ground rises steeply and we headed off the motorway and up the first suitable road, to see what views we could glimpse.

This is typical of the scenery through which we passed, there are steep mountainsides and deep valleys with big streams and rivers flowing through them. The temperature shot-up as soon as we got a barrier between us and the sea and we passed all sorts of canoe / kayak activities and lots of swimming in the rivers with the temperature touching 30c here.

The TomTom route planning facility is very handy and it gives options for travel avoiding motorways, fastest route etc. but it defaults to the maximum allowed road speed. When on the motorway, our expected arrival time keeps slipping back as we don’t (can’t) cruise at 120 kph and I always forget to reduce that maximum to 90kph. Therefore the arrival time in Bilbao kept slipping and got nearer the 4:30pm deadline as we cruised the hinterland.
Here are the Picos in all their 2,500m glory...


and this is “the picture”, the one that you always see in the winter shots.

So we raced to Bilbao and in fact found time to re-fuel at the same station that we used on the first day. I had kept the receipt for the whole trip because rather surprisingly it offered a €10 discount off a re-fuel of at least €30, an absolute bargain. So I pumped in 50 litres at €1.069 per litre and got the tank filled for about €43. Why not?
So to the ferry, with the shade temperature at over 30 we were happy to be waiting for just a few minutes on the concrete.

This is M.V. Baie de Seine and we are on the "Economie Service” which is a little cheaper than the full-blown service we experienced coming out on the Cap Finistère. So there was no posh restaurant, no cinema and no pub quiz. We didn’t miss them.
In fact this ferry is quite small and you can really feel the Atlantic rollers as you cross “the Bay”. In fact I ought to mention Atlantic rollers - they haven’t been referred to, so far. It’s amazing to see the size of the swell. The power of these innocuous waves coming in is quite surprising. As they hit the beach or the rocks they seem to come from nowhere. Row upon row march in from wherever they form and thats without any gale on top of them to create white caps.
We ate our Stugeron 15 pills to settle our stomachs just in case. I don’t know how they work or what it would have been like without them but we slept all night. Sometime in the night there was a thunderstorm as there were flashes through the curtain, otherwise it was peaceful. By morning we were squeezing round the Brest peninsular between the islands and the mainland and then it was a flat crossing up to the Cherbourg peninsular and across to the Isle of Wight during the rest of the day.
We left Bilbao at 17:30 Wednesday and we are expected into Portsmouth at 20:45 tonight, Thursday.

Asturias

Time was passing quickly and there was so much to do. I could have stayed at Wolfgang’s headland for a week. Each morning the tide was out and the rocks fully exposed and there was always someone pottering about out there with a fishing rod or a net. We walked along the 'tempestuous beach' once the weather improved and also visited the local town, Muros.
It was here that I started to wonder why there appears to be a flourishing fishing industry and yet (as far as I know) there isn’t one in the UK. I don’t think that Scarborough or Whitby have fishing boats like these any more.

This is Sunday afternoon in Muros where yet again we saw the Spanish weekenders. They sat happily in the quayside cafes whilst their kids played on bikes or kicked a ball around. There wasn’t a tv screen in sight and little evidence of Euro 2016.
We decided to eat Pulpo once more as we would soon be leaving Galicia and enjoyed it with a bowl of mussels this time. It was funny going into the cafe at 8pm and asking if we were too early. “No it’s OK - we’re ready for you!” the cheery waiter said and so we had a window seat looking out (as it was too hot in the sun for once).
We packed and got ready to move on and unfortunately had to cut the Galicia north west corner off and headed inland, past Compostela again and then north east to the coast in Asturias. It’s always difficult to make choices on a trip like this - if you don’t keep moving then you don’t get the full experience, yet if you like somewhere, you need to stay a little to be able to appreciate it.
An overnight is usually too short but spend just two full days somewhere and you feel as though you know it. So we often stay for three nights, arriving mid or late afternoon and leaving mid morning.
There are always some folk who seem to need to leave a site at the crack of dawn to move off somewhere. For me this is the best time of the day, It’s cool, quiet and breakfast outside is lovely so I don’t like rushing off.
There are others who are so early that they arrive on a site by mid-morning. Invariably these are the motorhome “wild campers” who have decided that they need a bit of civilisation for a day or so. So they come direct from a “camp” on the nearest harbour wall, spend time working out the best pitch, then levelling the vehicle with wedges. Then they hit the washing machine, the waste water disposal and the toilet waste point.
Meanwhile we are having a leisurely breakfast and then we pack-up and move on. Here, as in most “European” countries we never need to book. There’s so much coming and going on campsites that they always have room unless it is mid-summer and you have left it until late evening to arrive.

So we picked a site in Asturias that’s on the Cool Camping website (www.campingtauran.com). This is 3.5kms off the main road down a single track road, past a farm and then onto a headland.

It’s a site that has been owned by Dutch people but they recently sold to a couple of Spaniards. They have yet to master the art of welcoming guests and instead of the Else and Herman “Please sit down on the terrace, now what would you like to drink?” welcome at Quinta Valbon, we were given a key for the barrier, a paper with our arrival number, and these were handed over along with a bit of a scowl. They won’t get far in this business, that’s my prediction - once a few hundred thousand people have read this blog they won't.
The site is 30 or 40m above the sea which is inaccessible due to the cliffs. However you can not only view the sunset, at this time of year from the same spot, you can see the sunrise too! How about that? We got to see two great sunsets and unfortunately didn’t take any pics (well they all look the same don’t they?)
Well no actually, they don’t. There was a layer of dark cloud stretching across the horizon and somehow this made it look as though the sun was sinking into the sea in front of the horizon. I don’t know how this illusion occurred but it was as if an egg yolk was slowly sinking. Magnificent!
The local town Luarca was a short drive away but once we tried getting there in the Landy and had almost given-up trying to park, we decided to walk next time. It’s only about half an hour, cutting the corner off using the lanes, which includes an amazing view down into the harbour. In fact the whole town is located at the bottom of this steep ravine and again the focus is on a vibrant fishing industry.



We watched as a small boat came in after a trip. I assume this was a day’s fishing but what do I know?

Papá was operating the winch as Chico located the crates. They unloaded the boat in quick time and it was amazing to see what had been caught. Maybe he’s a conger eel specialist as I think this is was they are (in the main). There were no nets on boards just a series of big floats with lines wrapped around them. So this is true line-caught fish.

Are there quotas? How does the Bay of Biscay support small boats like this? Maybe there are just more fish around. Who knows? It just looks right and proper that when you go to a fishing port you see fish being unloaded in the harbour!
Just along the coast, no more than ten minutes drive, was a great beach for swimming and surfing. We looked the part, driving the Landy along the pebbles and sand at the back of the storm beach but the truth is that the rest of the day trippers were doing the same in their cars! The water was much warmer than it had been on the Atlantic coast at Wolfgang’s. When I took the plunge there I could hardly catch my breath it was so cold. Here it was bracing but manageable, although my swimming trunks weren’t holding much together by the time I got out.
It was our anniversary so we had lunch out (probably only had six meals out in the whole trip). The local dish here is Fabada Austuriana, which is very much like a cassoulet and that worked well with Spanish omelette.
Eventually it was time to walk up the three hundred plus steps out of town and back through the farming hinterland to the campsite.

Here we had great fun on a slack line with the greatest view.

Tuesday, 21 June 2016

Galicia - Atlantic coast

We headed west and back to the Atlantic coast of Galicia and it is hard to express just how magnificent this part of the coast is. There are countless inlets with white sandy beaches and little villages next to them. The whole coastline is a series of rias, so the sea reaches into far corners of the valleys and with the roads winding in and out, the driving distances mount up.
We stopped to buy cherries from Pepé. He sells only the best and even puts the tray in a rather cool carrier bag from ‘Cheap & Chic’. Prices must be tumbling now that they are in full season and we bought a 2Kg tray for €5. At least we think it was 2Kg but Pepé doesn’t bother with all that EU weights and measures nonsense and it’s a good deal anyway, as we can hardly manage to eat them all.


As we drive, we are nearing the most westerly points of Spain and again Dawn pulled a great campsite from the book. It’s just west of Louro, itself west of Muros, where we drove out to a very exposed headland. Here Wolfgang, originally from West Berlin thirty years ago ("I vorked for ze British Army”), has built a great site with views out west stretching in an arc from north to south, perfectly situated for June sunsets to the north west. From here we can see three lighthouses at night - it’s a dramatic coast.

The weather was still tempestuous and this photo reminds me of a scary time we once had in St Davids, when with a sky like this, we were hit by a small tornado that took out a swathe of tents and awnings in a line next to ours. “Don’t worry, it’s only a thunderstorm” were the words I uttered then, just before it struck.
The sea was battering the rocks, especially to the northern side of the headland.


It was a sheltered pitch and we had a good view over the wall!


With various bits of flotsam (or is it jetsam?) we stamped our mark on it and I hope that Wolfgang didn’t mind that we left them there.


During a day trip we found another waterfall right next to a hydro electric power station which allowed access to view the turbine hall. The other tourists can’t have been interested as we were only the second entry in the log book that day.


It’s possible to drive up to the top of the hill, behind the plant and we did - although there was only a sign showing the gradient at the top of the road and not the bottom. If there had been one I’d probably still have driven up but 30% is very steep and you must not stop!



We went to Cabo Fisterra, which is the unofficial most westerly point of Spain. Most people treat it as “The End of The World”, as it’s easier to get to than the proper point just up the coast and it 'feels' like it's the end as it is a big peninsular. Just because it stick out south doesn't matter!



This is also a final - final destination on the Camino for those hardy souls who walk the optional extension from SdC. Here they have a tradition of burning their footwear and indeed the cliff has many fire pits containing charred trainers, with other pairs just left on the ground.
Here’s a view of one of “our” beaches once the weather improved and it’s typical of those on this coastline - white sand and completely unspoilt.


This coast is truly amazing and there’s such an easy mix of local people and the relatively few tourists. It’s true that there are signs there will Spanish holiday crowds because there are preparations on going for the “season”. It can’t be very long though, as its midsummer’s day already and Wolfgang’s site closes in mid September!

The Jet stream joins us on holiday

The Met Office app on the iPhone is a basic tool that allows a snapshot of the weather forecast at various places - we managed to find Santiago de Compostela in there and the weather wouldn’t good for several days.
By the way that app still shows Lake Bled located in Slovakia when in fact it’s in Slovenia - something that I discussed with the Met Office by emails last summer (yes I did do that!) and they told me that it would take several months to correct it. Well Lake Bled is still waiting...
With the Meto app providing some uncertainty about just how bad the weather would be, I turned to netweather.tv - always a good bet. Their jet stream forecast was conclusive.
The intense colours show the speed of the jet and so it was clear that the Atlantic would be roaring into Iberia for a day or two.
The synoptic chart showed a similar situation for the following day and so we expected to get wet. In fact on Monday 13th June it was already raining hard when we woke-up and that’s never a good way to be greeted when you want to pack-up. So it was a "wet tent” pack-up and we headed for Spain and the Atlantic coast south of Vigo.
In a moment of fine weather we approached Baiona and it all looked very nice with a blue sky and sea.

We picked a site at Playa America that was recommended by the guy who booked us out of the previous site. Its a short walk from a magnificent sweep of beach and as we were to find out, no-one in Spain is yet on holiday, so the site was empty. Empty that is, save for a few older people who are the type that move to a campsite for the whole of the summer - living in tourer-sized caravans with awnings, where they spend most of the time watching TV.

Although that’s not our normal choice, for us the site was perfect as although we grabbed some sunny moments, it was inclement a lot of the time. We did the washing in an SAS style automatic washer that could handle everything we put in it and more besides. It was washed, rinsed and spun in 30 minutes flat. Wow - no wonder Dot Cotton had so much time for gossip and a cigarette or three!
I had to be inventive about a washing line as they don’t work outside in the rain - but a few minutes clambering around in the amenities block saw us fasten it up under the roof yet catching a breeze. So the washing got dried (eventually).
We wandered onto the beach and along the promenade. It’s a huge sandy beach with a great tidal wash so none of your Mediterranean beaches here - this is self cleaning and the sand gets a new look every day. We think that it was a public holiday - not particularly because there were lots of people but rather that by the next day, it was deserted!

There are no amusement arcades, no ice-cream parlours, just nice cafes and small restaurants. We were soon resting with a Super Bock and Estrella.
We were really on the look-out for another Spanish lunch - perfect if you want to while-away the odd hour or two and we particularly wanted to sample the local delicacy, Pulpo (Octopus). In fact we ordered fried Squid and Spanish omelette, from the Starters menu as well as a dish of Pulpo and the waiter was happy to take the order without saying anything.

The Pulpo was served first, in bite-sized pieces, with a dusting of paprika. You are supposed to eat it with a cocktail stick but we didn’t know that at the time. The taste is about as far removed from chewy calamaris that I could imagine. It is so soft and tender it almost melts in your mouth.

Next was the fried squid which was very tasty, maybe just a little dry in the mouth after the octopus. Thankfully the Spanish omelette was served soon afterwards. This is omelette with potato and we had also opted for prawns in it.
Between us we ate the octopus but only half of the others and quite out of character I asked to take-away the rest, which we did. The following day we had the best picnic lunch ever.

So a couple of wet days were spent at the coast before we headed further into Galicia, the far northwest region of Spain and we of course went to Santiago de Compostela, because everyone does.

It rained again and we walked under brollies into the city because the bus comes every 30 mins and we didn’t know which thirty minutes that was. As we walked it rained more and more. Places never look their best in the wet and SdC is no exception. It is fairly horrible until you reach the middle and then there are some very nice streets and walkways.
I hadn’t prepared at all for Santiago, the destination for so many walkers as it is at the end of the caminos of which there are several. Still the most popular one, the Camino Francés is marked with scallop shells and that route starts in France. Apparently if you walk to Compostela for at least a minimum allowed distance, you can receive a plenary indulgence - a lifetime remission of your sins. It goes on to explain in my guidebook, that this only happens in certain years and the next isn’t until 2021. I expect that it will be even busier then and those that missed out by walking or cycling this year, will be wishing that they too had read the Lonely Planet - Spain edition.
The “pilgrims” trudged into the city in boots, trainers and flip-flops carrying varying sizes of pack and for some weird reason I felt as though I shouldn't be there, having driven in my Landy rather than walking, which is nonsense of course!
The campsite felt like a car park and was really a series of terraces for camper vans and caravans. It was so shady that the grass was mud or the ground was gravel - not a good combination for a tent. So we slept in the Land Rover and used our new back porch as just that. The best bit of the campsite was the nice sticker to add to the collection on the Landy.
A Dutch guy, living in the French alps near Briançon was driving a Defender 90 with a 200TDi engine. This was the advance party as he was chief cook and bottle washer for a Dutch cycling group who had set out five weeks earlier to cycle to SdC. They had cycled six days out of seven for that time - what an effort and even more so as they are all over sixty five.


The cathedral is magnificent, especially the organ pipes - it’s a pity that it wasn’t being played because I’m sure the sound would have been tremendous.


When you are so far west (>9 degrees) and in CET timezone, it makes for some silly sunset times. Now, at midsummer, the sun sets at around 22:15. However at 43 degrees north, they don’t have the long days of more northern latitudes and sunrise isn’t until about 07:30 (I think) and that makes for very cool mornings under canvas, especially if the jet stream joins you for a holiday!
So it was a quick overnight at SdC with a muddy, wet pack-up the next morning. It’s times like this when we wonder about a proper motorhome and start to design one in our discussions.

Saturday, 18 June 2016

Remote mountains and how not to behave in them

Prior to the trip I had read somewhere that there aren’t any mountains in Portugal - at least I thought I read it. My preparations had, as usual, been focused almost totally on getting the Landy ready and Dawn, who had been doing all the other jobs was much better informed. “What? You are kidding aren’t you? Have you even looked at a map?” were some of the words she used when I told her this vital piece of information.
As it became clear, there are mountains in Portugal - not massive peaks but high elevations are common and the extent of the ranges is quite large. The most remote and wild are the Serra da Peneda Gerês which rise to 1,440m but there are three others “Seras” in the Parque National da Peneda - Gerês, in which wolves roam free.
First stop on they way there was the town of Guimarães, the day after “Portugal Day” and the castle and buildings were in tip-top condition.



A Polish guy from Katowice who’s lived here for twenty years was selling bilberry jam in these cloisters, with 70% fruit content. Beautiful stuff!

We sampled the local specialities - on the left are lovely Douradinas and on the right are the even better Tortas de Guimarães which have to be eaten to be fully appreciated

The campsite (Lima Escape) at Entre Ambos-os-Rios is in a pine forest at the side of a large reservoir (sounds horrible but think Ladybower with bigger, steeper hillsides). The Cool Camping book describes it as a quiet place shdsgdhhsgd. Well not this weekend! The tranquility was shared out between a teenage rowing team from gfgff who were doing some serious training on the water and also practicing to stay-up late and a group of scouts with a leader who used his voice instead of a megaphone. They had commandeered the barbeque shelter nearest our pitch for mass catering. Actually i was very impressed with them, especially their uniform which was worn all the time and included those “proper” scout hats and not those daft berets that everyone in 2nd Hale and 1st Bamford had to wear.
On Sunday morning we headed into the mountains, crossing one of the many “Barragem” that are used to hold water for hydro electric power generation and the road was very “local” so it was easy to stop and walk over it to see the view. At first glance it’s a long way down but not paticularly “clammy hands”.

When you walk out along the wall towards the middle, then there's a lot more exposure. The wall is concave and pulls back underneath you so that you feel as though you are standing above nothing (which is true really). Then the hands start to sweat and you can imagine what big wall climbing might be like (or not to like).

The mountain villages all have the traditional stone “barns” for holding grain or at least the harvest for drying. We have seen similar wooden constructions in central Europe. These in Portugal and Spain however have been over engineered in stone and will last for ever. I think most were made in the eighteenth century and feature carved cills, lintols and mullions and they are mounted on posts topped with stone discs that wouldn’t be out of place as millstones. The slots are so narrow that birds can’t get in and I can’t get the camera lens close enough to see what’s inside. I think that some are still in use but many are now simply features in gardens and yards.



The views of the villages with all their terraces made me think of my own images of the Himalayas. This is the view down to Sta. da Pineda, to where we were headed. It’s teh village at the top of the photo.

As we approached the village we started to see another Land Rover at the various view points and by the time we arrived at the village we were ready for a good old chin wag about Land Rovers in general.
The village is in an incredibly narrow valley and is dominated by the church and a huge “staircase” of stone steps that stretch right down to the bottom of the village. It was here that we started our sightseeing and we were curious to see what was behind those red doors - especially as a small bird was trapped in one of the buildings.


As I peered into the darkness I struggled to get a focus on the camera
There was clearly something in there but when I got the focus and flash to work, I got the shock of my life..

Each building was the same, holding life-size figures of various New Testament scenes with another showing the presentation of Jesus to the Wise Men and a third showing the crucifixion.
We ate some lunch and then decided to follow a shortish walk that is mentioned in the Lonely Planet. Right behind the church is a huge rock-domed peak, a mecca for climbers and the walk was described as a short but steep 1km upto and around this Dome peak finally reaching a lake high in the hills. The book continued…“If you stay on the trail past the lake, you can make a 8km loop that leads back to the main road just uphill from Peneda”.
So we slogged up the 1km to the lake and it really was a slog. The book hadn’t mentioned the vertical hight gained but most of that 1,000m was uphill. We were so impressed with ourselves that when we reached the lake we had a good look around, a bit of a rest and then thought that we would complete the loop.



This is where all our experience of high mountain walking kicked in. Well that’s what you would think isn’t it as we have a lot. Unfortunately we didn’t take any notice, on this cloudy, misty Sunday afternoon. How could it be anything other than what the book says - "you can make a 8km loop that leads back to the main road just uphill from Peneda”.
We followed the yellow and red makers painted at intervals on the rocks and we pulled through a lovely valley with the mists swirling around the hill tops. A few goats were watching us and we managed to zoom in at x12 to get a closer look (yes i need a better camera).,

The path got less distinct but we followed small cairns and as it was misty we were careful to look behind so we knew where we’d come from.
It wasn’t long before that 8km was complete because we saw the road and were happy to spy a slightly more distinct path down to it. “Piece of cake that and soo beautiful to be up here” we said.
Straight onto the road we walked and turning right to complete the circuit, we expected to see the village over the first rise.
Except that it wasn’t there.




We walked and walked and started to doubt where we were. There was no signal on the phone so we couldn’t use the GPS and got a little worried, to the extent that we eventually flagged-down a car coming towards us (this isn’t a very busy road). The Portuguese were very helpful once I had managed to show them the little map photograph of a noticeboard that I had on my phone becasue they couldn’t understand my pronunciation of Santa Domino de Peneda.

They explained in sign language that it was about 20km to our Land Rover, that we had to first continue to walk to the crossroads and then turn right and walk more!
After a long time a car come in our direction and fortunately the old guy stopped when we hitched and he also expressed some surprise that we wanted to go to Peneda but mananged to get his car re-started on the hill and took us to the cross roads saying that we still had 12km to go.
We then set-off over the next pass to Peneda and this really is wolf territory. The few cars that passed us didn’t stop and we were already walking down the otherside when thankfully a young couple from Lisbon pulled-in and took us what remained of the walk back, which according to their satnav was 3.8km!!
So what happened? Well with some later research using Google terrain view on the internet, we worked out that we walked a much bigger arc than we thought, which pushed us too far west. We had walked into another valley and when we hit the road we walked north east rather than south. This was in fact the best way out of our predicament because the escape route in the other direction would have been even further. This road was running almost parallel to “ours” and only when we got to the crossroads did we then turn south and walk towards the Landy.

It was a salutory lesson in how not to behave in mountains. Take a map, know where you are going and preferably leave details with someone - although that’s not always possible.
"Why didn’t I use the compass on the iPhone"? Well I did - but it didn’t tell me what I expected so I ignored it for a long time on that first road.
"If you reached the road and realised that it wasn’t the right one would you have walked back into the mist”? Yes probably as we really could route find there, due to the wierd rocks and we had walked through a long valley so once we hit that, it would have been srraightforward.
Glup!