Peelies travels

  I have found the combination of loads of mobile data and Google Translate a very useful holiday tool. In a calendar month I will have used almost all of my 11GB of data. Although my Spanish Duolingo ‘web learning’ before we left, gave me a good start to the language, I forgot to pack my notebook of ‘special words’, so perhaps used Google more than I expected. The Google translate app is easy to use and if necessary it will offer a spoken translation, although I’ve hardly used that. One surprising feature is that it can perform direct text recognition to translation. Just using the camera you hover over the text and English, in my case is superimposed. Like this… With more complex language the translation is a little less accurate but nevertheless it is very handy. We were by now watching the weather forecast for the northern coast and made the decision that we wouldn’t head for the Picos. What’s the point in going there only to meet cool wet weather? The Pyrenees were showing a b...

It’s so ‘fairy story’ here, biblical might be a better description. A castle on a hill, the young shepherd with his flock, the hunters and a small village, Riba de Santiusta . That’s where we spent the night, a little further north as we moved towards the final week. We had approached the hamlet, again using park4night which took us a few km off the main road, into an area of very slightly higher ground and then suddenly, there was another castle. We are used to this now but still, it was a rather wonderful sight. The hamlet was apparently deserted and we found the spot at one end, next to a water tap hydrant and a tiny 16C bridge. In true Enid Blyton fashion we scrambled up the hill, to explore the ruined castle but found it had a huge iron gate barring our entry. We had to be content with scrambling around on the rocks and looking down to the hamlet. Below in the field we heard the bells of a well behaved flock of sheep, happily munching grass and not straying into neighbouring field...

A notice board at a beauty spot we visited had asked walkers not to feed the wildlife ‘as it may change their diet’. This doesn’t appear to have been a detriment to Herring gulls in the UK, as they seem to thrive on meals of fish & chips and ice cream. In fact I read today that they are a protected species and the nest a pair have made on top of a police car in Bridport cannot be disturbed until the young have fledged! At this beautiful lake where we camped overnight at another suggested ‘wild place’, a fisherman arrived at about the same time as the sun was warming our canvas, urging us to get up. He was ready to chat as soon as I emerged with my morning cuppa but was a little less engaging once I’d told him I was Inglese. Of course that was more a language issue than anything else and I reassured him that I could converse in Spanish, This isn’t exactly true but a Carp in England is a Carp in Spain so we were off to a good start. Fortunately for this friendly guy there were no not...

A few nights ago I was at my temperature limit trying to sleep. I think 28C is it. Maybe with training I could manage warmer but on a relaxing holiday I can just about drop-off at 28C. One night it had been much cooler but the temperature rose during the dark to 25C. That was a strange feeling. It was the beginning of an early summer heatwave from the Sahara, which even made the Radio 4 news “Andalucia is experiencing temperatures 10 degrees above the May average”. Yesterday morning at the 6 o’clock wee, the temperature was just 4C. I think that’s a record for a late Spring /early Summer trip. This is mainly due to our height which is around 950m, so similar to that of Scafell in the English Lake District   We didn’t mind. This is where we stayed. It was another unplanned stop for which we have the Park4night app to thank. This app will show you places to stop near you / a point on the map. These can range from proper campsites to on-street parking in a town. Anywhere really that p...

Driving in Spain is an absolute pleasure. The roads are very under utilised. We have usually plotted routes on Google Maps using the ‘avoid motorway’ option yet the roads offered are frequently straight and bypass villages so there isn’t an obligatory ‘slow down’ needed as there so often is in France. It’s just not possible to over emphasise the spectacular nature of the landscapes. There is nowhere with which to compare this country. So much of it is unable to be farmed and it is left in the raw, rocky, dramatic state. The gorges, outcrops, mountains, lakes and reservoirs are too numerous to mention. If one were to highlight on a map these regions it would be covered in coded colours. We dropped into yet another small town for morning coffee and unusually I went to the bar rather than staying seated outside. The tapas looked attractive and thought “why not?”, so I ordered one anchovy and one jamon.   The barman placed two of each on the plates, even though I reminded him in my bes...

The weather was about to wobble. Only a little. Forecast temperatures would drop to the mid teens to low 20s rather than mid 30s. So we continued our slow journey north, aiming to get to the Picos mountains to the west of Santander, for the last full holiday week. We planned to take our time as after all, the journey is the holiday. We love stopping in a small town or village to have a morning coffee. Now we are Spanish this is at about noon. These coffees don’t break the bank, as they are about €1.30, sometimes provided with a smile but often just with a grunt, at these owner operated bars. With little obvious marketing, they just get on with serving the locals and anyone else who happens to drop in. The  village centres can be stunning. This place is off the main route and we turned here to buy bread for lunch. Google maps is used to navigate but also to search for panaderia .  One advantage of a Landy or a VW Transporter camper over a large motorhome, is that you drive and...

This was parked by the local policeman who is ready to supervise another Church procession. Written on the side is ‘Local Cazorla’. Cazorla is the town. I wonder what would happen if we did the same in the UK? Many towns and villages have scenes constructed using tiles set into walls. These describe an aspect of their history. There may be as many as a dozen spread around the town or village. I’m not sure how they survive the weather but they are nice to look at and to try to translate. We arrived here in Cazorla for a couple of nights and we knew what to expect as we came four years ago. It’s an amazing town, hanging tightly on the flank of a small mountain range and looks spectacular in day but particularly by night. The funny thing is that our first walk into town on Saturday evening, coincided with the town’s procession in honour of their patron saint, Virgin de La Cabeza. I think this translates to Virgin of the Head. Hmmm not sure what happened there.  This procession was a l...