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Showing posts from 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 ...

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...

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...

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 neve...

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 c...