Peelies travels

As well as the oldies we did see a nice wedding assembling outside the town hall. The bride was brought there on the handlebars of a bike by a friend. Great music was played on a super four plank glockenspiel and another guy announced her arrival with a blow on a horn. The weather then decided to close in and we had fun dodging thunderstorms, using a rain radar app that covers Iberia and the lightning page that I frequently examine at  blitzortung.org So Saturday night was a little damp and that perhaps deterred a few revellers but it was surprising how many Spanish came to stay in their motorhomes, campers and even sleeping in their cars at the ‘aire’. It was a great Friday / Saturday nights and on Sunday we continued the slow drive towards Santander. Yet more coffee and tapas beckoned after a steep walk down to the harbour at Elantxobe. Later we stopped at a totally local bar/restaurant to eat the Sunday version of menu del dia which is, I think, the same as the weekday vers...

We stopped overnight just west of San Sebastián, on a site that that has a surprisingly good pool. The first surprise was that it has water in it and the second is that it’s an infinity pool and in a great position. That other swimmer was watching Dawn’s perfect strokes enviously, as she glided across the sparkling water. Next to us was this wonderful Mercedes Benz Marco Polo roadsurfer  camper, driven by a young couple from Switzerland. I have to admit that a load of stuff went through my head when I saw them in it. Those thoughts were something like, #expensive   #how  #young_people  #swiss and #why_couldn’t_I Then they explained that although they were driving the top of the range AMG version, it wasn’t theirs. They had picked up a deal from the hire company, to drive it from Zurich to Bilbao. They had five days in which to do it and were then flying home via Mallorca. Now I felt #less_inadequate We toured a little further towards Bilbao and stopped at an interest...

By popular demand we returned to the  Bujaruelo valley and the campground at the head of it. This is tucked under the western side of the Monte Perdido massif, the highest in the Pyrenees. It is a special place, accessed by road only from the south. This gravel and stone track which takes about 20mins to drive is very bumpy in the Land Rover but at least it is made for it. Last time we visited in 2018,  we were surprised at how many cars and campervans make it here. It must be a bit  of a risk as there are some hard, stony lumps and gravelly looseness, which must be hard to handle carefully with a low slung vehicle and road tyres. The river is glacial! There’s a walkers’ hostel here with good food but we didn’t eat here this time. At night it was very dark and cold. There’s nowhere for the cold on the mountains to go, other than fill the valley. It’s a little like Buxton in that respect. The book of walks showed one directly from the campsite and the next day we had the d...