Shazza had not had the best of night’s sleep, due to the small quantity of Prawns, that she had eaten the previous evening, making their bid for freedom during the early hours of the morning 😲 She had not woken whilst I made my early morning coffee so I just left her to sleep, when she did finally awake she said that although tired, from the lack of sleep, strangely enough she actually felt a little better than she had done over the previous couple of days. This made me strongly suspect that she was actually suffering from some kind of stomach bug, rather than anything much more serious, although of course this didn’t explain her earlier symptoms of loss of appetite or fatigue 🤔 We both came to the conclusion that perhaps she should have starved herself for a little longer, her last meal being the Pizza, consumed just 24 hours earlier. “Do you feel well enough to take another longish car journey ?” I asked, “Where to” she asked, “Home” I said.

I should just say at this point that Shazza and I have never argued, I think that we had both learned, from our former lives and relationships, before we got together, that it actually serves no beneficial purpose. Don’t get me wrong, we are not Saints, we do have differences of opinions on a multitude of topics but, generally speaking, they are more often about things that are going on elsewhere and which do not directly involve ourselves or our lives, so external issues rather than personal matters, and on those occasions we usually just agree to disagree and leave it at that. Shazza is the first to admit that she tends to often be a bit more ‘Radical’ in her views and opinions and can often respond to things she see’s, reads or hears with ‘knee jerk’ decisions and personal opinions on matters, I on the other hand tend to be a little more ‘Contemplative’ and tend to think a little more about both sides of an issue before voicing a judgement or opinion 🤷‍♂️ I am of the belief that Governments, and Individuals, can always manipulate facts, figures and other information to support their own Agenda’s so, in my mind, you need to have access to ‘all’ the information in order to be able to make an ‘informed’ decision on whatever the subject matter happens to be. However, on this occasion I have to confess that I found myself losing a bit of patience with her, it reminded me of a statement several of my former military senior Officers had said about me in several annual appraisals, ‘Eric doesn’t suffer fools gladly’ and the truth is, twenty-two years after retiring from the military, I still don’t. I could not understand Shazza’s rationale in relation to her blatant refusal to get the professional medical advice or treatment that could identify her ill health and get some immediate treatment for it 🤷‍♂️ So, after a sensible discussion we came to a compromise, I would give her the next twenty-four hours and, if she didn’t get any better, or indeed, if her condition deteriorated, she agreed that we should seek immediate medical intervention, if she did not improve, but did not get any worse, we would go home from here where we would re-assess her condition and take any necessary appropriate medical action.

The thing was, Shazza did not feel strong enough, or confident enough to be very far away from bathroom facilities, to go out exploring the town or visiting the Alcazar, or even just relaxing around the pool area out in the fresh air, which I could certainly understand, and to be honest I would probably feel the same if the boot were on the other foot. I on the other hand couldn’t stay confined in a hotel room all day, so we agreed that I would go out by myself to explore these historic streets and alleyways, it would have been a shame not to now that we were here, but I said that I would leave visiting the Alcazar, in the hope that she would be fit enough so that we could do it together the following day. However, whilst I didn’t anticipate being out the whole day, I didn’t want to leave Shazza without some fresh supplies of bottled water, so I went to the supermarket first, about a ten minute walk away, she had given me specific instructions not to get her anything else, she probably correctly anticipated that I would buy her one of those pre-prepared salads that I know she quite enjoys, but in addition to the sparkling water, which is her personal preference, and some still water, I also purchased a mixture of some soft fruits, just in case, and which I would always eat if she didn’t.

I didn’t have any plan, in fact I didn’t even take the street plan, I had a tongue in my head if I needed directions, but half of the fun of exploring these historic old towns was getting lost. I just made my way towards the Plaza Mayor and would follow my nose from there. Initially, it did feel odd not having Shazza alongside me, making those constant ‘tutting’ noises every time I stopped to take a photograph, I afforded myself a smile, as she would certainly have been a doing a lot of tutting on this particular day 🤭

From the central Plaza there were lots of directions that I could have headed off in, but as I scanned the area, I saw a narrow road leading uphill, past the large church and equestrian statue, I thought that whilst my legs were still fresh, I would do the steps and uphill bits first.

Once inside the main part of this old town’s narrow cobbled streets it was just a maze of streets, around every corner there was another street, another view, another hill to climb, but I appreciated the shade that some of them provided. I did not see a lot of people, either residents of the houses or other tourists, just the odd one here and there, but everyone that I did come across were friendly enough, either with a verbal greeting, nod of the head or a smile. Sometimes I wasn’t sure wether I had already walked up, or down, the same street, but I just kept wandering and, wherever possible, walked in an upward direction, my logic being that I would have to come to the top at some point 🤷‍♂️

I kept walking, and clicking away, there was just so many beautiful and characterful streets and old buildings, churches, towers, thick walls, it didn’t take much for my imagination to start running riot, I could see this medieval fortication and its crowded busy streets, people, carts, horses and other livestock making their way to and from the market stalls in the central Plaza, I could feel the history ouzing out from every nook and cranny, what a story this walled town could tell me from over the centuries that it has existed, that is if I had the patience and was not a history heathen and so took the time to research it 🤔 but I do so like visualising my own version of events.

I finally reached the top, well the top of at least one part of this old town, for It was only when I started to wander, what I thought was downwards, did I begin to truly appreciate the vastness of this place, and soon was taking in an upwards direction again but I realised that I still had not, as yet, found the entrance to the Alcazar itself, which would have been the interior area of the castle fortress. I didn’t feel tired at all, in fact I felt exhilarated, this had got to be one of the best old medieval walled towns that I have ever visited and explored and this place would certainly take some beating and, as I was to discover, I hadn’t seen anywhere near all of it yet. I felt a little sad, because I knew that Shazza, if she had have been fit and well, would have really enjoyed this experience too, she may not be overly enthusiastic about visiting crumbling castles, but a medieval town that was still being lived in today, well she would have certainly thoroughly enjoyed wandering through the narrow cobbled streets and archways, the memories we would have taken away together from this place would have been very different from the one’s that sadly we will now actually have 🥺

By this time I began to realise that I was totally disorientated, I didn’t know which way I had come, or which way to head next, I just kept wandering up and along different cobbled streets, so I decided that if I just started to follow roads that went downhill that, at some point, I would get back to the central Plaza, again it seemed a logical deduction. But, what I had omitted to remember was that to get to the Plaza in the first place from the hotel, I had to walk in an upward direction, a fact that became quite evident a little later on 😳 Where was a local when you needed one, in fact, where was another human being coming to that, I hadn’t seen, or heard, another person for quite some time when I began to think about it 🤷‍♂️

I had been walking downhill for at least twenty minutes and still not reached the central Plaza, I was going to just keep walking downwards, it seemed the natural thing to do, but ‘Fate’ thankfully intervened, in the form of a woman with a full shopping basket who had appeared from an alleyway behind me. I asked her for directions to the Plaza Mayor and she pointed back, in the direction I had just walked from 🥺 I obviously looked confused so she gestured some directions with her hands, take a right turn then another right and I would find it. I thanked her, more than once, turned around and followed her directions.

The Plaza Cafe/Bars and restaurants were fairly busy and as I passed one, that had been closed the previous evening but was now open for business, I stopped to look at the menu that had been placed on a table at the pavement entrance. I became quite excited as amongst the starters it listed a cold tomato soup, one of Shazza’s favourites, and then amongst the selection of mains, under ‘Vegetarian’ options, it listed a selection of grilled vegetables, ‘Yes !’ I heard myself shout under my breath, finally, a proper ‘Plant Based’ meal for Shazza to enjoy, if and when she was up for it. It was busy with people eating formal type lunches, rather than Tapas or Sandwiches, so I made my way across to the Cafe/Bar where we had eaten the previous evening, as I just wanted a nice cold beer after my long walk and explorations, I hadn’t really thought about food and, although I hadn’t eaten since the previous evening, I wasn’t actually feeling hungry, but that was quite normal for me, god knows what I would be eating for dinner this evening, I thought to myself, that would depend very much on how Shazza was feeling I suppose 🤔

Sometimes, unless you sit and take time to observe your surroundings, you can miss some nice intricacies of what is actually around you. So whilst I was partaking of what I truly considered to be my well earned refreshments, and unexpected but very tasty Tapas snacks, I was doing a spot of people watching, as you do, and my eyes also started to scan around at some of the buildings positioned around the Plaza.

Sat, alone with my thoughts, I realised that I still hadn’t found the ‘official’ entrance to the Alcazar on my explorations, I would need to check Google Maps once I returned to the hotel. Then, as if the word ‘Hotel’ had rang an alarm bell in my mind, I started to feel a little guilty about having left Shazza alone for so long, I had been gone for a good three hours, maybe even a little more, what if she had taken a turn for the worse whilst I had been out enjoying myself ? What if she was too ill to call for help ? She had asked me to put the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the room door as I had left so that the cleaner would not go in ……….😲 I finished my glass of wine, paid the bill and made my way back to the hotel with a bit of a pace in my step, all the while my mind playing worst case scenarios in my brain.

”Did you have a nice time ?” she said, as I entered the room. She was dressed and sat up on the bed with her iPad. “How have you been ?” I asked, “I have had a shower but I felt a bit dizzy” she replied. I told her that that was probably due to a combination of spending a lot of time laying down and also not eating. She told me the Diarrhoea and Sickness had quelled and she had been drinking a lot of water but hadn’t risked eating anything. She was certainly a lot more conversational although she obviously still looked pale and gaunt, I told her about finding the restaurant with the menu that offered something that she could eat, if and when she felt up to eating again, but she said she would probably not risk eating anything now until the following day. “Do you think you may be up just for a little walk a bit later on, just so you can have a bit of fresh air and stretch your legs ?” I asked, “Maybe’ we will see” she responded, although not very convincingly. “The England men’s football team are playing an International qualifying match tonight and it is on TV” she announced. Now that was a positive sign, we both like watching the football and if she was up for watching it she must be feeling a little brighter I thought to myself, I have to admit, I felt hugely relieved as she did seem to be showing the first proper signs of being on the mend. However, during my explorations I had also had plenty of time and space to think, and I had decided to scrap any of my plans about travelling anywhere else when we left here on the Thursday, other than just getting Shazza home that was. I made myself a nice hot cuppa, Shazza didn’t want one, and I spent the next half an hour or so burning her ear about what I had seen, she laughed when I told her about getting lost a couple of times and having to ask for directions and me still not finding the entrance to the Alcazar. “Don’t worry, we will work it out before ‘we’ go, there will be an official entrance where ‘we’ have to buy the tickets” she said, which was a really positive sign as I picked up on the double use of the word ‘we’ in her sentence 🤗 As the afternoon moved to early evening, I didn’t want to push her on the going out for a walk and she didn’t mention it, so I said that I would pop back out to the supermarket to get myself something to bring back and eat in the room, she just said “Okay”, so that had answered the question that I hadn’t asked 😉 I returned with a couple of small baguette sized rolls, a pack of ham, cheese slices, tomato and pack of crisps, and some extra bottles of water to replace the one’s she had consumed. I also purchased a bottle of Coke for Shazza, now wether it is just a myth I do not know, but many years ago someone had told me that if you let it go flat, then drink it, it replaces the ‘electrolytes’ that your body has lost when you have suffered with excess loss of bodily fluids, it was worth a go I thought to myself 🤷‍♂️

In our hotel room we had a small two-seat settee and a small round table, so I sat there, prepared my rolls and ate them, I did ask Shazza if she wanted some, although I already knew the answer, but I felt a bit guilty of eating in front of her. Later, we sat together on the bed and watched the football on my iPad, it was a good result for England, which always makes us feel good too, but by the time the game ended it was nearly 11pm so Shazza got back under the covers and went to sleep. I sat up and just scrolled through stuff on my iPad, it was far too early for me to go to sleep, but I felt a lot more settled and relieved now that Shazza appeared to be on the mend.

To be continued…………….

Hasta Luego mi Amigos

Shazza and I have been together as a couple for the best part of twenty years, married for eighteen of them and, as you will know by now if you have read my rambles from the beginning, we have been virtually joined at the hip for the vast majority of our lives together, especially living in a Motorhome, on a full time basis, for ten of those year’s. We have always done everything together, although we do have our own individual interests, but they don’t involve us spending any lengthy periods of time away from each other, other than perhaps separate rooms, which, for some reading this, may seem a little bit of a claustrophobic relationship, but it continues to work for us. So, as you may well imagine, we know pretty much everything there is to know about each other, our individual likes and dislikes, quirks, habits, irritations, the ability to read each other’s non-verbal communications like body language and facial expressions, and certainly when one or other of us is not quite firing on all cylinders 🤔

For several days now I have known that Shazza hadn’t been quite herself, some things were blatantly obvious, her lack of appetite was the most obvious and most concerning, Shazza would normally eat Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner and would certainly let me know in no uncertain terms, especially when we were living our mobile nomadic lifestyle, if we went past any of those key timelines in the day, although more recently, since living here in Spain, with her enjoying a more leisurely start to most days, Breakfast and Lunch have become combined into ‘Brunch’, although she would still normally have a light snack, usually a piece of fruit, in the afternoon, just to put her on until Dinner 🤭 Another thing that had concerned me was that she became ‘fatigued’ much quicker, Shazza is generally a bundle of energy, always doing something, never sitting still for a moment but, on this trip, she has run out of steam very quickly when we have been on our walks, although I had put some of that down to either some of the uphill walks we have undertaken, Shazza isn’t good with long steep ascents, but also the heat and sometimes the distance we had walked which were probably also contributory factors. Shazza has a tremendous amount of personal grit and determination, driven primarily by the fact that she thinks that because she is nine-years my junior that she should be able to match, or sometimes, even better, whatever I can manage to do physically, silly woman, she should know by now that she could never outmatch a Super-Hero like me 😂

Anyway, as you know, on this trip and for several days now, I have been consistently asking her if she is okay, knowing something was obviously not quite right with her, and that wasn’t down to just a gut feeling, but because I know her so well (cue for a song there somewhere 🤷‍♂️), but she kept insisting that she was fine, I could tell by her tone of reply that she was beginning to get irritated with me continually asking the same question every single morning, afternoon and evening, but of course, that didn’t deter me from keep asking the question on a daily basis 🤭

So, when she said to me, “Before we plan a route I need to talk to you”, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up on end 😳 The long and the short of it was that Shazza finally admitted that all was not well with her, in my mind I heard myself saying, “No shit Sherlock !”, however I refrained from saying it out aloud, and after she had told me the issue I certainly don’t think it would have helped matters if I had have done 🤔 Although she said that she did not actually feel unwell, as in she did not have cold or flu or any other immediately obvious condition. She explained that she had not only lost her usual regular appetite, but to make matters worse, when she did eat anything substantial she could not keep it in 🤮💩 So that explained why she had not been wanting to stop and eat when we were on our long drives, and more recently on our walks. Even when we did go out and eat in the evenings, she had been uncomfortable and glad to get back to the room, knowing that the contents of the meal would not remain in her stomach for very long. Additionally, she had not been sleeping well most nights and so had been waking up tired, so she had been quite happy when the rainy day we experienced kept us confined in our room for the majority of the day. She said that she thought that it was just a stomach bug she had picked up at the start of the trip and that it would resolve itself after a couple of days, but so far it hadn’t, and the combination of things had started to leave her quite fatigued.

I have to confess that I was a little annoyed, not angry, perhaps more a case of irritated rather than actually annoyed, that she had not said anything on all of the occasions that I had asked her 🤷‍♂️ Had I have known I would have just amended what sort of activities we did and ensured that we were never too far away from the ‘facilities’ she may have required at short notice, or to be honest, just cut the trip short and done it another time 🤷‍♂️ She said that she was hoping that by not eating for a couple of days that it may have passed, quite literally I assumed 🤭 and that all would have been well in her world again. However, she also didn’t want to spoil the trip as she knew that I had been looking forward to it for quite some time. I could sympathise with her, we have all been there at some point with a ‘Delli Belly’ and, when we have, the best place to be is close to bathroom facilities, and preferably our own. My immediate reaction once she had finished her ‘Confession’ was to place my hand on top of her head and say “Bless You My Child”, and then send her away to say seven Hail Mary’s, but I really didn’t want her anywhere near the ‘font’ in her current condition.

However, in all seriousness, my immediate reaction was to get her to a doctor, just so she could get checked out and to make sure that it wasn’t anything more serious or complicated, and to perhaps get her some medication to relieve the symptoms, but she was having none of that. Shazza has always been an obstinate so and so when it comes to going to Doctor’s, in fact the last time she went to see one was when we lived and worked in Ilfracombe in Devon, when she had a ‘Thyroid’ issue, we left there four year’s ago. So my next suggestion was to get her straight back home, we could be there within 8-10 hours, I would do the driving and we could stop whenever she needed to, but, she was also extremely reluctant to do that, saying she would probably be okay in a couple more days 🤷‍♂️ She also said that she would feel guilty about bringing our road trip to a rather abrupt end, especially if within the next day or so she got better. I told her that Galicia, Asturias and the Picos de Europas were not actually going to go anywhere in the near future, well to the best of my knowledge that was, unless we get a stray drone from Russia or missile from Iran 😂 But neither were they at the other side of the world, but within only a relatively short ten hour, or even less, drive away, so in all reality we could come back here anytime we wanted, there was no ‘Use By’ date on when we could, or could not, do this particular road trip. In the end I decided to let her make the decision for herself, to tell me what it was that ‘she’ wanted to do. She suggested that rather than head any further North, we could make a start East, the way we had come, back towards home, but depending on how she was feeling, maybe even stopping at the Picos, if the weather was good. “Are you saying that you would risk doing a hike in the mountains ?” I asked, already knowing what her answer would be, “Probably not” she sheepishly replied, “Well I don’t want to go on a hike in the mountains without you, we have always had our adventures together and I am not changing that now” I said, in a tone that told her that the subject was not up for debate. She must really have not been feeling that well as she offered no argument, I must remember to also put that verbal ‘victory’ in my diary 😂 I told her to go and drink her coffee and read her book and I would sit down and come up with a plan for her to consider and agree.

Although I may have sounded a little unsympathetic, even flippant, in my earlier comments in this ramble, in truth, I was really quite concerned because Shazza rarely takes ill, it is me that is generally the ‘Sick Note’ in this relationship, what with recurring Kidney Stones and the Detached Retina, although, in my defence, I have been trouble free, well medically speaking at least, for over two and a half year’s now, so let’s just hope that the ‘Dark Forces’ are not currently within listening distance 🙄 So when I planned the route, which was certainly going to be heading in a homewards direction, a mere ten and a half hour drive away, in the knowledge that we have covered these sort of distances many times in the past without any problems whatsoever, although that travel time was not taking into consideration any stops en-route, but I also wanted to take into consideration Shazza’s comfort, a long drive in a car is not ideal at the best of times, if only we still had the ‘Little Fokker’, I thought to myself, which as you know, was not for the first time on this trip 🙄 Not only could Shazza have spent the journey in the comfort of the rear double bed, if she so required, and yes !! I do know, that that would be illegal by the letter of the law, but what the eye doesn’t see and all that stuff and, the unwritten rule of ‘you do what you have to do’ in such circumstances 🤷‍♂️ Plus, we would have had the added convenience, if you will excuse the pun, of having readily available, our own on-board bathroom, although come on, I am not that sympathetic, as I would have made her be the one to empty the toilette cassette at the end of the journey 😂

However, and being the eternal optimist that I tend to be, and based on the fact that she was more ‘Uncomfortable’ with her situation, rather than being at death’s door, there was the possibility that in fact she could start to get better if it was just a tummy bug. I knew that if she did, she would have felt really guilty at cutting the trip short, so I looked at potential opportunities on the route where we could perhaps stop, either for a night, or perhaps a little more. The problem was of course, that sticking to the fastest main routes, all ‘Toll Free’ motorways, meant that the places we would pass where locations we had previously visited 🤷‍♂️ The more I researched the route, the further South I began to look, that meant the longer that leg of the drive would be 😤 How many times have I said in my rambles over the year’s that patience is a virtue, and well okay, although even the route I had planned may have involved driving a little longer than I would really have liked for Shazza’s sake, six and a half hours, and would involve a thirty or forty minute detour off the main route, but, thinking positively, if Shazza were to start feeling better then, the place that I had found, would be of interest to the both of us and actually would probably also be a great way to end this rather unexpected road trip 🤗

Day 8 – Vigo – Trujillo

Trujillo is a town in the Province of Caceres in Western Spain. The Castillo (Castle or Alcazar) a medieval stone fortress, sits atop a hill overlooking the town centre. The ‘Coria Museum’ has displays on the regional links between Spain and Latin America. The life of conquistador ‘Francisco Pizarro’, who conquered the Inca Empire, is traced at the ‘Casa Museo de Pizarro’ his former home. An equestrian statue dedicated to him stands in the Plaza Mayor.

Thank you for the above Mr Wikipedia 😴 Actually, looking at numerous on-line images of the town actually got me quite excited, this looked like a really old historical place, narrow cobbled streets and alleyways to get lost in, a large central Plaza Mayor with a wide assortment of Cafe/Bars and Restaurants, Lots of Churches, Museums and this time, an impressive ‘Alcazar’ that actually looked worthy of looking around, even though this one had an admission fee, that fact alone probably was a good indication of it being very worthwhile to visit, but you can be assured that I will let you know if it wasn’t 😁 And for those of you reading this who are Motorhomers, there is a serviced Aire located at the Bullring and within easy walking distance of the town which also has, two Supermarkets, ELequerc and a DIA.

Shazza was still awake by the time I had finished making my plan and so I briefly ran through it with her, she gave me her nod of approval and asked if I wanted her to seek out some nearby accommodation. “Aha” I said, in a smart ass sort of way, “I have already found somewhere, it is within ten minutes walking distance of the ‘Plaza Mayor’, it is a former Convent and it has a small splash pool with sunbeds. The only downside though is that each day at 6am you have to attend morning prayers and an evening mass at 7pm” 😂 She grinned, “I am sure you will enjoy being amongst all those dirty habits” she said, with a chuckle 😳 humour huh, she can’t be feeling all that ill, I thought to myself. She went on-line and pre-booked the hotel for a three night’s stay, without any why’s or wherefore’s, so another ‘victory’ entry for my diary me thinks, best I take full advantage of this situation whilst I can 🤭

I awoke early and having packed my bags the previous evening, apart from my wash bag, I was raring to get going after my morning coffee. Shazza didn’t look so good though, probably the worst she had been on the trip so far, she looked quite pale and gaunt in her face, I guessed that the lack of nutrition was beginning to take its toll, I was actually quite worried about her, so much so that I suggested perhaps going to reception to see if we could stay an extra night and to enquire as to the location of the nearest Doctor or Health Clinic, at least we were covered these days under the Spanish State Healthcare system, however, Miss Obstinate was still having none of it, “Give me half an hour to get myself sorted and then let’s get off” she said 🤷‍♂️

Our timing to depart Vigo turned out to be just right as the weather had turned, no sunshine, just a sheet of grey everywhere, so it would likely be a slow journey out of Galicia, fortunately at Trujillo it was forecast to be between 27-30 degrees( c) by the time we arrived later that afternoon, but I had already decided in my own mind on a Plan B, if she kept deteriorating, and that was to just head towards home in the knowledge that the Costa del Sol public hospital, our main local hospital, was on our route 🤔

In all the time we have been together, and all the road journey’s that we have been on together, short or long, in a car or the Motor Home, Shazza has never once fallen asleep whilst being the passenger, or whilst being the driver I should perhaps also hasten to add 🤭 So I knew she was not feeling at all well, for as soon as we had driven out of Vigo and had got on to the Motorway, she reclined her seat, curled up and fell fast asleep, I did mention she was actually not driving didn’t I 😂 The roads were, as usual, generally very quite and the miles just passed by, my head was full of thoughts, wondering what could be the cause of Shazza’s sudden turn of bad health, could she have contracted the new strain of COVID ? That was very possible and we know that it is still out there, throughout Europe, although nowhere near as bad as during the pandemic, we have been using elevators in hotels and we don’t know how well the hotel rooms are being cleaned these days 🤷‍♂️ However, it could also be a bad case of Gastroenteritis ? The general symptoms are pretty much the same. But then again, I was okay, so surely, as we had been together, eaten much of the same, I too would have suffered similar symptoms ? My mind then wandered into a thought where I didn’t really want it to go, the worst case scenario, there was a history of Cancer, Shazza’s mum, having suffered twice with Bowel Cancer, the latest as recently as 2021, she had fortunately recovered, but I knew that this would also be playing on Shazza’s mind, and it was the sudden and quite prolonged periods of fatigue that were of concern, although neither of us had mentioned it. I attempted to clear such negative thoughts from my mind and attempted to focus on the destination I was heading towards, but that dark thought remained irritatingly at the back of my mind 🥺 We are both very conscious of the fact that we are ageing, and that in itself brings about the bodies own natural progressive deterioration, and reduced levels of immunity to bacterial infections, but we know that we cannot prevent that. However, these days we do try to maintain a healthy diet, although Shazza is much more disciplined at that than myself, we both try to keep ourselves physically active and relatively fit and just generally try to maintain a good lifestyle, although we also realise that no matter what we do, there is no magic bullet to prevent the natural ageing process. We also know that there are things outside our own influence that we just have to accept as a risk to our own health, we cannot wrap ourselves up in cotton wool, so normal everyday activities bring you into contact with other’s, supermarket shopping, having coffee’s or meals in public establishments, visiting public venues or events, so in all reality we just have no way of knowing who we come into contact with may be suffering, knowingly or otherwise, with bacterial infections, cold’s, flu, covid etc. I am smiling inwardly to myself as I am writing these words, for it is now many days since I had those silent inner thought’s in the car whilst I was driving, it’s amazing the directions that your mind can take you in especially when you are confined and have no other means of distraction, like a passenger chitter chattering away 🙄

Periodically Shazza would awaken, as she shifted to get comfortable in her seat, “Are you okay” she would ask me, “I’m fine” I would respond, and give her what I hoped was a reassuring smile, “But how are you doing ? Do you want me to stop at the next services ?” I asked, but the response was always “No, but, if you need to” before she drifted back into, what I was guessing, was probably only a semi-conscious state. I had left the A52 motorway behind, and had already travelled along the A631, passing the village Cafe we had stopped at on the way through to Vigo nearly a week ago, and then finally, after around three hours, I got on to the very familiar A66 motorway which would take us all the way South. So deep in my thoughts had I been, that I do not remember when the sun had actually come out, we were heading South, a little more inland now and running parallel with the Eastern border of Portugal towards Central Spain. The views of the surrounding countryside opened up and I could once again see for miles in all directions, it helped to give me other things to focus my attention on which I was grateful for, I made one stop for fuel and took the opportunity to take a brief comfort stop, Shazza also took the opportunity to use the facilities and stretch her legs, but she didn’t want anything to eat or drink so I just continued to drive on. To be honest I don’t tend to eat very much, I will have a Tostado when we make a stop on our usual morning walks when we are at home, but then I generally do not eat again until my evening meal, or, if we do occasionally have a proper lunch, instead of dinner, then I don’t generally eat anything else in the evening, perhaps a biscuit or two with my evening cuppa. Some critics will say that is not healthy, but I have been like that for many years, I eat generally only when I feel hungry, or if something really tantalises my taste buds and, so far, I haven’t withered away yet 😁 I had a bottle of water in the car so that I could remain hydrated, but all in all, I was quite enjoying the actual drive and, at times, it did take me back to the days that we did this very route, going both South and North, in our Motor Home, and that unlocked memories of the many places we had visited and parked up, places where we had wild-camped or stayed on Motorhome Aires, it all seemed an eternity away from where we are now and the lifestyle we are currently enjoying.

It was nice to see the appearance of the name of the city of ‘Caceres’ on the road signs, although still a good hour’s drive away, but I knew we were getting closer to our destination. Even though we would deviate from our Southerly direction to travel further East and inland, it would be on another toll free motorway, the A58, which would take us to within 2Km of Trujillo.

I remember saying ‘WOW’ out loud when I got my first clear view of our destination, Shazza woke from her half slumber and all I could say to her was “Look at that !”, she sat up and looked at the view, “Very Nice” she said, in a less than convincing tone. “Do you want to pull over and let me drive in to the town” she asked. I knew she would be a little concerned about me driving through potential narrow streets, “Well you have done all the driving so you must be tired” she said, I knew it wasn’t the tiredness that concerned her but more the slightly depleted vision in my eye. “I think I will be okay I said, I will just take it slowly and anyway I don’t think you are well enough to drive anyway ?” I replied. She said she was feeling a little better and that she needed something else to concentrate on, so I pulled over and we changed positions. As it was, traffic in the small town was quiet and the hotel was easy to locate.

The old gentleman receptionist greeted us warmly and got us checked in quite promptly before advising us how to get around to the rear hotel garage parking area, where we had pre-booked a space.

Although much of the interior had been modified for its use now as a hotel, it was still quite evident that it had been a former Convent, it had that old religious look about it, the rooms were not as modern as the one we had left in Vigo, but it was perfectly clean, their were two wide beds, side by side and we had a nice en-suite bathroom, a large window that overlooked the pool area, air-conditioning, a mini-bar with soft drinks, an LCD TV and free Wi-Fi, everything that we needed.

Shazza actually looked much better than she had earlier that morning, so I made us both a nice hot cuppa and whilst she checked her iPad for any Emails, or messages on her Social media accounts, I relaxed on the bed from the long drive, it had taken us just a little over 7 hours with just the one re-fuel and comfort stop, but now my eyes began to feel really heavy, it was 4pm, and I could feel a ‘Siesta’ coming on 😴 I only dropped off for an hour and when I awoke Shazza was reading a book on her kindle, she still looked gaunt and pale, but certainly a lot better than she had done, “You must be starving by now” she said to me, “I am getting ready for some dinner, but it’s a bit early yet, will you be up for going out a little later to find somewhere to eat ?” I replied. “I am a bit hungry now, but I still feel a bit cautious about eating” she said, “But I will come out to get some fresh air and I also need to stretch my legs, but you need a proper meal today”, she said. We agreed that we would not spend too long out this evening, just a bite to eat then back, and then, hopefully, after Shazza had got what I hoped would be a restful night’s sleep we would do some exploring of the town the following day, but we did now have two full days, so we didn’t have to rush around, we could just take things easy to see how she got on, and hopefully she would be able to start to eat something more nutritious and substantial again, even if it was a Coffee and Tostado to start with in the morning and then perhaps just something light for her lunch.

We both got showered and changed, the receptionist had given us a street map and given us directions towards the Plaza Mayor, although to be honest their were eateries all over the place, hidden amongst the maze of narrow streets, but the Plaza Mayor was where the majority were clumped together. Although when we first drove into the town it was along a modern street, our hotel was right on a corner that led directly into the old part of town and so, as we walked out that evening, we were soon dwarfed in the narrow streets by tall old stone built buildings, lots of the buildings in these streets were still residential houses, or apartments, but some of them had also been renovated and converted into modern day shops, but without losing that external ambience of that older period. Even with the aid of the street map we got confused, their were just too many alleyways and twists and turns which were not always reflected on the map by the person who drew it 🙄 I didn’t want to wander around aimlessly this particular evening for Shazza’s sake, as some of the narrow roads were on a bit of an incline and I could see her struggling, so I attempted to enlist the assistance of Google, but in these narrow streets the GPS was struggling to pinpoint our exact location, so I just stopped somebody and asked them which direction to the Plaza Mayor. It was literally a couple of minutes walk away from where we were, but had we have kept going in the direction we were headed we would have missed it as we needed to take a right turn 🤷‍♂️ the pavement Cafe/Bars and Restaurants were fairly busy, but not crowded, and after quickly looking at a couple of establishments menu’s we made our selection and were shown to a table. Once again though, there was little choice for Shazza’s palate, why do none of these places serve Vegetable dishes ? Of course she could have ordered another Salad, but where are the Jacket or boiled potatoes, the Broccoli, Cauliflower, Green Beans, Carrots etc. which are widely available from all the supermarkets and independent grocers, I mean Spain is a major exporter of all of this type of produce. Anyway she settled for a dish of Prawns cooked in Garlic and Olive Oil, I had a much wider choice and went for the ‘Beef Cheeks’ in a red wine sauce 😋😋 we also ordered a basket of bread. Whilst mine came with a side order of chips, although I would have preferred mashed or boiled potatoes, Shazza’s came with no side dish whatsoever, which, as it turned out, was a good thing on this occasion as she only managed to eat less than a quarter of her meal, about four smallish prawns 😲 I wasn’t complaining, I devoured my own course, and the whole basket of bread before finishing off her Prawns 🤭 Shazza had also settled for bottled water, but having seen her suffering over the last few days, I of course needed no excuse to maintain my strict regime of Anti-Covid Vacinnes 🤭🍷🍷 I of course knew that Shazza had only come out with me that evening so that I would get a proper meal, had she have decided not to, she knew that I would have just called in at a local shop and grabbed a sandwich, or something quick, to take back to eat in the hotel room, I could of course have gone out by myself for dinner, but who wants to eat out alone and be sat like a ‘Billy No Mates’ 🤷‍♂️

Shazza seemed fairly ‘chirpy’ as we wandered back through the streets to the hotel, compared to how she had been, so I was hoping that she was now coming through the other side of whatever it was that had made her feel so ill, so at least now she would be able to have a good couple of days rest here to build her strength up again before we decided what we were going to do next, we still had a couple of weeks in which to head elsewhere if we wanted to, that was if she was feeling much better. Now I have to confess that at this point, with Shazza looking and sounding a lot better, I couldn’t help myself, this ‘Going With The Flow’ business just does my head in, so that night whilst Shazza slept, I got my head back into the route maps and started formulating some alternative options 😂 There were lots of ways we could go with lots of places to explore, however, I decided on three options.

We could continue to head East, although that would also involve heading just a little North again, to the town of ‘Toledo’, somewhere that Shazza had previously said she would like to visit, from there we could stay on the Eastern side of Spain and just head South, through the Sierra Nevada National Park on our way home. Alternatively, we could head West, cross the border into Portugal and head for the town of ‘Elvas’, which is another place we have not as yet visited. After that we could travel South, following the course of the ‘Rio Guadiana’. The Guadiana is an international river defining a long stretch of the border between Portugal and Spain, effectively separating ‘Extremadura’ and ‘Andalusia’ on the Spanish side, from ‘Alentejo’ and the ‘Algarve’ on the Portuguese side. The river’s basin extends from La Mancha and the eastern portion of Extremadura to the southern provinces of the Algarve; the river and its tributaries flow from east to west, then south through Portugal to the border towns of ‘Vila Real de Santo Antonio’ (Portugal), which is a lovely town that we have stayed in several times during our motorhoming days and which looks across the river to ‘Ayamonte’ (Spain), another lovely town that we have visited on several occasions, you can take a small ferry between the two (15 minutes), then the river flows out into the Gulf of Cádiz. Following the route of this river would take us through some beautiful scenic landscapes, wine growing regions and a whole host of small Portuguese villages and, whilst we have done some parts of this route in the Motorhome, we had not followed it all the way South to the Eastern Algarve. From there we would cross the border back into Spain and head, from the Atlantic side of the coast, to our home on the Mediterranean side, only a couple of hours journey. The third and final option was the least appealing one, which was to just leave Trujillo and head straight home 🥺 I decided though, that for now it would probably be best to just keep all of these alternative plans to myself 😉

To be continued…………………………

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, La Vida Es Buena

We were not late back to the hotel from the Mexican Restaurant, around 10:30pm, but Shazza said she was tired and went straight to bed, I was still wide awake, as usual, so I decided to see what I could find out about the Island we were going to visit the following day. I have included some screenshots of the information that I discovered below, for a very good reason, which will become very obvious later in this ramble. But I was quite excited by what I had read, so I would certainly be packing the beach towel and swimwear in the rucksack the following morning, I still didn’t have any intentions of going for a swim, but a spot of sunbathing on a pristine white sand Island beach, well it would have to be done really and I certainly had to have some photo’s of that to include in the ramble 🤭 It also looked as if, finally, we may also just manage to get that nice spot for a lunch too 🤗

Whilst Shazza was drinking her coffee the following morning I let her read the information that I had found the previous evening. I suggested that if she wasn’t up for another walk we could always just drive there in the car, as their was free parking on the Island, however, she said that she still wanted to do the walk, I re-packed the rucksack, she suggested that we should still take some snacks, fruit and water as we could always bring them back, to have on another day, if we didn’t eat or drink them.

We looked at the map and agreed where we would park, which would entail starting on a part of the route that we had actually already walked the previous day, which would be at the start of the long promenade, although there were several car parks to choose from, but the one we selected looked easy enough to get to from the hotel, we would park directly at the beach in an official car park and not just on the side of the road and, the car parking was completely ‘free’, and you all know just how much I like that word 😂

The thing about Google, is that it does not account for gradients, or for what pace individuals may walk, so when I checked the actual route it showed that it would only be a little under an hour’s walk, from where we would park the car to our intended destination, but all in all it looked as though the actual route would be very easy, and quite effortless to the ‘Illa de Toralla’.

Shazza elected to do the driving, there are times when she does actually prefer me to be the passenger so that I can do the navigation through towns, although Google does the directions, I am pretty good at reading the on-screen mapping so that I am able to give her some advance notifications of which junction to take, or how far it is before a turn off, or which lane to be in, and it also helps being an extra pair of eyes watching other traffic and suicidal pedestrians 😳 However, it was quite easy as it was a Sunday morning and their was very little traffic on the roads, also, we didn’t have to go anywhere near the central part of the city which may have been a little busier. It was a beautiful sunny morning, already quite warm and we had our fingers crossed that yesterday’s weird band of mist would not be present again today.

We parked up, there were already quite a lot of other cars already there, but there was still plenty of space. As we commenced our walk we could already see quite a few people on the beach, the promenade itself was certainly a lot busier than it had been the previous day, but we also soon discovered the reason for that, and it had nothing to do with not having the previous day’s misty conditions. We just kept walking, although it was actually more of a leisurely stroll, and we were just enjoying the warmth and the views, then we came to the reason for the large number of people that early on a Sunday morning, the street market, which occupied the whole area of one of the seafront car parks, however we didn’t stop, one street market is much the same as any other. We had not walked down as far as this on the previous day and we were quite surprised at just how long this promenade actually was, we had seen one open air swimming pool and a basketball park, the previous day, but their were even more play areas, food and drink vendors and another, more impressive open air swimming pool, although nobody, as yet, at this time of the morning was taking advantage of it, we made the assumption that it wasn’t a heated one, although we didn’t know that for certain, but their was no way that we were going to prove, or disprove, our assumption 🥶

When we did finally reach the end of the long promenade we came to a bit of a dead end and the coastal path did not continue from that point 🤔 We did have a choice, Google maps was instructing us to cut across to the main road and continue to follow it, until it would eventually bring us back towards the seashore and another long stretch of beach, or, we could have chosen to divert off the route down on to the beach to see wether we could just walk along it, the mapping wasn’t very clear though, would we come to another river or estuary that we would be unable to cross and then have to walk all the way back 🤷‍♂️ We certainly didn’t want to risk having to do that, so we agreed to just keep following the Google directions.

Now you may recall me commenting about Google Maps, in fact several times over the course of these current travel rambles, particularly about it not showing gradients, and I continue to mention it for very good reason. In the main, there was a good flattish pavement that ran alongside the main road that we now found ourselves walking along, which took us through a couple of small villages, passed houses, shops that were closed, some because it was a Sunday but other’s that looked a bit more permanent, we walked past a large sporting arena, where lots of youngsters, aged we guessed between 6-7, who were spread across several tennis courts, were being coached by Adults, the next generation of Grand Slam Champions we mused, but it was good to see them doing something physically active over this lovely sunny weekend, and not just stuck with their heads looking down at screens on electronic devices, totally oblivious to everything else going on around them, an activity that has spread these days to all generations of folk, and yes that does include ourselves 😳 But we do sometimes laugh when we see quite elderly folk, seemingly tottering along the pavements talking to themselves, year’s ago that behaviour would have seen them taken away by men in white coats 😂, but when we get closer and pass them we see the tell tale signs of earphone cables, or wireless earbuds, in their ears, as they chatter away to someone on the other end, “Don’t laugh, that’ll be you in a couple of years time” Shazza says to me, “I doubt it, I don’t have any friends to talk to” I reply, anticipating a bit of sympathy, but I should have known better, “That’s true” she said, cruelly followed by a laugh 😲

We crossed a bridge across a wide river that ran down to the sea, wide enough at least to have prevented us from traversing it, had we have opted to have taken the beach route 😲 “We made the right choice there” Shazza commented, “We certainly did, especially when you think how far we have just walked since leaving the promenade, it would have been a pain to have had to backtrack” I said, in a thankful tone. Sometimes it pays to just follow directions, I thought to myself. However, once we had crossed that bridge, the road and pavement bent around to the right and proceeded to take us up a steep hill, “This has certainly got the heart pumping” I said to Shazza, unsurprisingly she gave no response but just kept trudging on. At, what we thought would be the top, the road bent around to the left and continued in an upward direction, but the pavement disappeared and we had to walk on an uneven and potholed hard shoulder, fortunately the road was not that busy. It felt a longer distance than it actually was and soon we started to descend back to beach and sea level, we cut across a small dirt car park that had a sign prominently stating that Caravans and Camper Vans were prohibited, I still tend to notice these sort of things as I can still imagine being in our own van and finding rare opportunities like this to park up for a night. However, although there were restrictions on this beach side of the road, we noted that directly across from it was another dirt car park which had several medium sized (7m) Motor Homes parked up, it looked a bit ‘lumpy’ but you could have made do for a night, or perhaps two 🤔 We re-joined the sandy coastal footpath through a lightly pine forested area which provided some welcome shade from the rapidly increasing heat and we could see our destination and the bridge that gave access to it. As we approached the bridge, to what we thought would be our final destination, on the beach, on the mainland side, there were proper small five-a-side goalposts set up with a game in progress, although this was no five-a-side match as there were at least twenty individuals having a kick-around. As we got closer we could see that these were not youths but mainly adult males, of an age group that the Spanish class as ‘Seniors’, but their game was being played at the normal speed and not at a walking pace, another reason perhaps that there is longevity in these parts which obviously isn’t just due to the healthy Mediterranean Diet, or maintaining a strict daily Anti-Covid Vaccine regime.

As we approached the other side of the bridge we could see a security barrier across the road and a man, in a uniform, in a security hut 🤷‍♂️ There was a sturdy metal barred security pedestrian gate but it was locked. I sauntered across to the security hut, the guard stood up and I could see he was wearing a gun 😲 “Buenas Dias” I said, in a cheerful manner with a smile on my face, “How can I help you ?” He said in perfect English, ‘Why do I even bother’ I thought to myself 🤷‍♂️ I explained that we had walked from Vigo to come and visit the Island for a couple of hours. He told us that it was not possible as the Island was Private and only for residents 🤔 I explained that on-line it said that it was open to visitor’s, but he just re-iterated, although not in an unfriendly manner, that it was a Privately owned Island. I was in no position to argue, after all he was the one with the gun 😲 We were both extremely disappointed, and a little irritated, I mean we had read up on the place before coming here, hence the reason I have included the screenshots at the beginning of this ramble, which you can see clearly indicated that it was open to visitor’s 🤷‍♂️

I said to Sharon that this looked suspicious, perhaps the Island had been taken over by a very wealthy individual, or a corporation, for unscrupulous reasons, like you see in the James Bond Movies 🤷‍♂️ In fact, as we were walking away a big expensive luxury looking car arrived, with blacked out windows, as the electric rear passenger window came partially down, so as the guard could identify the occupant, I am certain the old white-haired passenger looked a lot like ‘Blofeld’ and, he had a white fluffy Persian cat sat on his knee 😲 Or perhaps I was letting my imagination run away with me 🤭 As we returned across the bridge we looked down to see a person in a black wetsuit swimming under the bridge towards the beach, and no, I was certainly not imagining that. I told Shazza that we should hurry up and get back to the mainland side of the bridge before the explosions started and the gun battle commenced !!

As we disappointedly walked back across the bridge, we stopped to just admire the views, a little further away we could see what looked like a small village with a nice looking harbour so we decided we would continue a little further on our walk to see what was their, and wether we could still find a nice place for lunch.

As we got back onto the mainland from the bridge, the sandy coastal path and pine forest continued, from there, with us today having beautiful clear mist free views, we got a lovely view of the ‘Cies’ Islands and beyond them, and albeit in a bit of a heat haze, I could just about make out what looked like another, but not so tall, rocky outcrop. Just out of curiosity I used the zoom lens on my camera to take a look and, although not visible to the naked eye, well at least not in daylight, there was a small lighthouse.

We headed for the small harbour cove, their were quite a few people walking along the path so we were hopeful that there may have been things to see, and a few choices to select somewhere nice for a spot of lunch. It was not to be our day, albeit the weather was good, their was no mist so the views were spectacular and it was a very nice beach day, however, there was only one very small Cafe open, but their outside seating area was at the back of the property offering no views, so we gave that a miss. Shazza’s suggestion to pack our own snacks, fruit and drinks had been a good call and, unless we wanted the usual seaside food offerings, it looked like another opportunity for a nice lunch had been thwarted. We decided to just re-trace our steps and make our way back to the car, we would find somewhere to eat later that evening in Vigo.

When we came to the car park in the village, the one that didn’t permit Caravans or Camper Vans, in one corner there was a small refreshments hut with just a few plastic tables and chairs positioned nearby, we decided to stop for a cold beer, they offered one on tap that was mixed with Lemon, it tasted just like the ‘Lager & Lime’ that we used to drink in the pubs back in the UK in our much younger days, and very refreshing it was too.

Instead of walking across the car park to the main road and walking back through the village, as we had on our way up here, we continued to walk on a trail through a lightly forested area and by doing so ended up getting some nice views of some other coves. This was obviously not the shortest route , as Google wanted to send us back up the main village road. However, it wasn’t as if we were on a jungle trek in the wilderness now was it 🤷‍♂️ We wouldn’t actually end up getting lost, okay we may have had to double back on ourselves but we were willing to take that risk, this route was much more scenic.

We kept following the coastal trail until eventually we could go no further, except back up a road into the village where we re-joined the main road again. We recognised where we were, so it would be straightforward from here to get back to the car. As we descended the first part of the hill back to the bridge that crossed the river, there was an ambulance on the pavement, right on the bend of the road, blue lights flashing, rear doors open, blocking our footpath access, so we had to make our way around it on the narrow road, “Careful of the traffic” Shazza shouted out to me, I laughed to myself, sometimes she talks to me as if I am a little child, “It’s okay Mum, if I get run over there is an ambulance already here” I shouted back to her 😂

As we passed the sports-hall again, outside, the youngsters were still playing tennis, although wether it was a different group I don’t know, then we both sighed a bit of relief as we once again got back on to the promenade. We still had a fair way to walk to get back to the car but phsycologically we knew that we were on the home leg which always tends to put an extra spring in the step.

It hadn’t actually felt as though we were on an actual hike today, more of a nice gentle walk with just one short uphill ascent but nothing very strenuous, much the same as the previous days walk really but with some slightly different views. I don’t really mind where we walk, it’s more about being outdoors in the fresh air, but, if I were to be totally honest, I think that silently I was longing for a more rugged, and peaceful, coastal or mountain hike, with much less people and traffic.

Shazza I think could sense that I wasn’t totally enamoured with todays activity, but for completely the wrong reason, “I’m sorry we didn’t find anywhere nice again to stop and have lunch” she said, “Don’t be daft, I am not that bothered about not stopping for a lunch” I replied. “Well, I have got a suggestion” she continued. So she went on to tell me about a little Pizza restaurant she had seen one night as we were walking back from the Mexican place, although she hadn’t mentioned it at the time. “It looked really small inside, but very nice” she said, in quite an enthusiastic way. “Is that where you want to eat this evening ?” I asked her, but instead she suggested that we could get back to the hotel, drop off our stuff in the room and then walk to the Italian Pizza place and have what could be a very late lunch or early dinner.

I was very conscious that this was our last day in Vigo and we hadn’t even discussed where we would head off to next, my natural assumption had been I guess that we would just continue to travel a little further North up this Western coastline of Galicia, possibly with a stop at Santiago de Compostela, the official end of the Camino where all the Pilgrims assemble at the Cathedral, then we could turn East and head along the Northern coast, on into the ‘Asturias’ Region before dropping South and back through the Picos de Europas mountain range, where, subject of course to the weather, we may still get a chance for a day or two hiking. But of course, as we were just ‘Going with the flow’ on this particular road trip, I couldn’t let Shazza know that I may have had a cunning sort of plan 🤭 If we went out to eat early, then we could spend the evening looking at the ‘Works of Fiction’ forecasts, and our maps, and then plan a bit of a route.

Back at the hotel, suitably fed and watered, and yes there may have been a couple of Anti-Covid Vaccines included, I got Google maps up on my iPad, opened up the outdated, but still useful, road map of Portugal & Spain. Shazza handed me a cup of coffee that she had just made and then said, in a tone that immediately gave me cause for concern, “Before we plan a route I need to talk to you” 😳

To be continued………………………

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, La Vida Es Buena

Day 6 – Vigo

We do not set alarm clocks these days, unless we have to be up at a specific time to go somewhere, but for some reason I am awake most mornings at 07:30am, albeit that I do not usually go to bed much before 1:00am, so, is this not needing much sleep, an older person sort of thing I ask myself 🤷‍♂️ I wouldn’t normally make Shazza a coffee until nearer 08:30am and, only then if I heard her in the throws of waking up, but this particular morning she too had awoken early. I looked out of the window, the sky and sea were a nice shade of blue, although I couldn’t actually see the sun shining, I could tell from the view that it too had already started to wipe the sleep from its eyes and was starting to rise. So, kettle on, then coffees made and I awaited my instructions from the ‘gaffer’ as to what we would be doing today. she was quite bright and cheerful this particular morning so I guess she was excited about putting her day’s activity plan into action, “Rucksack, Beach Towel, Swimwear, Bottles of water and some snacks” she commanded, “Yes Ma’am” I responded and gave a swift salute, before assembling and packing said items. What I want to know is, who gave her permission to take my former military rank insignia and sew them on to her knickers 🤷‍♂️ Today, she informed me that we were going on a hike along a coastal path, but to where was a bit of a mystery, “As far as our legs will carry us, bearing in mind that we will of course have to walk back again” she said. “Will we need our walking boots and walking Poles” I enquired of my trip leader, if we had have done, that would have meant a quick trip down to the car to retrieve them from the boot. “No, just our trainers” she said. Now this I was really looking forward to, nice plan Shazza I thought to myself, finally, a proper walk out in the countryside and along a coastal path, perfect, although, whilst I didn’t actually vocalise my thought on the subject, ‘Swimwear ? , this my dear was the bloody cold Atlantic Ocean and not the lovely warm Mediterranean Sea, your having a laugh if you think I will be dipping anything other than my toes in it’ I thought to myself 😲

To get to the start of the coastal walk proper meant having to walk first along the road past the expansive Commercial Port areas, that was a bit boring as it was just one boatyard building after another, huge cranes and behind the tall, row on row, of warehouse sized shipyard buildings, with the occasional sighting of part of a deep sea trawler in dry dock which, in the water, looks very large, but with their huge hulls totally exposed it gave a true picture of their under bellies and massive girth. However, even these large and heavy steel vessels get thrown around like paper aeroplanes, by the sheer power of the oceans, so it amazes me at times how much smaller, and primarily lightweight plastic constructed vessels, manage to sail around the world in these same oceans. We just kept walking, at least there were no hills to climb today, well not yet anyway. To be honest, I don’t actually mind hills, apart from being good cardio-vascular work outs, the biggest advantage for me is that you tend to get great views over the surrounding landscapes, Shazza however, prefers much flatter walks, so it will be interesting to see what we get on this particular walk, possibly a mix of both, but that is the good thing about unfamiliar environments, you just never know what you are going to encounter.

Eventually, after about twenty-minutes of road walking, which felt as though it had been much longer, we crossed a busy road, the views finally opened up and we came to the head of a small estuary on to a very nice, level and wide pedestrianised foot and cycle path. We were just casually chitter chattering away, as we do, and not really taking too much notice of the direction in which we were actually walking, just really following other people who were out for a stroll along the estuary path, with and without their four-legged friends, some on a morning jog. The sun was high in the sky, although their was still a bit of a cool chill in the air, but it certainly wasn’t cold and it was sure to get warmer as the morning wore on, or so we believed looking at the sunshine sparkling off the lovely calm blue sea and the blue sky above us. We passed a small set of moorings with a few boats, the boats themselves were quite small too, nothing for me to get too excited about but I took a photo anyway. As we gazed across the flat calm water we could see, in the distance, across the other side of the estuary, an old looking lighthouse, we continued walking, still miles away in our own little world, feeling quite relaxed and just enjoying the views, then, as the pedestrian walkway started to bend around to the right we had a lightbulb moment 💡 for it suddenly dawned on us that we were actually walking on the wrong side of the bloody estuary !!

If we had continued walking we would have come to a dead end or, fallen into the sea at the entrance to the river 😳 We were both initially a little irritated with ourselves, we just hadn’t been concentrating, fortunately we hadn’t gone too far off the route we should have been on, but it meant walking back to the head of this small estuary. Between us, and that point, was a road bridge, we thought that we may have been able to get up to it, and across to where we wanted to be, a bit of a shortcut, but there was no way to get up to it as it was fenced off by a very large storage area for new cars, Citroen’s I later discovered. Anyway, we walked back and fortunately there was a nice promenade and a handful of Cafe’s in the throws of opening, “May as well stop and have breakfast” I said to Shazza, “I am not hungry yet, but we can stop for a coffee if you like” she replied, then added, “But you can have something to eat if you want to”, however, I wasn’t actually hungry either but I thought that Shazza would have been by now 🤔 “Are you on some sort of weight loss diet ?” I asked her, “No, but for a few days now I just don’t really have my usual apetite” she replied, “I had noticed, and I am getting a bit concerned, this isn’t normal for you” I told her. She told me not to worry and that she was fine and that she would eat if she felt hungry. So we stopped for a coffee, but wished we hadn’t, it was one of those milky dishwater affairs and only luke warm 🤮

We re-started our walk and suddenly, without any sort or pre-warning, a sea mist descended across the mouth of this small estuary, it was really strange, the sun was shining, the sky above this band of mist was really clear and blue, but the mist was rolling in across the top of the water quite rapidly, shrouding the view of some small sailing yachts that were on their way out to sea and, that lighthouse, that we could clearly see just a few minutes earlier, had virtually all but disappeared from view, it was really, really strange to watch.

We continued walking around the estuary, the visibility, in front of this band of mist was still so clear and I stopped to take some photo’s of some resident wildlife seeking out their own breakfast’s. The smell of the algae and seaweed, drying out on the exposed rocks, brought back childhood memories of British seaside holidays

We couldn’t walk the whole way around the estuary wall, Google maps indicated that we would have to walk up a path between some houses, along a road and then swing back in to re-join what then became the coastal path. It was only a minor deviation, perhaps only five minutes, and then we entered what looked like a wooded park which led down towards the sea. As we entered this park there was a large old looking stone blocked wall, a bit like a castle outer wall and there was a large open archway with a wide row of steps inside leading upwards. There were no barriers, or gates or signage, at this entrance so we entered through the arch, this was an added bonus and a bit of unanticipated early exploration I thought to myself. Well it would have been, but just inside the grounds was a large sign indicating that it was a 5* Spa Hotel so we did an about turn and made a hasty retreat 😲 I would have expected there to have been some sort of signage at the archway entrance 🤷‍♂️

We were walking amongst a forested sort of parkland with a number of footpaths leading off in different directions, but the main much wider path followed the contours of the coastline and, every so often, we would get wonderful views of little sun drenched sandy coves, albeit the band of mist hovered just above the sea a couple of hundred metres offshore.

Occasionally we would find ourselves at some wider stretches of beach, some of which had small hut like cafe’s with plastic tables and chairs set up outside, people sat around them chatting and drinking, we didn’t need another coffee, or anything else, at that stage and we had our own snacks and bottles of water with us, but we had not ruled out the idea of stopping for lunch a bit later in the day, if we came across a nice place. If it hadn’t have been for the lingering mist, some of these white sandy beaches could have had you believing that you were somewhere more exotic 🏝️

If we had have just come out for a beach day then we would have been spoilt for choice, there were lots, but we continued walking and then suddenly, what appeared literally out of nowhere, we found ourselves on a rather nice, wide and well paved promenade with another, but much longer, white sand beach. However, at this point the sea mist had moved inland and with it the temperature plummeted, quite sharply, requiring us to put our hoody tops back on. We decided to keep walking along this very long promenade, which eventually led to what I can only describe as a resort sort of location, we had the wide sandy beach on one side, the promenade and parkland on the other and then, beyond that there was a road with hotels and cafe’s and restaurants running the length of it. Further along the promenade there was a children’s play park, an open air swimming pool and a basketball court along with a number of large car parks and then promenade eateries. It hadn’t been quite the coastal walk that we had imagined, but it wasn’t unpleasant, we stopped and sat on a bench and Shazza checked where we were on the map. We we were quite surprised for we had walked just a little under 6 miles 😲 It certainly hadn’t felt that far ! We drunk some water and ate a piece of fruit whilst we decided wether to just keep walking or turn around and head back 🤷‍♂️ We both ‘Uhmd’ and ‘Ahrred’ for a bit, each of us not really wanting to be the one to call it a day and not really knowing wether to just keep going, however, we did agree that the sea mist seemed to not be shifting, so we both thought that we were unlikely to get any decent views and it may just get even thicker 🤷‍♂️ However, the map did reflect that a couple of miles further along there was an Island that jutted out into the sea which was accessible by a bridge 🤔 That sounded quite interesting, but we came to the conclusion that we probably wouldn’t get to see very much anyway, once we reached it, as it would probably be sat out in the sea mist. We had however, a few miles back, passed a ‘nautical’ themed museum earlier on the walk, which advertised that it had a sea life aquarium, so that would give us something else to see and do rather than just go straight back. “What about lunch ?” I said to Shazza, “I thought we were going to try and find somewhere ?” But she once again said that she was not really all that hungry, “There is no ambience, there will be no nice views with this mist and, to be honest, it will probably be a bit chilly as it all looks like all open air seating” she said. She was right, most of the Cafe’s only offered the usual menu’s of Burger’s, Hotdogs, Calamari or ‘Jamon y Queso Bocadillos’ (Ham and cheese sandwiches) and of course the mandatory ‘Patatas frites’ (Chips), which, on another day, would have actually been right up my street 😋 Shazza then reminded me, for I had actually forgotten, that we also had a reservation at the ‘Mexican Fusion Style’ Restaurant again at 9pm that evening, when I would be having my pre-ordered Oysters, amongst other things 🤗 Shazza cannot eat Oysters, or Scallops or Mussels etc. since she got a really bad case of food poisoning very many years ago from shellfish that she had eaten at a Restaurant in Paris, but she was looking forward to trying some different sort of ‘Mexican Fish Fusions’. “We do still have snacks and fruit that we brought with us, I am happy to stop a bit later to have them for a late lunch, but if you want something now that is a bit more substantial ?” She said. However, like her, I wasn’t really all that hungry at that stage, “Let’s walk back and go to that museum, then after that we will find a nice spot to stop and eat our snacks” I said. At least there was one positive aspect to this damp sea mist, she hadn’t appeared too interested in getting our kit off and going for a dip 🤭

As we left the promenade and got back on to the sandy track we both commented again on not believing how far we had walked without realising it, or without feeling leg weary 🤷‍♂️ Perhaps, we both agreed, that we were either a lot physically fitter than we had given ourselves credit for, or perhaps, it was just because this had been a primarily flat walk, unlike the other day which was a lot of steep uphill walking, we agreed that it was probably a combination of the two 😉 But here is another strange thing, as we returned from the direction we had initially started from, the mist suddenly retreated from inland and once again settled as just a band of mist a few metres out to sea, seemingly sitting just above the water line 🤷‍♂️ the coves and beaches once again became sun drenched, the water was so clear, like tap water and, the sky above the band of mist was a beautiful shade of blue, the air temperature immediately rose again.

From the outside entry gate, the museum was housed in what looked like an old warehouse building, so we were not sure what this was going to be like, but, once inside we discovered that it was very modern, the actual museum exhibits were contained in two separate buildings, both with ground and upper floors and they were joined via an enclosed glazed footbridge, the actual aquarium was housed in a third, quite separate building. Their was an admission fee, €5 for Shazza and for me, as a ‘Senior’, as they refer to us pensioners, £3.50 👍 There were a lot of exhibits, both to keep children, and us Adults interested, and to my surprise we spent quite a bit of time wandering around the exhibits than I had anticipated that we would, and reading information boards, albeit they were all in Spanish, I must have been so engrossed that I actually forgot to take any photo’s 😲 Now, personally, I had been keen to get to the Aquarium, anticipating seeing big fish, perhaps a small shark, or Rays and Octopus, so I was actually quite disappointed to discover that the actual aquarium was quite small, and that it only contained smaller species of quite uninteresting ‘live’ exhibits of the smaller species of fish, however, overall the whole visit was well worth every Euro, we ended up spending at least an hour or so there.

The inner areas of the museum were nice and cool but as soon as we stepped out into the sunshine, wow, it was roasting hot 🥵 Back on the coast path we found ourselves a bench, overlooking the sea, and sat and ate our snacks and fruit. Other walkers passed by, offering us the usual pleasantries, some were wearing stiff hiking boots and using walking poles, carrying huge rucksacks on their backs so we responded to them with “Buen Camino” (Enjoy your walk) as these were ‘Pilgrims’ on the ‘Portuguese Way’ of the Camino de Santiago. We both used to think that there was only one route on the ‘Camino de Santiago’, probably as it is the most popular and well known, covered by most ‘You Tube’ documentaries, that being the one from ‘San Sebastian’, near the French border, across the Northern Coast of Spain, to ‘Santagio de Compostela’, but in fact we have since learnt that there are several routes, some up through Portugal and other’s up via southern areas of Spain. We had ourselves once considered doing the Camino, a few year’s ago, but to be honest, after watching many of the videos, and reading some personal blog’s, we had to admit that we are just not built of the right stuff and do not have the right sort of motivation, I feel a little embarrassed even mentioning it, but the honest truth is that Shazza and I like our personal comforts too much and real adventures like these are only really in our heads and one’s that seem like a good idea at the time 🤔

Although we were walking back along the same route, you sometimes get a different view or perspective when walking in the opposite direction and at a different time of the day. The tide had now started to ebb in, so small boats that had been secured to buoys, but had been laying on the mud or sand when we passed by earlier, were now floating and to be honest it gave these coves quite a very different look. Although we hadn’t seen them earlier, as they were behind us, now we could see quaint beachfront cottages and houses with small boats parked in front of them, rope lines running down the length of the beach attached to other small boats that were now bobbing around on top of the rising water. We both commented that these cottages may not have been quite so idyllic if you were inside them when the large Atlantic breakers came rolling in and up the beach, we wondered if they had ever been flooded 😳

As we walked back along the promenade that surrounded the small estuary, the one where we had started our walk, their were hoards of people enjoying the sunshine, all the bars and eateries were now open, every outside table was occupied and so those without were sat on the estuary walls drinking whatever Anti-Covid Vaccine it was that took their fancy, from Glasses of beer, or wine, jugs of Sangria and even Cocktails and yes, I could have been easily tempted but, at the pace Shazza was walking in front of me, I could tell that she wasn’t 😕

We got back to the hotel, it was early afternoon and it was good to take our trainers off, Shazza informed me that we had walked just short of 18Km, I think in reality that if it hadn’t have been for the misty conditions that we may have been tempted to have walked just a little bit further, but I consoled myself in the knowledge that there would be opportunities for more walking along other coastal paths in the coming days.

As we had lost a day, due to the previous day’s rainy conditions, we agreed to agree on what we would do on our last full day which, according to the ‘Works of Fiction’, at that particular time, indicated a very similar sort of day to the one we had just had. We looked at Google Maps and identified some villages and towns that we could drive to, but we are not ‘town’ sort of people so we ruled that out, then Shazza suggested that as I had wanted to go and see the Island, with the bridge across to it, that we had decided not to walk to today, that tomorrow, we should drive to the point where we had finished today’s walk, park up in one of the many car parks and then just continue walking, it seemed like a good plan to me 👍

Later that evening we walked to the Mexican restaurant, the waiter who had served us a few nights ago was not there, but the young female waitress who greeted us told us that he had told her that we were coming and sat us at the table that we had requested, which was outside where we could of course enjoy a spot of people watching, it was a Saturday night and so there were a lot more people about. The waitress informed me that the half dozen Oysters that I had pre-ordered could be served in three different ways, usually two served ‘Naturally’, two with a melted cheese topping and two in a fusion of spiced Mexican oil. I said that I wasn’t bothered about the ‘Natural’ one’s so went for a mix of three and three. We both started with the ‘Cerveche’, as we had the first evening, that was again delicious, when she brought out my Oysters, there were seven 🤔 She told me that the Chef wanted me to try one of the natural ones, but this was ‘gratis’, so I wasn’t complaining 🤷‍♂️ I have to say that they were all delicious, the spiced one did have a bit of a ‘kick’ to it, but not in a bad way. Shazza had half a dozen large Prawns on skewers with a Salsa dip and plain tortilla chips and then we both shared a plate of four, different style, fish Taco’s. Whilst I enjoyed my usual red wine, Shazza tried one of their house special Margarita’s. We both agreed that this second visit had been equally as good as the first and I was also pleased to have seen Shazza eat a proper meal. It was the perfect end to a very nice day.

To be continued………………….

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, La Vida Es Buena

Day 5 – Vigo

”What time is it ?” came a muffled voice from under the covers, “It is exactly 7:30am” I replied, “Oh ! can I have a bit more sleep this morning, I feel really tired, I don’t want coffee yet” she said in a sleepy voice. “You can sleep for as long as you like this morning, we won’t be going anywhere” I told her, “What do you mean ?” she asked, a little more awake now, “Can’t you hear that sound on the window ?” I asked her. She raised her head off the pillow, “Is that rain ?” she exclaimed, “Yup, started at around 3.00am” I told her. She put her head back on the pillow and pulled the cover back over her head, I put the kettle on, made myself a cup of coffee and read the News headlines on my iPad.

To be fair, the ‘Works of Fiction’ had forecast the possibility of light drizzle throughout periods of the day, anything from a 10-40% chance, which told me that they didn’t really know and were hedging their bets, but what was currently falling out of the sky was a lot more than just ‘light drizzle’, this was heavy rain 🤷‍♂️ In truth, it hadn’t come as a complete surprise to me, the sky had been threatening it since yesterday afternoon when we were returning from our walk, it was just a little late in arriving and, since we had to change our plans from heading into the ‘Picos de Europa’ mountains, due to the arrival of the wet stuff, I also knew that we were going to get some sketchy weather over this side of the coast throughout the coming days, and it looked much of the same as we progressed North, so for now, we would just keep taking one day at a time.

Shazza slept for a further two hours and the rain, although looking as if it was easing a little, continued to fall. I suggested to Shazza that perhaps we should bite the bullet and go down to the hotel restaurant and have breakfast, we were out of snacks and would need to eat something. However, Shazza declined, not about eating breakfast but about going to the hotel restaurant to eat it. It wasn’t about the cost as such, more the principle, we may both be thrifty by nature, but we were not on any sort of budget constraint or having to account for every cent. We could afford to eat all our meals in the hotel, breakfast’s and dinners, if we chose to. It was more about the charge for these hotel breakfast’s, against what we knew we would actually eat, we could purchase a decent filling breakfast, for the both of us, for just €6-8 in a local Cafe, here they would charge us €26, even if we only ate toast and jam, and had a coffee 🤷‍♂️ We could understand it if we each enjoyed a full cooked breakfast, followed by the fruit, or sticky buns, and drank orange juice and gallons of coffee, then €13 each was probably quite reasonable, but we don’t. However, and in all honesty, I would have paid it and wouldn’t have let principle get in the way of my hunger.

We agreed to wait a little longer and thankfully it did pay off, as there was a break in the weather at around 11:00am, although the clouds looked as if they could still discharge even more of their watery cargo at any time, but we took the gamble. It was also good to get out of the confines of the room for a while and get some fresh air. On Google maps I had identified a couple of Cafe’s in one of the back streets just a couple of levels above us, about a twenty minute walk away, although it took us slightly longer, as we didn’t exactly race up the steep steps 😮‍💨 unfortunately, in this particular direction, we didn’t have the luxury of mechanical devices to aid our ascent 😢 As we sat outside the Cafe, under the shelter of the large awning style canopy, we had quite a nice view over the Port area below us, and a view of the sea as it flowed into the river channel, we enjoyed our usual coffee’s and Tostado’s, which were generous large baguette sized portions. Their were several other’s sat at tables around us, from their conversations we knew that they were all Spanish, but wether they were locals, or visitor’s, we of course had no idea 🤷‍♂️ We observed Council workmen with one of those trucks with a telescopic lift on the back, they were doing something to overhead cables that stretched between the lamp posts, other people were just going about their normal daily business, all wearing raincoats of some description, and many were carrying umbrella’s, some had bags, so presumably out doing their daily shopping, many walking, totally oblivious to anything else going on around them whilst they were talking on their mobile phones, cars and buses passed up and down, their tyres spraying water up onto the pavement from the puddles in the road, fortunately we were sat far enough back from the road so as not to be splashed, soggy looking pigeons looking sorry for themselves argued with each other for the best position under the tables, waiting eagerly for any scraps to be dropped. For a time, Shazza and I sat silent, just taking in what was going on around us, we love this people watching stuff, normal daily life going on around us, similar I presumed to what was going on in many other towns and cities all around the world, but, who may have been watching us I wondered 🤔

“So, had it not have been raining, what would we have been doing today my love ?” I asked Shazza, “You will now have to wait until tomorrow to find out” she replied, I seized my opportunity, I baited the hook and cast my line, “What do you mean wait until tomorrow, today is your activity day, tomorrow is mine again” I said, with a straight face. “No way !!, that isn’t fair” she announced, “It’s raining today so we cannot go anywhere” she exclaimed, “Well that isn’t my fault” I responded, “No, I’m not having that, no way” she said quite adamantly. I burst out laughing, “Got you, hook, line and sinker” I said. “Right, just for that, tomorrow I am going to find at least four of the most boring Stately Homes and Gardens, and spend the whole day dragging you around each and everyone one of them” she said, and then smirked knowing that she had been caught off guard. Of course, neither of us knew at that point what the ‘Works of Fiction’ actually had in store for us for the following day, a drive to a Stately House may actually be the only option 🤷‍♂️

As we sat, with nothing better to do, other than just let time pass us by whilst enjoying some open space, we heard the faint rumblings of thunder and decided that we had better make our way back to the hotel, at least it would be all downhill on the way back. We paid the bill, a mere €8, we agreed that it was probably best to make a contingency for dinner too, as we may not want to go out if the rain continued, so, on the way back we called in at the Supermarket and purchased some pre-packed food, Salad bowls with Pasta, Shazza chose Salmon whilst I went for a combo Prawn and Octopus, we also threw a few extra snacks and fruit into our basket, well it could be a very long afternoon. We were not in a hurry to get back to our prison cell, albeit a luxury one, so we wandered up and down the aisles, with no intention of buying anything else, but it killed a little bit more time 🙄 Then we sensed eyes watching us, possibly store security, dressed to look like a shopper and thinking we were perhaps shop lifters 😲 We made our way to the checkout a bit sharpish and by doing so, probably looked even more suspicious.

The remainder of the day continued to be mixed between periods of heavy rain and drizzle, so we both ended up taking a lot of ‘mini siestas’, combined with doing stuff on our iPads, drinking tea, or coffee etc. Shazza started to finalise her plan for the following day’s activity, or that’s what I assumed as she kept shielding her iPad from my view whenever I looked across, although for all I know, perhaps she was watching a Porn channel 😲 I did offer a suggestion, no, not for what Porn channels to watch, I wouldn’t divulge that kind of personal information 😂 My input, not that she asked for it, was to perhaps go on a culinary experience, which I thought may appeal to her, a tour of Vigo’s Tapas Bars perhaps 🤷‍♂️ she just gave me one of her school teacher looks over the top of her glasses and then said, with a hint of sarcasm in her tone I must say, “Well, we could go the whole nine yards and combine it with a tour of some vineyards perhaps ?”, I laughed and then responded, “Great idea, but actually, the Tapas tour and Wine Tasting are one and the same thing my love” then I gave her a wink 😉

I think that in truth, we both actually needed this rainy day, it provided us with the perfect opportunity to take our foot off the gas and actually relax, to take a much needed rest day, we have been pushing ourselves to do something every single day, either with the long drives with a bit of sightseeing thrown in, or like yesterday, because the weather was good, we felt that we had to be out and about, doing something. The reality is, we are not on a time schedule, in fact, we are not on any sort of schedule, other than having to be back by the beginning of October when Shazza’s mum is coming out to stay with us, so perhaps, upon reflection, we are on a sort of time schedule 😂 But we don’t actually have to go, or be, anywhere specific, and we certainly do not have an ultimate final destination, we will end up wherever we end up 🤷‍♂️ Our only real consideration actually being the weather as we do, at this time of year, expect at least a few days of rain, but we can certainly handle that, but, if it does look at any point as if the periods of bad weather will be protracted, then we could just head South again, there are lots of Regions we still have to explore all over Spain, or we could just go straight back home, the choice is actually our’s to make. However, at the end of the day, and putting it into some sort of perspective, this has actually been the only really bad weather day that we have encountered, so far, on this road trip.

The rain continued to switch between heavy downfalls, with a few rumbles of thunder, to just horrible drizzle, and at one point, during the early evening, we put our coats on and went out to the front of the hotel, thinking that we may make it to the eateries just a fifteen minute stroll away without getting too wet, but we agreed that we would probably end up looking like drowned rats and would feel uncomfortable sat in wet clothes in a restaurant, we returned to our room and ate our Salads, which were actually extremely flavoursome and filling, we both said that we would have them again without hesitation, if needed. We each put our earphones in and whilst I caught up with some Motorhome, Cycling and Sailing ‘Vlogs’ on ‘You Tube’ on my iPad, Shazza watched whatever it was that she was following on her’s. It had been a long day, but a restful one, fortunately, the ‘Works of Fiction, were forecasting a much better weather day for tomorrow.

To be continued………………..

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, La Vida Es Buena

We hadn’t done any advance research on the Port City of ‘Vigo’, primarily because we didn’t know that we were going to come here 🤷‍♂️ The only research we had done, once we knew that we were, was to look for accommodations and then, once here, to look for somewhere to eat dinner that first night. But, now that we are here, and me being a bit of a night owl, after returning to our hotel after our ‘Mexican Style’ fusion dinner 🤭 I started to gather bit’s and pieces of information about the things that we could possibly see and do, in and around the city. It was only when I started doing this research that I came to the realisation that, if we had arrived just a couple of weeks earlier, when the weather had been a lot better, and the main tourist season activities would not have been starting to close down, as they now appeared to be doing, that even two weeks here probably would not have been enough to do it justice. Of course their would be nothing actually stopping us from extending our stay here, but the changing cooler, and high possibility of wetter weather, would prevent us from doing a lot of what would normally have been possible in warmer conditions and when there were more gentler sea states. One example of what we were to miss out on was as a boat trip to the ‘Cies Islands’, or visit some of the 119 beaches along this coastline, many of them being of fine white sand, other’s were smaller sandy coves, whilst some were rugged rocky trajectories that, at low tides, revealed hundreds of rock pools. Additionally, their were lots of coastal footpaths and hill walking trails, visits to several other Coastal villages and towns and a couple of sightseeing opportunities right here in Vigo itself. I remember thinking to myself, no wonder many Motor Homers from the UK, who travel to Spain for their 90 day ‘Schengen Shuffle’ period, never actually get beyond Galicia before their limited time runs out. So, and for the second time already on this road trip, I found myself thinking about the possibilities we were missing, ‘If only we had chosen to import the ‘Little Fokker’, now we would, as residents of Spain, not have been under such time restrictions and limitations to visit such places 🤔 Sometimes, this damn ‘Hindsight’ stuff can get to be a right pain in the proverbial, I thought to myself 🙄 So, albeit we would not get an opportunity to do the ‘Cies Islands’, at least not on this visit, they themselves would be worthy of a return trip at some point in the future. I also thought that if anyone reading this was planning on coming to Vigo during the Summer months, that I would take the liberty of perhaps pointing you in the direction of one of the ‘must do’ things to put on your itinerary:

Cies Islands

The Cies Islands are an archipelago off the coast of both Vigo and Pontevedra, in the mouth of the ‘Ria de Vigo’ and were declared a Nature Reserve in 1980. They consist of three separate Islands, ‘Monteagudo, ‘‘do Faro’’ and ‘San Martin’. The underwater area surrounding the ‘Cies’ forms one of the richest ecosystems on the Galician Coast, the perimeter of the islands have different types of environments, the cliffs which are exposed to the waves are populated by barnacles and mussels, in its very rocky underwater areas there are crabs, spider crabs, lobsters and octopus, numerous molluscs, turbot, plaice, sole and sea urchins, all of which play a role in Galicia’s gastronomy, but fishing in the waters that surround these Islands is not permitted. On the Islands themselves are forests, so the area is a haven for birds, Seagulls, Iberian Guillemots, Birds of Prey, Pigeons, Petrels, Doves, Woodpeckers amongst other much smaller species. These abundant waters are rich in biodiversity and attract Whales, Dolphins, Blue Sharks, Basking Sharks and Turtles. In the Summer months, boats from nearby Ports, including Vigo, take visitor’s from the mainland to the ‘Monteagudo’ Island where there are nine separate beaches and lots of walking opportunities, although you do need a licence to visit which some day boat trip booking agencies will organise for you, or you can obtain one yourself from the Port at Vigo. Tent camping is also permitted in a camping area, a licence is required for that too and has to be reserved ‘in advance’, again from Vigo Port. There is a Supermarket, Visitor Centre and Restaurant on the island for visitor’s but there are no litter bins, so this has to be taken back by visitors and disposed of on the mainland.

As it was, we had currently only allowed ourselves four full sightseeing days in Vigo, this ‘all day’ Island trip would have been high on both of our ‘To Do’ lists, however, this is where a bit of advance planning, and not ‘Going With The Flow’ would certainly have proven to have been a distinct advantage, as now, on checking the boat trip websites, all the dates were fully booked for the coming week 😢 After that, the Islands would be closed to tourists, as it was the official end of their Summer Season 🤷‍♂️ But in our defence, we didn’t know that we were coming here, so there was no point in me being disappointed, after all, there was still plenty of other stuff to do, although selecting what, could be our biggest headache, as their were still so many possibilities available to us, as long as we took some precautionary rainwear in our rucksacks, as the ‘Works of Fiction’ were beginning to be as reliable as a chocolate fireguard, messing around with the forecasts that they were issuing, on a daily basis 🤷‍♂️ Ideally, we wanted to use our legs, rather than a motorised means of transportation to get ourselves around, although we wouldn’t rule out using the car if necessary. Anyway, I came up with a sort of a plan, which I would of course share with Shazza, when she awoke the following morning, but she would already have been anticipating that I would 🤭

Day 4 – Vigo

As is usual I was awake first, or at least I was the one that got up first and made the coffee’s. I think Shazza just pretends to be asleep, until I get up and make the coffee and then put her cup on her bedside locker when, conveniently, her eyes suddenly open 😉 We then held our morning conference, although it did seem a little bit unusual not conducting this on our own balcony, but as we currently didn’t have one 🤷‍♂️ I have to admit, it was rather a pleasant change laying in bed with my coffee having our discussions, “Don’t get too used to it though” Shazza had said, with a mischievous smile on her face. I ran through my burning the midnight oil research results from the previous night with her. I had been correct with thinking that she would be just as disappointed as I was about the boat trip, but we maintained our philosophy of ‘not worrying about things that we can neither control or influence’. She actually liked my idea about our next four days here, I suggested that perhaps we both select things that we each want to do, and then conduct our personally selected choices on alternate days, as quick as a flash she says, “Okay, you go first, we will do what you want to do today”, but I of course realised that that was because she hadn’t yet had a chance to look at things that she may want to do, which I guess was fair enough, but, as she would have already guessed anyway, I had already made ‘a plan’ for my first activity choice. I wouldn’t make my second choice until I had seen what it was that she had in store for me the following day, I was already hoping that it may have been an Anti-Covid Vaccine Pub Crawl, although I knew that in reality that that was just wishful thinking on my part 😂

Now, just in case, like us, you have never visited Vigo before. When you look at any road map, electronic or otherwise, everywhere just looks flat, and so sometimes it can come as a bit of a surprise when you think, because you are going to a coastal location with a large Port, and your brain naturally tells you that it is of course going to be at sea level, but then, when you actually see it with your own eyes, and realise that actually it isn’t quite as level as you believed it was going to be, well………. Bienvenidos a Vigo ! (Welcome to Vigo)

Now I am not stupid, irrespective of what other people may tell you about me, so of course I realised that going to visit my first choice activity, which was to the ‘Fortaleza O Castro’ (Castle), or at least the remnants of one (two actually, Eric !) was going to be a bit of an uphill walk, but what I hadn’t realised was the amount of uphill effort that would be required 😲

But first, now that I am getting into the inclusion of some of this ‘History’ M’larky in these current rambles, although please don’t expect this to become a habit after this trip, so, without further ado, take it away Mr Google, …………….or was it Mr Wickapedia this time 🤔

The O Castro mountain is the point of origin of the city of Vigo, the place where the first settlers settled. Here we can find remains of military buildings dating from the 2nd and 3rd centuries BC. Today, some 45 stone constructions are still preserved on the right side of the mountain. In the Middle Ages, the O Castro Castle was built, which was erected at the same time as the San Sebastián Castle and the fortress that linked the two. The O Castro fortress was made up of three walled enclosures. Today, only the first enclosure and part of the second remain; the third, which was the city wall, has completely disappeared. The first enclosure is the fortress that crowns the summit of O Castro, now converted into a viewing point. The second enclosure is the fortress of San Sebastián, currently occupied by the Plaza del Rey and the town hall. Passages and tunnels have been found that connected the castles to each other and to the city. On the O Castro mountain we can also find the monument dedicated to Curros Enríquez, the greatest representative of Galician literature of the 19th century; a monument dedicated to Martín Códax (medieval troubadour); the Galleons of Rande – a monument dedicated to the Battle of Rande in 1702; the Cross of the Fallen (a monument in honour of those who fell during the Spanish Civil War). O Castro is also a magnificent botanical park, with a great variety of native and foreign species.

So, as you may just have gathered by now, Vigo is actually built on a hill, a really big hill as it happens, although I am not sure that I would call it a mountain as ‘they’ describe it. Now, from the Port, which is of course at sea level, and where our accommodation is located, each upper level is formed by differen streets, running parallel with each other and many of these streets are their own quite unique smaller suburbs of Vigo city, with their own rows of retail outlets, Cafe’s and Restaurants and, if like us, you happen to have chosen to be on foot and walking, to coin the title of an 80’s UK pop hit, ‘The Only Way Is Up’ and to do so means traversing long and steep steps to get up to each level, their are ‘at least’ ten different street levels 😲 to be honest we lost count when we quickly started to re-prioritise our focus on breathing, rather than counting streets 😮‍💨😮‍💨 However, their is not a straight line of steps up each level to get to the top, so you have to zig zag your way up, sometimes walking fifty or so metres along a street to locate the next set of steep steps up to the next level 😲 But there are opportunities, if you are so inclined (excuse the pun), to stop at some levels and look back and admire the views over the rooftops to the rest of the city and down towards the sea. You may not be surprised to hear that we stopped to admire the views, quite frequently as it happens 😂

After completing our third lot of steps we crossed the road and you know, when people talk about nearly dying of thirst in the desert, then they see an Oasis which saved their lives, well we unexpectedly came across our own version of such an oasis, it came in the form of a glass elevator, one, that on closer investigation revealed that it would, free of any charge, raise us effortlessly up a further ‘two’ street levels. As we exited the elevator, almost directly across the street, on a corner, we saw a Cafe and agreed that it would be a good time to stop for a spot of breakfast, we stuck with our usual traditional Spanish Fayre, but if I am completely honest, if they had have served a ‘Full English’ I would have most certainly have gone for it at that stage, and very much the ‘Muchas Grande’ version without any doubt 😂 Unfortunately though, they didn’t, so Tostado it was 😕 But such stops provide the opportunity to relax, people watch and take a look around at the immediate environment, sometimes you just happen to see things to your advantage ?

They say, and exactly who ‘they’ are, I have absolutely no idea, but anyway, ‘they’ say that timing is everything, and there is some truth in that, for had we have not stopped on this particular level, at that particular time, and at that particular cafe, and outside on a pavement table as opposed to inside, then we would have failed to observe, whilst we were eating our breakfast’s, that set back from the road, very discreetly, was a ‘Funicular Rail’ type mechanism, one that once again, completely free of charge, would take us effortlessly up another street level, although only one this time, but it meant one less set of steep steps to climb, so perhaps ‘fate’ was also lending us a hand too, for had we not have seen the ‘Elevator’, or the ‘Funicular’ mechanism we would have had to continue climbing up long steep steps to the top, or decide to give it up as a bad idea and go and spend the day on an Anti-Covid Vaccine pub crawl, you know that ‘hindsight’ thing I often keep mentioning………. 🤔 Even with mechanical assistance, we were still not at the top, once we had alighted the funicular mechanism, we still had to ascend another four street levels and then, unfortunately, once at the top street level, thinking we had reached the summit, we discovered that we still needed to walk ‘up’ a long winding pedestrian pathway in a park to get to the actual ‘Fortaleza’, but, eventually we made it 🥳🥳 It was only once we got up to the top that we discovered a large ‘free’ car park, or that we could have purchased tickets for a city bus tour that stopped here for thirty-minutes to allow people to get off and have a look around, I think from the look on her face, if Shazza had been presented with an opportunity to push me over one of the castle walls she may just have been tempted 😲 “But think of the calories we have just burnt off and the exercise we have just had” I said, albeit I ensured that I spoke those words from a very safe distance, and with several witnesses close by 😂 God help what she may now decide to have in store for me tomorrow 😳😲

I found the Forteleza quite interesting and, thankfully, after Shazza had got her breath back from the walk, and climb, she did too, so I live to visit more castles another day, although our method of transport up to them may require a little more consultation with my beloved in the future 🤭 We actually spent quite a bit of time wandering around, Shazza and I going off in different directions to each other, she just lookin at the views from different vantage points, whilst I explored every nook and cranny. After a short break for a refreshment stop, just bottles of water to re-hydrate, although we could have purchased a Sandwich for lunch, Shazza said that she wasn’t feeling hungry at that point, which was a bit unusual I have to admit, but I didn’t think anymore about it as she would be sure to let me know when she was. “So, is that it, is that all you wanted to do today ?” She asked inquisitively, “Well, actually yes and no” I responded, she looked confused, “I do have another part to my day’s plan, but actually part two is actually more for you than me” I told her. I then went on to explain that there was a Museum, located inside an old ‘Stately House’, one that you could walk around, this house was located in a massive public park, which I imagine would have originally been the grounds belonging to the Estate once upon a time, but there were also large private gardens at the back of the house that you could walk around too and, the entrance to the house and gardens was actually ‘free’ of charge. “I know that you like looking around old houses and all that sort of stuff, so I just thought we could kill two birds with one stone, Castle in the morning, Stately Home in the afternoon, what do you think ?” She thought it was a great idea, “Where is it ?” had been her obvious next question, and the one I was now a bit concerned about 😳 I got out the street map, with having just walked to the Fontaleza, I was now better able to judge the distances a bit more accurately, it was only then that I realised that it didn’t look as close as I had initially thought 🫣 On Google it indicates a forty-minute walk to the other side of the city”, I said hesitantly, but I don’t know if that is uphill or downhill 🤷‍♂️ “That’s okay, it isn’t really that far, and I don’t think that it is likely to be any higher than this is” she responded fairly cheerfully, “We could always grab a taxi if you want” I suggested, “No, lets walk, we have been sat in a car for the last three days, so the exercise will do us good” she said. Remember a comment I made earlier about ‘Hindsight’, and in an earlier ramble about ‘Google’ maps, in relation to its ineptitude when it comes to walking directions ? Well, on this occasion, perhaps we should have gone with the taxi suggestion 😳

But Shazza was right, and to be fair, occasionally, she is 🤭 But other than for exercise purposes, sometimes it is also good to walk because then you get to see a lot more that’s around you, just keep telling yourself that Eric 🙄 But thankfully, the walking route took us in a downward direction, although not back down as far as sea level, but down through part of what we discovered was the central area of the city, along, and across, wide and busy traffic filled roads and of course we passed lots of typical globally recognisable branded high street stores, this area was modern Vigo, but it could have been a high street in any number of other Spanish, or European, cities as far as we were concerned, for they all tend to look, and sound, much the same, noisy and crowded. The suburb that we are staying in is considered as the waterfront area, the more touristy area, and where the cruise ships moor up and ditch unload their passengers, so not the ‘real’ Vigo.

Google directions then took us down several side streets and back roads, it was like going back in time, from the very modern noisy traffic congested roads to very narrow roads with some beautiful old stone rows of terraced houses, with small, but very pretty, flower adorned postage stamp sized front gardens with low stone-walled entrances and wrought iron gates, then there were the very much larger residences, partially hidden behind their tall thick stone walls and thick tall and solid, wooden entry gates. So we had gone from the sounds of the modern world with its noisy traffic, and all the hustle and bustle of city life, to now being transported into a world of peace and tranquility, one that was filled with colour, tree’s and birdsong, we soon began to forget the burning sensation on the soles of our feet, and the slight tightness that we were beginning to feel in our calf muscles, for we had already walked a fair distance already since leaving the hotel earlier that morning.

It was only when we came to a junction in the road, and crossed a hump backed bridge that crossed a small river, that we could see the forested park on one side of us, but it was bordered with a waist high dry-stone wall and we needed to find an entrance. It was by pure chance that for some reason I had looked behind me as we crossed over the bridge and I saw a path, on the opposite side of the road, that switched back and down, under the bridge, and which gave pedestrian access into a corner of this massive public park. Once into the park itself there were wide dirt paths leading off in all directions, their were joggers, walkers and dog walkers and cyclists, fortunately we came across a large board with a park layout map, I say fortunately because Google maps was having a bit of a nervous breakdown at this point, the blue direction arrow just going around in circles and jumping from side to side 🤷‍♂️ so, from the park map we were able to get our bearings and head towards our ultimate destination, the ‘Pazo Quinones de Leon’

We didn’t know what to expect, I mean in the UK, ‘Stately Homes’ these days are usually managed by the ‘National Trust’ or ‘English Heritage’ Organisations and, generally speaking, they have long tree lined avenues leading up to them, and the houses themselves were generally pretty big and very impressive from the outside. There would be a car park somewhere along the entrance road, where you would ‘Pay At The Meter’ the parking fee, before proceeding to the main entrance, where you would then pay the appropriate entry fee, to visit the house, unless of course you had joined and paid the annual subscription fee to whichever Organisation that managed it, although to just visit the gardens and grounds were usually free. So, before I add my own personal photographs, and for those that are interested in this sort of stuff, I hand you back over to Mr. Google to provide you with some history of the place……………

I was quite impressed that entry to something like this was provided to the general public ‘free of charge’, and not even a cheeky little ‘Donations’ box at the exit. As this is something that interests Shazza, I would have been more than happy to have paid an entrance fee or given a donation, although of course, I wasn’t complaining that I didn’t have to 🤭

I hadn’t expected very much before we entered, but even I was very pleasantly surprised, the house was on four levels, although the basement, where presumably the kitchen areas on the lower ground floor were located, and the fourth floor, were not accessible to the Public 🤷‍♂️ But the Ground and first floors were accessible, and you could wander at your own leisure, there was artwork and furnishings from the period on display in most rooms which made it feel still lived in, although areas were roped off to prevent people from sitting on the furniture or touching ornaments and such like. I left Shazza to just wander around at her own pace, like she had done with me at the Forteleza. She was probably imagining living in such a place during the period, as I do with Castles and old Lighthouses, although she did say that she was a little disappointed at not being able to view ‘below stairs’, mainly the Kitchen and Scullery areas. Once she had seen everything in the main house we wandered into a separate ‘museum area’ that contained archaeological pieces that were discovered probably during the renovations of the house and grounds, again, not really of interest to either of us ‘History Heathens’ 🙄 But we were now both looking forward to getting into the gardens, we like parks and gardens, although I couldn’t tell you the names of most of the plants and shrubs, but private gardens like this, from earlier times, can usually be very interesting. Unfortunately, much like we had already come across on this road trip elsewhere, and probably due to both the drought conditions and the time of year, this garden wasn’t quite as impressive as we had hoped or expected that it would be, it could all have done with a lot more TLC 🤷‍♂️ Nevertheless, we wandered around anyway and, at one point, Shazza froze in fear on believing she had seen a snake right at her feet 😲

We had enjoyed our bit of a more leisurely walk, but time was now knocking on, it was already mid-afternoon and we hadn’t eaten since breakfast 😲 Now that is not unusual for me, I can usually go all day without food if I have eaten a late breakfast, but for Shazza !! well that is totally unheard of, but not once during our time out had she mentioned food. “Are you hungry ?” I asked her, “Not really, but if we find a Cafe on the way back I would probably stop and have a sandwich” she replied. Now for anyone who has been following these rambles from the beginning, since our motor-homing days, you will recall how, if we hadn’t stopped to make, or purchase, lunch by 1pm, at the very latest, Shazza would go exceptionally quiet and get very grumpy, she was a three meals a day sort of girl, but for several days now she has kept saying that she has not been hungry, I have to admit that quietly, I was beginning to get somewhat concerned although, whenever I asked her if she was alright, she would say that she was fine 🤷‍♂️

We re-traced part of our route back the same way we had approached the park, through the nice quiet streets, but when we got to a certain point, Google directions instructed us to head in a different direction, which made sense as we were now across the opposite side of the town to where the ‘Forteleza’ was located and we were heading back down to our hotel from a different point. We had expected to continue in a downhill direction, back to sea level, so we got a bit confused when we started to climb up hills again, our calf muscles didn’t like it very much either. We were relieved though when we returned to civilisation, another very busy suburb of the city, which part though we didn’t have a clue and didn’t really care 🤷‍♂️ but we saw road signs pointing towards the Port. We saw several ‘fast food’ establishments, Pizza’s, Burgers, Kebabs etc. but not one Cafe/Bar that sold either sandwiches, or Tapa’s, and wether it was just the thought of food, or the smell of fat, but I was beginning to feel quite hungry myself, but I didn’t want ‘Junk Food’. We continued walking when it suddenly became quite noticeable that the sky had become much darker, cloudier and grey, and we had come out without rain jackets 😲

We could see the Port, and the sea, so our legs, although feeling pretty weary now, picked up the pace. When we got close to the hotel, having not found a suitable place to eat, we decided that we would go into the supermarket just a couple of minutes walk from the hotel and buy some food to take back to our room. Shazza grabbed one of those ‘Poke Salad Bowl’ things, a bag of crisps and a banana, I grabbed a couple of packs of sandwiches, crisps and also a banana. It was around 4:30pm when we got back to our room, feeling totally knackered, we had been out for the best part of seven hours, walking for the majority of that time, a lot of it uphill, so we both sat on the bed devouring our food, with a nice hot cuppa. I was glad to actually see Shazza eating something at last. Although tired, we had both enjoyed our day and we had both seen things that were of interest to us both, I would call that a successful day out 🤗

We didn’t leave our room again that evening, neither of us wanted to go out to eat dinner, we were still full after eating what was supposed to be lunch, but so late, and our legs were still feeling a little heavy. So we both took steaming hot showers, flicked through all the channels on the TV although we couldn’t find anything that we could easily understand, well not sufficient to watch a complete programme, so we sat in bed watching something or other on Netflix, on our iPads. Wether Shazza had got a plan for the following day I didn’t know and I didn’t ask, as I would of course be doing whatever it was that she chose to do 🤷‍♂️

I awoke in the early hours to the sound of pitter pattering of rain on the windows, this obviously the rain that had not appeared anywhere in the day’s ‘Works of Fiction’ forecast 🤷‍♂️ But as we know by now, Meteorology is not an exact science now, is it 😉

To be continued……………………..

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, La Vida Es Buena

Day 3 – Mozarbez to Vigo

I had slept really well and awoke fully refreshed, I looked out of the window, fortunately to no fog today, instead it looked as if it was going to be a beautiful morning, the sun was just starting to rise and the sky was clear. Shazza grumbled as I filled the kettle and got the cups ready for what, on current experience, could be one of our only decent cups of coffee of the day, I try to do things as quietly as possible first thing in the morning if Shazza is still in dreamland, but it is difficult when you are in a hotel room where you don’t have a separate kitchen in which to conduct these morning routines 🤷‍♂️ She was still only half awake when I put the hot steaming coffee on her bedside locker, “Are you okay ?” I asked, a muffled response from under the cover said “What time is it ?”, “It has just turned 7:30am, did you sleep okay ?” I asked. She said that she hadn’t and that she had been awake on and off all through the night but didn’t know why, she complained of aching a little bit as if she was going down with a cold. Oh dear, not a good start to the day for one of us then, I thought to myself 🤔 I suggested that it was probably because of the much colder weather the previous day whilst we were in Badajoz, we hadn’t really experienced that sort of a chill in the air for a very long time, not since we had left the UK nearly eighteen months ago, and neither of us had been dressed appropriately for it, so perhaps it had come as a bit of a shock to her system, although I have to say that I was feeling okay, must be something to do with these youngster’s eh ! 🤭 Jokingly, I suggested that at our next stop we should perhaps book two separate rooms, as I didn’t want her passing her germs on to me, “Very funny” she said, but not in a humorous way, “So what is the weather like this morning ?” she asked, “You will probably need your thermal nickers on today, and your warm scarf and gloves” I said, “Really !!” She said with a bit of alarm in her voice, I chuckled, “No, you won’t have to wear ‘any’ knickers today as it’s actually a beautiful morning” I said, then proceeded to get my shower and get my stuff re-packed.

Now, the previous evening, when we had done our route planning, perhaps, on hindsight, we should have checked the ‘Works of Fiction’ forecasts first, as it would have saved us a lot of time 🙄 Initially I had got the road atlas out and had that next to ‘Google Maps’ on my iPad looking at routes up to Northern Spain. I suggested heading to a small hamlet in the Picos de Europas National Park which, but not taking any stops into consideration, would be around a six hour drive to a place called ‘Fuente De’, their were only two hotels there, but it was the location of a cable car that could take us up into the mountains, that would have to be pre-booked on-line, twenty-four hours in advance, and of course provided that it was actually in operation, as the weather dictates the schedule. At the top there was a cafe/restaurant and, according to our hiking ‘App’, there was a pretty ‘easy’ marked walking trail back down the mountain, which could only take 3-4 hours dependent on how wobbly your knee’s are or, alternatively, we could just have a short walk once at the top, as their were other smaller trails, take some photo’s, it would of course be rude not to, and then head back down in the cable car 🤷‍♂️ There were also lots of other scenic gorges to ‘drive’ through in the same area, with numerous stops at viewing points, as well as some other walking trails, of varying degrees of difficulty, but which included some easy one’s which enable us to test our fitness and stamina levels before progressing on to perhaps some intermediate level hikes. I suggested that we could base ourselves at one of the two hotels for perhaps 3-4 days, so Shazza did a check on her accommodation ‘Apps’ and confirmed that both currently had vacancies. From there we could drive on a little further, eventually reaching the Northern coast (Bay of Biscay), which would only be a couple of hours further drive away, at most, and then work our way around the headland in an anti-clockwise direction, stopping at various small coastal villages or towns where there were plenty of coastal footpath walks that we could undertake. I started to feel quite excited, because this was one of the actual goals of this trip for me, being out in nature, not walking around towns or cities. We both agreed that this was a good plan.

Well it would have been, until that was, we checked the ‘Works of Fiction’ forecasts for the next five days and discovered that the weather perhaps had a different plan for us, one which would mean that we would certainly have to skip making our next stop in the Pico’s, for now at least 🥺 Further up the Northern coast, the forecast was also reflecting a mixed bag of weather over the coming week, so we somewhat reluctantly agreed that we would now have to come up with a different option for the next few days, it would be pointless shelling out good money only to find ourselves holed up in a hotel 🤷‍♂️

Another option, as the weather was looking much better, was to head across to the Western side of the Galician Coast, from there we could work our way up to the Northern coast in a clockwise direction, just really doing a similar thing to what Plan A had been, but in reverse, and then, hopefully 🤞 we could finish in the Pico’s before we headed South again towards home. I know, I was supposed to be just going with the flow on this trip, and I had been, well for the first two days at least 🤭 but now, and from here on in, the weather was going to be the dominating factor, and something we would be stupid not to take into consideration so Shazza agreed, we really did need to start to do some sort of planning 🤷‍♂️ So I made us another coffee and we once again studied the maps and route options. We decided to head to ‘Vigo’, a large coastal city that had a variety of things for us to do, both within the city, nearby beaches and coastal walks, and one’s that we could do straight from the hotel so, with the weather looking reasonable for the next five days and, with temperatures during the day forecast to be between 22-25 degrees(c), albeit a bit sketchy after that, we at least now had a Plan B sorted. We agreed on booking a five day stay in a hotel and to use that as our ‘base camp’, we had considered one of those Air B&B type accommodations, it would give us a little more independence and flexibility, but when we looked, the costs were excessive, compared to the cost of a very nice four star hotel that Shazza had seen, which had a vacancy and was pretty much close to the centre, so that was booked and pre-paid and it would now give us the opportunity to spend, after our travelling day, four full days to explore the area, we would of course keep reviewing the weather forecast for further up the coast, as it looked very much as if the weather up this part of Spain was now beginning to change.

Google Maps had given us a choice of three routes, but one of them wasn’t worth considering, as it would take us out to the East before bringing us back in to head West, which is the direction we now wanted to be travelling, but the other two alternative routes had both given warnings of ‘wildfires’ in the area 😲 It seemed strange that not far away it would be suffering with rain, but on this particular side of the country it was still hot enough to spark wildfires 🤷‍♂️ So we could head into Northern Portugal, then cross back into Spain on its Northern border ? That would have been our personal preference and, although the longer route, it would be on scenic country roads, with lots more nice villages to drive through, but, that would also entail driving through lots of densely forested areas 🤔 The shorter Spanish route would be, potentially at least, on safer and faster motorway routes, although probably much less picturesque, although it would also involve, at one point, leaving the motorway to cut across the corner and using a normal National Road (N631) for around one hour (52 miles), before then joining the A52 motorway all the way to Vigo 🤔 We decided to leave the choice until the following morning when we would check our routes again to see if their were any updates on the locations of the Wildfires.

So on our morning of departure, whilst Shazza got herself ready, I checked both the routes, their was no change, just the same warnings of ‘Possible Wildfires’ along both routes 🤔 I made the executive decision to do the faster Spanish motorways route, better to be safe than sorry as, if there were to be an issue, the overhead electronic motorway signs would give plenty of advance notice. With Shazza not feeling a hundred per cent, I elected to do the first leg of the driving and I told her that I was more than happy to do it all, if she didn’t feel any better later on. I had underestimated just how bad she was actually feeling this morning, for she offered no form of protest, either over me taking the decision on which route we would take, or me doing the driving 😳

We departed the hotel a little before 08:30am and joined the very quiet N630 road, that road took us very quickly onto the A66 motorway just south of Salamanca, we then headed directly North, towards and past Zamora. This I have to say was a very familiar route to us, one that we had driven very many times over the last eleven years, travelling to, and from, the Ferry terminals at either Santander or Bilbao. We had decided to not stop for breakfast until we got past Zamora and had got onto the N631, where we would then be back in unfamiliar and much more scenic territory, hopefully without the smell or sights of any smoke or flames🤞

It was a good travelling day, the sun was now already high in the sky with just a few clouds, nothing of any significance, the external temperature was 20 degrees(c) so we didn’t need the air-con on at this stage, the normal cool-air fan was sufficient, for now. The motorway was, as usual, very quiet, with very little traffic, and with very long straight sections that went on for miles into the distance, so on went the cruise control and we then both just sat back, relaxed and enjoyed looking out at the scenery, at times we would chitter chatter about nothing of any relevance or importance, but it passed the time. Now, as you may have already gathered, as I was doing the driving, there are obviously no photographs of the surrounding countryside in this part of the ramble, but considering that photo’s of those landscapes appeared very many times in my previous rambles over those last 11 years, let me assure you that you are not missing anything, they hadn’t changed 😉

Once we had turned off the Motorway, and on to the N631 road, the views didn’t actually change that much from what we had already been seeing, flat landscapes that stretched for miles, the mountains far off in the distance, acres upon acres of Olive groves, farm buildings stuck in the middle of large open fields, various livestock, cows, sheep, goats and horses and occasionally a small grouping of non-Olive trees, which did add a bit of variety for our eyes. We passed through the occasional small hamlets, but saw no evidence of any human life, we drove across bridges and aqueducts that spanned small ‘Embalces’ and, for a time, we even drove alongside a long straight train track, but we never saw any trains 🤷‍♂️ I had to take off the cruise control as the roads became very much more winding and bumpy due to the camber of the road which was very changeable, but this stretch of road was a nice change from the long straight motorway road. Eventually we entered a larger village and as we approached we saw a sign for a ‘Cafateria’, so we stopped for a break, inside it was quite nice, nothing special, probably more homely would be a better description, a few tables and chairs in the centre of the floor, on one wall a cigarette machine dispenser and on another, a colourful gaming machine, of the fruit machine variety. We were greeted with the usual ‘Buenas Dias’, not only by the man behind the bar, but also by the two men who were sat at it, both reading their papers, their glasses of beer within arms reach, we of course responded, ‘Hola’ we said, in cheerful voices, then ordered two Cafe con Leche’s, Shazza ordered her usual ‘Tostado con Tomate’ but I saw a nice looking ‘Tortilla’ on the bar so I ordered a slice of that. Surprisingly, based on our previous recent experiences, the coffees were strong, just as we like them. Shazza enjoyed her Tostado, the usual two generous sized pieces of baguette, my large slice of Tortilla came with a small bread basket with four circles of sliced baguette, the Tortilla was still warm and absolutely delicious, a giant potato omelette as I think of them, “I may just have to switch to this as being my regular late morning breakfast when we get back home” I said to Shazza, although today, as we were a little later eating, it was almost certainly nearer being a Brunch. As we were eating, another group of four people arrived, we, as in the royal ‘we’, the barman and existing customers, all offered them the usual greeting, they responded with ‘Bon Dia’, which suggested that they may have been Portuguese 🤔 When we came to leave, the bill was even cheaper than we pay at home, things were looking up I thought to myself, but just another reminder of what normal life, and prices, are like when you are away from the tourist enclaves. As we departed we said ‘Adios’ and, once again, I had to smile to myself, as they responded with ‘Luego’, but you never know, we may see them again ‘Later’, if we end up returning this way and stop in for a coffee and a slice of Tortilla 🤷‍♂️

Shazza was happy for me to continue to do the driving, which I was pleased about, as I was really enjoying being back behind the wheel for a long period, I have always enjoyed driving, wether that was in the Motor Home or the car, but since the issue with my right eye a couple of year’s ago, I think I had lost some confidence when driving in town’s and cities, especially when it involved close quarter manoeuvering.

Our journey on the next stage of this N631 became much slower, their was lots of re-surfacing work being done to several stretches of the road and we had to stop, numerous times, at traffic lights, due to one side or other of the road being closed. Their were no clearly evident signs that this work was being carried out as a consequence of damage caused by wildfires, the landscape and tree’s bore no evidence of having being scorched, so it was probably just routine maintenance, for this road was the short cut, the main cross-country link, from the A66 to the A52 motorway route. It had taken us a lot longer than anticipated, due to the roadworks, to get up to the point where we joined the A52 motorway, but it was a relief as I was beginning to get tired and I really needed to stretch my legs. Shazza looked at Google maps on her iPhone and identified a town, ‘Pueblo de Sanabria’, not far off our route that she believed, from the photo’s, would be a good scenic place to take a break and perhaps grab a spot of lunch. However, as we left the motorway we came to a roundabout, in one direction, the town, in the other ‘Lago de Sanabria’ which looked quite large, so just like we often do, we changed our minds about going into the town and headed for the lake, even though it would entail driving a further twenty-minutes (8-9 miles), but as we discovered, it was through some wonderful underlating lush green forested countryside.

Now this had been worth travelling the extra few miles for, the views were a feast for our eyes, forest, mountains and water. Although the sun was shining, the air temperature was cool, we had considered walking back to the car and getting our swimwear, and beach towels, out of our cases and spending an hour on the beach, their were toilet facilities where we could have changed but, fortunately, we had the good sense to check the water temperature first 🥶🥶 Obviously those already sunbathing and swimming were of a much hardier breed than us Southern softies 😂 We enjoyed a short but pleasant stretch of our legs around the lake. The Cafeteria was more of a beach bar selling beer, soft drinks, crisps, chocolate and ice-creams, than any sort of more substantial food, I could have gone a full on Burger and Chips, so we settled for ice lollies, we could always find somewhere else to eat once we got back on the motorway. However, just a thought to ponder on, isn’t this totally unscheduled deviation from our route just proof, if proof were indeed needed, that actually, I am still more than capable of just ‘Going with the flow’ 😉😂

The short stop, fresh air and walk had done Shazza the power of good, she was feeling much better than she had at the start of the day, how do I know that, other than her of course now being more than happy to eat a cold ice-lollipop 🤔……… yup, she now ‘insisted’ on doing the driving 😂 Now, I would have been more than happy to have continued driving but, her insistence on taking over the driving happened to be very good timing as far as I was concerned, for it was clearly obvious by the surrounding landscapes that we were now in ‘Green’ and very lush Galicia and I, now being relegated to the passenger seat, would be able to provide a public service to you my reader’s by giving my camera ‘clicker finger’ some much needed and overdue exercise 🤗

With our breakfast stop, the delays with the roadworks and the deviation to the lake, it was now well past lunchtime and we still had a little under a two hour drive to Vigo, we had not eaten since our brunch stop and we were both now getting hungry again, so rather than do a major deviation off our motorway route, we decided to just pull in at the next available service station where we could grab a sandwich and also take the opportunity to refuel the car. We hadn’t scheduled another stop until we reached our hotel, but we are suckers for wonderful riverside views and so, as we crossed a wide bridge that spanned the ‘River Minho’, we saw a small village below, down on the riverside, so of course, we went to see if we could get a closer look.

As we looked down, over the nice small vegetable garden directly below where we were standing, we also noticed the very nice swimming pool and the South facing balcony on the house they belonged to, with views directly over the river and the forested hills, this was certainly one of those idyllic ‘wished we lived in this’ sort of a house, on the side of it was a sign declaring that it was ‘For Rent’. Shazza mused over the thought that perhaps they may consider selling it 🤷‍♂️ and suggested that she may know some potential interested buyer’s 😲 “We would certainly not be too far from the ferry ports if, or when, we wanted or needed to go back to the UK and, we would not be too far from the French border and the rest of Europe for doing more road trips” she said, with a bit of a sparkle in her eyes and a grin on her face. “Very true” I said, then I reminded her of the fog from just the previous morning, and the cold temperature, and how she had felt. We already know how cold it gets in the Autumn and Winter months up this part of the world, let alone the Atlantic storms, frost, ice and snow 🥶 She gave one of her mischievous smiles, we both knew that she, and I, had no intention of moving anywhere else, well not in the immediate future at least, for we both enjoy our year round warmth and are very settled and quite happy where we currently are 😉

It was almost 5pm when we checked-in at the hotel reception, but we knew beforehand that this was going to be yet another very long travelling day, although in all honesty, we had enjoyed this day’s travelling more than the previous one, probably because we had some nice stops along the route, but now we were both ready to take a bit of a break from such lengthy driving day’s. The hotel was very modern and a smart looking place, the car parking was in an underground public car park, with reserved parking spaces for hotel guests (€13 per night), which we had pre-booked, and there was a direct lift up to the hotel lobby. We were allocated a room on the 5th floor, it was very modern and spacious and immaculately clean. Their were the usual facilities, Stocked Mini-Bar, with a choice of alcohol, soft drinks, water and various snack items, but those came at quite a cost 😲 so, apart from using it to store our ‘Oat Milk’ and our own bottled water, we wouldn’t be availing ourselves of ‘their’ provided contents. There was a large LCD TV, free WiFi (Very fast connection) and plenty of electrical and USB sockets. But of course, no Tea/Coffee making facilities, no balcony and only the side view of a tall building to see outside our large windows 🤷‍♂️ However, we were not planning on spending a lot of time in the room, only at the end of each day after we had been out somewhere sightseeing or walking, and then again after we had been out and eaten dinner, and perhaps partaken of a few Anti-Covid Vaccines in the process, well you know that it would have be been rude not to 😉 The hotel itself was in a perfect location, right opposite part of the large port, so I had plenty of very large fishing and commercial vessels to look at, but more importantly it was within a very short, flat and easy route to lots of eateries and, we were just a two-minute walk from a large ‘Mercadona’ supermarket, which sold water, snacks and just about anything and everything else that we may have needed, but at prices that were very much more aligned to our ‘pockets’. We had not booked breakfast as part of our room package, they wanted €13 each (per day) for the privilege 😲 The hotel had its own Cafeteria, and separate Restaurant, and it provided room service and, although no words of confirmation were spoken between us, they didn’t need to be, as we usually sing from the same hymn sheet on such VFM matters (Value For Money), so we each knew instantly that we would not be utilising any of those facilities.

We were both tired from the long journey but, unlike the previous evening, we daren’t risk taking a ‘siesta’, we needed to eat a proper meal this evening, so we enjoyed a hot strong coffee, checked our separate Email and social media accounts and then started looking on Google at the local eateries available, and of course the associated customer ‘reviews’. We were in Galicia, renowned for it’s seafood gastronomy, but we were not finding anything out of the ordinary, at least nothing that we couldn’t get down on the Costa del Sol, so we thought that a bit later we would just wander and see if we just fell on something that would tantalise our taste buds. We had read lots of reviews, which all gave a particular establishment 5* and sung its praises, but it was a ‘Mexican’ restaurant, really !! we said to ourselves, ‘Come to Galicia and Eat Mexican Food’ 😲 Little did we know though, that later that same evening, that is exactly where we would end up eating.

We saw on Google that most of the eateries shut their kitchens between 3-4pm, and then re-opened them again between 8:30-9pm, so we got showered and changed and headed out on our eateries reconnaissance mission. Shazza decided to wear her warmer fleece, we were on the Atlantic coast after all, but I risked just wearing a lighter one and was glad that I had, for whilst there was a stiff breeze blowing, it wasn’t cold, in fact the evening was warm and very pleasant. The thing with Google maps is that it is difficult to sometimes assimilate real time distances and, as this was an unfamiliar place, so we headed out at 7:30pm. However, it had only taken us a gentle 15 minute stroll to reach the main food street that accommodated the majority of the eateries, at least those in that particular area, we were later to discover that there are many other areas here in Vigo, but you needed hiking boots to get up hills to them 🤭 but more about that in another ramble. We walked up and down the long narrow alley, all of the eateries had their tables, chairs and umbrellas lined up on the pavements, some with menu’s on the tables that we could stop and peruse. Unsurprisingly, the majority advertised fish, fish and more fish, a variety of both shellfish and wet fish, and of course lots of Galician Octopus. There were plenty that also offered the usual mixture of Salads and, for the Carnivores, plenty of meat choices from Hamburgers up to prime Steaks and everything in between, their were also Pizza’s, Paellas and even Kebabs, this told us just how much of a tourist resort it actually was, so actually I had quite a wide choice, but nothing actually any ‘different’ to what we can, and already have, experienced in our own Marina and local Town, yes even there we can get Galician style Octopus. I did wonder what the difference was between this and any other sort of Octopus, unless it had an additional outer furry coat because of the cold sea temperature 😂 Anyway, I was a little disappointed, where were the Galician Stews or Fish Chowder’s 🤷‍♂️ As for Shazza, apart from Salads, or Vegetarian Pizza, there wasn’t a lot of ‘Plant Based’ options in fact, we didn’t see one establishment that advertised any kind of vegetables, so personally, I wouldn’t hold out much hope if you were truly of a ‘Vegan’ persuasion as I don’t think that they have yet heard of that particular word in these parts. Fortunately, Shazza does now eat some fish. As for those speciality Galician dishes, well perhaps these are more seasonal, more Autumnal style dishes and we had just arrived a little bit too early to sample them 🤷‍♂️

We stopped at a small bar, what Shazza calls and ‘Old Man’s Bar’, not a fancy pub with loud music blaring out so as to make any kind of normal conversation inaudible, or a lively cocktail bar, and certainly not a place for raucous youngsters, in fact we could have walked straight past it as it was such a quiet an anonymous looking place and, we probably would have done so, had it not been for an elderly man sat outside, with his beer, newspaper spread out all over the table, smoking a cigarette, and coughing a quite chesty cough after each puff 😁 We sat outside with our glasses of ‘Vermut’ just enjoying the evening, people watching and mulling over what gastronomic choices were available to us 🤭 We decided, that as everywhere appeared to be much of a muchness, we may as well try something different, okay the ‘Mexican’ it was then. We nearly walked past that too for it was advertised as an Oyster bar. I just happened to see a waiter preparing the outside tables and asked if this was the ‘Mexican Restaurant’, he said that it was a ‘Mexican Style’, not one that served authentic Mexican food like Chilli-con-Carne or Burritos, but they used locally caught fish and served it in a Mexican style, with an assortment of different Mexican fusions. That sounded interesting, we thought, our eyebrows raised, but only because neither of us had a clue what this ‘fusion’ business was that he was talking about, it was more a case of ‘Con-fusion’ to us 🤭 I looked at Shazza, she looked at me and we both said “Okay, why not”, he asked if we had made a reservation, our hearts sunk, “No, we have just arrived in the city this evening” I told him, “Just wait a moment please” he asked, a couple of minutes later he came back and said “Yes, I have a table for you”. Now this waiter, ‘Adoni’ turned out to be a right gem, we told him we had no idea what we would be ordering so asked him for his recommendations and from that, well what a truly different type of gastronomic experience we had that evening, he told us that much like Tapas, we just order as we go and stop when we have had enough, he recommended a ‘Ceveche’ starter which was a Salsa with raw fish, served with home-made Tortilla Chips, but when it came out there were two strange, what looked like dried flower buds, on a side-plate. He told us to squeeze lime juice over the ceveche and then eat some, with the plain unsalted Tortilla Chips, after our first taste we then had to chew these flower bud looking things, just one each, then taste the Salsa again. WOW ! If we thought the Salsa tasted good after the first taste, the rest was just amazing, it just seemed to combine and lift all of the flavours to another level, was that the ‘Fusion’ that he had mentioned 🤔 Thereafter he made other recommendations, explaining what each dish was, and without any exaggeration, each dish was just as absolutely fantastic, spicy hits with some, but not of the hot mouth burning spicy variety, he served each course and then went off to serve other customers, but he always came back and asked how we had enjoyed what we had eaten and wether we wanted to try anymore, we just kept going until we were full.

Well I said earlier in the ramble that I was disappointed with the gastronomic offerings, I take that back one hundred per cent, this wasn’t just food that once eaten you would forget about, this was a celebration of food, combining presentation, colour, flavours, or more simply put a ‘Fusion’ 😂 To top it all off, the exceptional service was quite honestly over and above anything we have previously experienced and the cost for this wonderful gastronomic experience, including four generous glasses of wine and at least four different courses, less than €50 😲 We were so impressed that we immediately booked to go back three nights later, to try some different things, Saturday evenings were apparently Oyster Night, so what the heck, I ordered half a dozen Oysters which, the waiter informed me, would be served three different ways, now I really did have another gastronomic experience to look forward to 🤗 I have only ever had Oysters once before, on that occasion they were just served naturally with a squeeze of lemon juice, they were okay, nothing to write home about though, so it will be interesting to see what I make of this next experience 🤔

We had had a very long day and we were both pretty tired, but what a way to round it off. As for what we will do on our first full day in Vigo, well that is for another day 😉

To be continued……………………..

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, La Vida Es Buena

Before I continue with my ramble about the second day of our road trip, please note that I have added an amendment to the previous ramble, by way of a footnote at the end, it was relevant to the town of Jerez de los Caballeros and the Knights Templar and something that I felt needed to be added to complete the association between the two 👍

Day 2 – Jerez de Los Caballeros via Badajoz to Mozárbez

What a difference a day makes ? We of course were looking forward to experiencing some cooler temperatures as we travelled further North towards Galicia, but even up in that part of Spain the ‘Works of Fiction’ were forecasting daily temperatures still being around the 27 degree(c) mark, although very much cooler at night, but even those daily temperatures would still be a very welcome 10 degrees(c) cooler than we have been experiencing recently at home on the Costa del Sol.

On our first day we travelled nearly 200 miles in a North Western direction, skirting close to the Portuguese border where the temperature had remained high at 34 degrees(c), we had travelled a little further than we had initially planned, but of course we had added on an ‘extra bit’ for our somewhat unscheduled deviation from our intended route 🤭 But even when we arrived at our first night-stop location we were still pretty much South of Madrid and so the temperatures were still high, as we had expected them to be, but as we progress further North over the next couple of days we expect to reach some more bearable temperatures 🤞However, as well as our route planning, we are also continuously watching the advance ten day ‘Works of Fiction’ forecasts for the Galicia and Asturias regions, as that could potentially impact on our direction of travel as we get closer. The weather up there, under ‘normal’ conditions, is extremely changeable at the best of times, going from one weather extreme to the other, both on the Western and Northern coastlines and around the ‘Picos de Europas’ mountain range. Note however, that I said under ‘Normal’ conditions, for all over Spain this year their had been nothing normal in the weather patterns, with temperatures being very much higher than normal, creating devastating droughts, which are a more normal annual occurrence in the South, but less so in the North. However, even the more usual rainfall had not been occurring in the Northern part of Spain, which had created another major issue, the hotter and drier the weather, meant an increase in the incidences of sudden wildfires and we had been seeing warnings of wildfires when we had been looking at road routes up through both Spain and the Northern areas of Portugal, we certainly didn’t want to be caught up in any of those. This added another dimension to the choices we would have to make in our route planning once we started travelling a little further North. On the other hand, if the weather did change, and become more normal towards the approach of the Autumn months, this could impact on our opportunities for going on some of the hikes we were hoping to accomplish along the Western and Northern Coastal Paths, as well as some of the easier routes up in the Picos de Europa mountain range, as rain also brought low cloud and reduced visibility and being only ‘hobby’ walkers and not experienced ones with all the gear, we would be reliant on good walking weather and clear visibility. But, there was absolutely nothing that Shazza and I could do about any of this, the weather conditions were completely out of our control, all we could for now was to keep watching the ‘Works of Fiction’ forecasts, on a daily basis, and be ready to adapt our routes and activities as necessary 🤷‍♂️

The previous evening, before we went out to explore the town and have dinner, Shazza and I had looked at the map and had made a plan for the next stage of our travels. We were only an hour’s drive from the city of ‘Badajoz’, a city virtually on the border of Portugal and a place that ten years ago we had driven through during our motor-homing days whilst on our way into Portugal to do some wildcamping, however, on that occasion we had not stopped to look around the city, so now this would give us an opportunity to do just that and to tick off another Spanish City on our ‘To Do’ list 👍

That evening we had a look at what their was to see in the city, judging by the photo’s on Google and reading many of the reviews, it looked pretty good, there was an ‘Alcazar’, I like them, a ‘Roman Bridge’ that spans the ‘Guadiana River’ which had a nice looking ‘Riverside Walk’, there were also the old city walls which we may have been able to walk around and, within the city itself, there appeared to be several Plaza’s. So our initial thoughts were that there appeared to be enough to keep us out of mischief for a couple or more hours, in fact we would probably have to watch the amount of time we spent there as we would still have quite a long drive to get to our next night-stop. After our sightseeing in Badajoz we would then drive North East, inland to our second night stop just outside the city of Salamanca. The total driving time, even with the slight detour to Badajoz, would be around 5 hours, so that just fitted in with our daily driving hour’s plan, although dependent on how long we spent in Badajoz, and anywhere else we may choose to stop off as we drove along the route, it would be another longish day, but we had not come on this trip just to sit in a car and look at the passing scenery, as nice as it may be.

The only issue, with spending many years motor-homing in both Portugal and Spain, is that we had already spent time sightseeing in a lot of the major towns and cities that were along today’s proposed route to our next night stop. After departing Badajoz we would probably follow the ‘new road’ that wound its way up through the scenic countryside, rather than heading for the motorway, we would pass close to the cities of ‘Merida’, ‘Caceres’, ‘Plasencia’ and then, towards the end of our travel day, we would be on the outskirts of ‘Salamanca’. But these were all places that we had previously visited, we had walked the walks, seen the sights, so more a case now of already seen it, done it but didn’t buy the tee-shirts sort of visits, so we made the joint decision not to make any stops in them. Of course we didn’t know what we would come across on the drive between these cities, but our road atlas and Google maps were not highlighting anything particular that stood out as a ‘must see or do’. However, sometimes you come across the unexpected, things that Google hasn’t highlighted, and they can sometimes turn out to be true gems, so we remained open-minded and decided to just wait to see what leapt out in front of us, although hopefully, not literally 😲

However, when the following morning arrived, it came as a bit of a shock when I stepped out onto the balcony of our hotel room, partially dressed, as usual, wearing only my shorts, I actually physically shivered when the cold damp air, from the fog that engulfed the landscape, hit my body 🥶 I did not expect that so soon into our road trip, but I guess, upon reflection, we were after all up in the hills. When I mentioned the fog, and the cold, to Shazza, who was still tucked up under the thin bed sheet drinking the coffee I had just made her, she just said “Yeah, right” in a disbelieving sort of tone, but it didn’t take her too long, after I fully opened the curtains and then slid open the large glazed balcony doors, for her to say, “Okay, Okay I believe you, shut those bloody doors it’s freezing !!” 😂 As I mentioned, in the previous ramble, we didn’t eat breakfast at the hotel that morning so it didn’t take us long to get ourselves sorted, checked-out of the hotel and put our cases and rucksacks into the car and hit the road, driving in to the murky damp greyness, it was the first time, in a very very long time, that we had to turn the car heater on and de-mist the windows 😲 Shazza had already got herself into the driver’s seat whilst I was packing the car boot. Fortunately, as almost everywhere in Spain, apart from around major cities, the roads are pretty quiet and by the time we got within striking distance of the outskirts of Badajoz the view in front of our windscreen had changed.

Part of our route planning the previous evening was to search on Google Maps for ‘Free’ parking locations near to the city centre, although if none had been available we would have used one of the paid for parkings, but you already know how thrifty I am 🤭 Fortunately, we found a place at the ‘Baluarte de S Pedro’, just inside the old town walls and conveniently close, within an easy walking distance, to almost everything we initially wanted to see. However, whilst the fog may have lifted, the sky was full with grey leaden clouds and the temperature had still not risen much above 12 degrees(c) 🥶 We had dressed in our usual shorts and short sleeve shirts, just by way of habit really, although the ‘Works of Fiction’ had forecast the temperature to rise to 21 degrees, so until it did, we dug out our hoodie tops from the boot and headed for our first priority, which was somewhere to have our morning ‘Cafe con Leche and Tostado’s’.

Badajoz

As with most European cities, Badajoz has a long history dating back thousands and thousands of years, the city walls, Moorish and Roman architecture, the Alcazaba, Roman Bridge etc. are all clear evidence of the city’s past history. The ‘Moorish’ invasion of Badejoz, and its location on the Spanish-Portuguese border, means that it has had more than its fair share of bloody battles over the centuries, but the most brutal was during the more recent, historically speaking, Spanish Civil War, when the Nationalists took control of the city. On August 14th, 1936 they herded literally hundreds of men and women of the town into the bullring where they had set up machine gun points all around the ring. Hundreds were killed on that particular night and, the next day, they began the slaughter all over again 😲 It is alleged that in total over 4,000 people were killed, under the orders of General Juan Yague, who became known as the ‘Butcher of Badajoz’.

I like discovering small snippets of historical information like this on places that we visit, so perhaps I am not such the history heathen that I may profess to be 😁 Shazza much prefers to seek out where the best Cafe’s and eateries are, I on the other hand, look for the dungeons and places of witchcraft and torture, what does that say about me 😲

We could see on Google maps that where we had parked was very close to the ‘Alcazaba de Badajoz’ so we headed in that direction, one of the very first things that we noticed though was just how quiet everywhere was, unusual for a City, I mean it wasn’t exactly the crack of sparrows when we arrived and got parked up and, technically speaking, it wasn’t yet the end of the tourist season, so where was everybody ? Perhaps they had got lost in the early morning fog and were now looking for ‘free’ parking spaces 🤭

After a short walk, probably no more than ten minutes, we found ourselves in a wonderful Plaza with a building that was decorated with red and white tiles, this was the Plaza Alta, located in the oldest part of the city and right next to the Alcazaba, and a location where, due to the acoustics, many musical events are held in the height of the Summer. The only acoustics we could hear were the sound of the pigeons, the noisy buggers !

In a corner of the Plaza was a solitary Cafe, but on the face of it, it looked nice enough, so we sat down and ordered our usual breakfast’s. Now one thing we are discovering here in Spain, not just on this particular trip, but also when touring in our own local areas, is that ‘Tostados’ come in an assortment of different shapes and sizes, from ‘regular’ sized slices of toasted bread, to brick size slabs, large long baguettes, toasted and cut in half, smaller toasted baguettes cut in half, or perhaps round toasted rolls. But they are all, generally speaking, quite decent sized offerings, except that is, at this particular Cafe establishment, who take it to an extremely different level, but not in a good way 🤔 We suspected, after eating there, that this establishment was one that the locals would never frequent, more of a ‘fleece the tourists’ sort of place, for when our breakfast was delivered, the thinly sliced bread was much like the small thinly sliced toasted bread soldiers I used to dip into my softly boiled eggs, no wonder the scrawny looking pigeons were complaining, no scraps left for them to feast upon. When it came time to pay the bill I got the biggest shock though and had to check it twice, I was convinced that they had charged for two full English breakfasts !! I think it would be fair to say that he quite literally saw us coming, it wouldn’t have been difficult, as we were the only bloody idiots there 😲 So, our first impression on our visit to this city had not got off to the best start, I must confess that I thought that by now we would have learnt to only eat or drink where the locals eat and drink, obviously not, so it served as a quick reminder to us as any savings I had made on the free parking had quickly just disappeared. Whilst I am on the subject, another thing we have noted since leaving home is that the standard of the ‘Cafe con Leche’s’ are terrible, like milky dishwater, not the strong coffee that we have become accustomed to down our own neck of the woods, we can only hope that it improves as we progress North, otherwise, I may well have to take drastic action and seriously up the number of my ‘daily’ doses of Anti-Covid Vaccine’s, now there’s a happy thought 😂

From the place where we had suffered our ‘daylight robbery’, we walked up some old stone steps, through a couple of ancient archways and alighted into the upper gardens and external grounds of the ‘Alcazaba’. The photo’s of this place on Google must have been taken from another Alcazaba located somewhere else, even with taking into consideration the time of year, and the recent extended drought period, the place looked totally unkempt, scruffy and disheveled. There was a museum, which involved parting with an Admission Fee, which we are guessing was housed within the old Palace buildings and would perhaps be in a much better state of maintenance, but we decided not to take the risk and subject ourselves to yet another ‘daylight mugging’, so early into our visit. Now, as you know, I have a thing for Castles, and ‘usually’ Alcazars, and even Lighthouses, which Shazza tolerates, well it would appear that Shazza has a thing for old Stately Homes and their Gardens, and for some inexplicable reason, even Roman Bridges it would seem 🤷‍♂️ Well, at the moment we couldn’t do her first choice but, if my beloved wants wants a Roman Bridge, then a Roman Bridge she shall have, or at least see, for I, and Google Maps, knew just exactly the place to go and see one, conveniently, only a short fifteen minute walk away along the banks of the river 👍

The sun had still not broken through the grey leaden clouds as we walked across the road and entered into the walled city, but there was a noticeable rise in the temperature 👍 Our intention now was to find the steps up and walk around the walls, to see how far we could get and what the views were like. Unfortunately, we were thwarted yet again, as the entrances were protected by padlocked rusty iron gates, the so called inner gardens beyond them again looked derelict, unkempt and more like a rubbish skip, it made us ask the question, just what exactly are the local and regional government’s doing to this place, they certainly don’t seem to be spending any money on general maintenance, grass cutting, litter clearance etc. Perhaps we were just at the wrong part of the city wall 🤷‍♂️ We decided to wander into the centre, in the hope that we would find that, to be more scenic and picturesque, and we were also now ready for another coffee as we had already spent over an hour of this visit seeing nothing very much of interest !!

I know that at this point of the ramble I must be sounding like a bit of a grumpy old git, although we did come armed in the knowledge that lots of inland places like this had suffered with water shortages during the height of the drought, so watering of grass, shrubs and plants during that lengthy period were banned. Also, away from the main coastal resorts, it had passed the period of the main tourist season, so we were not expecting to see or feel the same sort of ambience, we also anticipated the change in weather and the temperatures, so to be fair, we had not arrived with too many expectations, but being a city we had expected a little bit more than we were actually currently experiencing, to get us back into the holiday mood perhaps we should visit a few ‘Tourist Tat’ shops, we could purchase fridge magnets, flamenco dolls, key rings and even ‘I Love Badajoz’ tee-shirts emblazoned with a big red heart………… 🤔 Yup ! You are correct, never going to happen in a month of Sunday’s 😂

But you know what they say, ‘Patience is a virtue’ and as we entered the inner part of the city with it’s hustle and bustle, small little Plaza’s with Cafe’s, the typical big modern retail stores and the noise of traffic, it was as if we had just walked through an invisible outer defence barrier and into the real everyday world of down town Badajoz. Neither Shazza or I, generally speaking, like inner cities with their crowds, but on this occasion it felt good, as if we were not actually part of an Apocalyptic Disaster Movie as it had felt like a little earlier.

After a brief coffee stop, which by the way, was only a minor improvement on the rest that we had so far experienced whilst on this road trip, we decided to just wander, following a tourist map we had picked up from of the Tourist Information Offices we had passed. Now we could have spent time in Museums, Art Galleries etc but that really isn’t our thing, however, we did take the opportunity, seeing as we were in a city, to find a branch of our Bank and get some extra money. It wasn’t that we desperately needed any, as we were paying for accommodations and fuel on our Spanish bank debit cards, but we used cash for coffee’s, lunches, dinners and other incidentals, although in truth we could have used our cards for most of that as well, just call me old-fashioned, but I like cash in my wallet 🤔 Anyway, it seems that further North, the presence of our particular Bank Institution is not that well represented, and to withdraw money from other banks ATM machines, here in Spain, costs a fee, so this was more a precautionary measure rather than one out of necessity. The only reason that I am mentioning this is to highlight just how friendly and helpful complete strangers can be. Google Maps are very good for guidance on road routes, but we are discovering that when getting ‘walking’ directions it is not nearly as good, now wether that is because the GPS signal is not as good in small streets I do not know, but it doesn’t seem to be able to accurately pin point your location, so when you think you are heading in the correct direction and following the voice and visual directions, the on screen tracking suddenly changes and indicates that you are then travelling in the wrong direction, which is extremely frustrating to say the least. Anyway, we had stopped to study where we needed to be against where Google Maps indicated that we were and whilst we were looking for a wall plaque to indicate the street that we were on, a young chap, smart but casually dressed and probably in his late twenties, or very early thirties, stopped and asked if we needed any help. I told him the name of the bank we were looking for and he kindly offered to show us the way, now of course we were a little cautious, as you would be, but we accepted his assistance otherwise we could have been going around and around in circles forever. We discovered that we had actually been walking in the totally wrong direction, so thank you for that Mr Google 😳 Whilst walking, we started chatting, as you do, and, we discovered that although he originated from Badajoz and is currently living and working here, he had actually spent most of his adult years working in other cities and countries within Europe and, blow me down with a feather, he was in the same Pharmaceutical profession as my daughter in Munich, now how’s that for a coincidence ? Anyway, just before we got to the location of the bank he was stopped, and greeted, by a female friend, so he pointed to where our bank was, which was just a little further down the street we were now on, we could see the sign, so we thanked him very much for his help and said goodbye. We had to wait in a queue before we could use the machine and as we did so, the helpful stranger walked passed, we briefly exchanged pleasantries again and once again thanked him for his assistance. No matter where we have been in Spain, from the early days when we were travelling, or since we have lived here, it is not often that we have come across unpleasant, unhelpful or unfriendly locals, perhaps just the odd young female waitress having a ‘Personal Crisis’ 😂

After a little further exploration we decided that we had seen enough and decided to make our way back to the car and continue with our long journey, we had already passed a little over three hours of our day since leaving the hotel that morning, we considered eating lunch first but agreed to stop somewhere else along our route. On our way to the car park we stopped at a small supermarket, purchased a carton of Oat Milk for our coffee’s in our hotel rooms and a few snacks. We decided to take a more scenic route, away from the noise of the inner city, and walked through what turned out to be quite a nice large park on the outer side of the city walls.

The walk through the park had taken us a little longer than we had anticipated, probably because we were getting a bit leg weary and so had slowed down, by the time we reached the car the clouds had started to break and the sun had started to shine, it was feeling a little warmer than it had done during the majority of the morning. Our feelings about Badajoz, well, we walked the walks, saw some of the sights but it certainly didn’t justify buying a tee-shirt 🤭 To be fair and not too critical, in the height of the Summer it would probably have been a much better time to visit, the river walk would certainly have been a more pleasant experience, with the riverside Cafe’s actually open for business, and perhaps the local Council may have maintained some areas a lot better, we will never know, but if we do come this way again it will only be to either cross the border into Portugal, or vice versa, back into Spain, but we wouldn’t make a point of stopping in Badajoz, however, we can now cross it off our ‘To Do’ list 👍

As Shazza had driven us here I asked if she wanted me to do some of the driving, but she declined and said she would prefer to drive and let me click away on my camera, I didn’t protest but said that when she had had enough, I was happy to take a turn at the wheel as we still had the longest stretch of the drive to do, around four hours 😲 We had a choice of three routes out of Badajoz, our somewhat outdated road atlas of Portugal and Spain had shown the ‘old road’ route towards the direction we wanted to be in, but it also showed what was then the proposed new road, we took a gamble on the new road now having been completed and we were correct to do so.

What became immediately evident to us was the devastation caused in this area from forest fires, the majority of the trees had blackened trunks and branches, although there was evidence of new green growth, large areas of the land were still scorched black and even on this new road, there were several long areas of recent re-surfacing work where the original tarmac would have melted from the heat of the wildfires as they jumped the roads. Houses and farm buildings lay empty, their blackened interiors clearly visible through the collapsed roofs, many lives would have been lost, human and animals, as the fires swept rapidly across acres of land at great speed and without much prior notice. We had seen this in our own area, it is a common annual occurrence and is one of the reasons why many are leaving rural areas for the safety of larger coastal towns and cities. This is one of the main reasons why rural properties with acres of land can be purchased very cheaply, both in Spain and Portugal, by the unsuspecting foreign buyers who are unaware of the dangers. But some of the many older residents, who have lived here for decades and invested all their money into their properties, animals and farmland, remain, some have no other financial choice 🥺 As we moved further North and inland, to areas that are more arable and much less forested, the landscapes became green again with the usual acres upon acres of Olive trees and Hay meadows, the clouds all but disappeared, the sky was a deep shade of blue and the external temperature jumped to 30 degrees(c), thank goodness this car has really efficient air-con 🥵

We were both beginning to feel tired and weary, the scenery was very much the same for mile upon mile and I got bored of taking photo’s, Shazza needed a ‘rest stop’ so we pulled in at the next Cafe we came to, surprisingly, as we had eaten very little all day, neither of us felt hungry so we just settled for a small cold beer and then I took over the driving. Shazza booked us hotel accommodation on-line in the small village of ‘Mozarbez’ just on the outskirts of Salamanca, it had a swimming pool and an on site Restaurant which opened at 8pm, we had seen this the previous evening when conducting our route planning but had not booked it, just in case we diverted from the route. We both agreed to just head there, have a swim and go to the restaurant for dinner later that evening.

By the time we reached the hotel it had been nearly an eight hour day, we were both tired, we checked in and went straight to our room, which was very modern and immaculately clean, a lovely walk in shower, large LCD TV, free good fast WiFi and a small refrigerator, but nothing in it, no water or soft drinks, but we had our own which we had purchased from the supermarket before we left Badajoz, at least it would serve to keep them and our oat milk chilled, notably absent, as usual, was the lack of any coffee/tea making facilities, we were glad we had come prepared on this trip and now we were ready for a ‘decent’ cup of coffee. Neither of us felt like getting changed and going for a swim, we relaxed on the bed and fell asleep and didn’t awake again until 10:30pm later that evening 😲 We couldn’t be bothered to get showered and changed just to go down to the restaurant, so we snacked on what we had purchased from the supermarket, had another coffee, perused our Emails and Social Media on our iPads and then planned a route for the following day. We considered just getting into the ‘Picos’, it was closer, however the ‘Works of Fiction’ put a spanner in the works for that idea, with rain forecast for the next three days, we didn’t want to just sit in an accommodation doing nothing , we could have done that at home at no expense. We were also spending a lot of time driving and having long days, the driving was the most tiring bit and, although it had only been two days, we agreed that we just needed to now get ourselves up to Galicia, and take a few days break, basing ourselves in a hotel that we could use as a bit of a base camp, somewhere where the sun was still shining. However, getting up and across there in one go would entail another very long and monotonous drive, but we both agreed that it would be worth it.

Today had also not been a good eating day, a small, and I mean small, Tostado for breakfast followed by ‘junk’ food much later that evening, we were also not drinking enough water, so we agreed that on the rest of this trip we had to plan our travel and dietary needs much better than we had been doing. For really the first time since we sold it in April 2023, we miss not having our Motorhome, our home on wheels with all the facilities, being able to stop more or less wherever we wanted, cooking facilities (Hob, Grill and Oven) to ensure we could eat properly, and regularly, a proper large fridge/freezer, our own on-board toilet and shower facilities and our own bed to sleep in, damn it, I don’t half miss that ‘Little Fokker’ right now 🥺 But the grass is always greener as they say and life is never completely perfect, their would have been issues of living here in Spain with the van, financial implications and even practical issues with parking/storage 🤷‍♂️ I guess just seeing lots of other motor homes, and camper vans, on the road, or parked up discreetly under the shade of trees, the occupants sat in sun chairs outside enjoying a cool drink, yes I admit, it did make us more than a little envious.

To be continued……………………

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, ‘La’ Vida Es Buena

(even without our Little Fokker 😉)

Day One – Home to Jerez de los Caballeros

We awoke on the Monday morning, our chosen day of departure, to an unexpected and somewhat cooler morning, a nice fresh breeze was blowing in through the open balcony doors, although we both knew that that wouldn’t last long as the day’s temperature was already forecast to climb to yet another sweltering 36+ degrees(c). We had packed our bags the night before so, after our usual morning coffee’s, we loaded the car boot and at 10:00am we drove away, I had elected to do the first stint behind the wheel, not knowing where we would stop for a late breakfast, or perhaps brunch and, to be perfectly honest, at this point in the proceedings, we had no idea of when we would actually be returning home again, it could be in a week, or even a month, so this really was going to be an adventure 🤗

I had elected to do the first stint at driving, but this was much to Shazza’s displeasure as these days she prefers to do the majority of the driving, although she assures me that it has nothing to do with a lack of confidence in my own driving ability 🤔 she just get’s bored with being a passenger and she certainly isn’t like me, as I enjoy being a passenger so that I can take lots of photo’s as you know, of anything and everything 🤭 However, as we had travelled the first part of this trip on numerous occasions, I wasn’t bothered with doing any clicking away on my camera, but I knew that she would still get her way at the first opportunity, probably our first stop and to be honest she would probably then elect to do the majority of the driving over the coming days, or weeks, but I wouldn’t mind as by then we would be in unfamiliar territory so my clicker finger would get plenty of exercise.

Now you may recall from my last ramble, I mentioned that we had made a loose plan for our first day’s travel and that I may have, unbeknown to Shazza at the time, made my own cunning plan based on the knowledge that my beloved did not want to be driving for more than 4-5 hours per day. Well, as I knew would happen, within a very short time of being on the road, Shazza asked me the question that I knew she would, “Have you got any ideas of where we should head for once we get clear of Seville ?”, I smiled inwardly to myself, “Well actually” I said, and then reeled off my surreptitious pre-conceived plan 🤭 Fortunately, once she had looked at the small town on ‘Google Maps’, and my suggested modest three star hotel, with breakfast included, use of their swimming pool and free parking all included in the price, she agreed with my suggestion and went on to her phone ‘App’ and made the necessary accommodation booking. But I knew that from here on in, each night in our selected accommodation before going out for dinner, we would both sit down together and look at the road map both on ‘Google maps’ and our road Atlas and agree on a general direction for the following day’s travel and for potential night-stops. We would wait to book accommodation as we didn’t know at that stage if, or where, we may choose to deviate from our tentative route, as it was quite possible that we may have seen a ‘Brown’ Tourist sign to somewhere, or something, that may have been worth a detour off our planned route 🤷‍♂️ This road trip could be quite interesting and exciting, although perhaps, for me, tinged with some slight anxiety, not just because we may not go straight from Point A to Point B, but maybe several different ‘Points’ in between or, actually never getting to the original planned ‘Point B’ 😲 Additionally, there were no guarantees that there would be any accommodation vacancies at places that we did eventually decide to overnight, after all it was still, until the end of September, the tourist period both here in Spain, and also in Portugal. I mentioned this to Shazza, her response took me back to our full-timing Motorhome days when, in our early novice days, when Wildcamping seemed a dangerous option to me, I had similar concerns, she would always say, ‘Don’t worry, we will be alright, we will find somewhere”, and we always did.

I have to say that, for me, the first part of the journey was pretty boring really, which is a bit unfair as the scenery is absolutely amazing, but now that we have travelled this same route ‘numerous’ times, and are more than very familiar with the scenery, and all the landmarks, which now only serve to remind us of how far we have driven and ultimately how far we still have to go. After only an hour into our journey we made a stop at a small Cafe, one that unsurprisingly, Shazza had found on her route map and which was just off the main motorway but not a service station establishment. I am not the only one in this relationship that makes surreptitious plans. Yes she may have been hungry for, as unlike me who does not usually eat before lunch, Shazza needs feeding ‘at least’ three times a day 🤭 However she also had another purpose for stopping sooner rather than later. Although we had been travelling in the cool comfort of our very efficient Air-con, as soon as we stopped and opened the car doors the heat hit us, it was still relatively early, but the external temperature was already reading an opressive 30 degrees(c) 🥵 We ordered our usual coffee and tostado’s, but the toasted slices of bread that we each received were the size and thickness of a house brick, needless to say, we would not need to stop anywhere else for lunch, not even Shazza on this occasion. After devouring our late breakfast’s, it was then that Shazza implemented her own cunning plan and took the opportunity, whilst I was using the bathroom facilities, to jump into the driving seat 😲

Now just because she had evicted me from my driving position, I am not saying that it was she that was solely to blame for sailing right past our exit junction, part of my passenger duties, other than taking photo’s of anything and everything, was to be back-up navigation assistant to our Sat Nav 🤔 Let’s just say that perhaps we may both have been a little pre-occupied, either at concentrating on the scenery around us, or to be honest, due to the fact that we had been acting like a pair of irresponsible teenager’s by singing along, very very loudly, to some of our favourite 60’s, 70’s and 80’s pop tunes that were blasting out on Apple Car Play from the playlist selection on my iPhone, we did get some strange looks from the occupants of vehicles that overtook us 😂 Anyway, as a consequence, we missed our proposed turn-off into what would have been an even more scenic ‘Sierra de Aracena National Park’. It really didn’t matter though, we just drove for a few more miles then took the next available turn off the motorway and headed West, towards our destination, which was not far from the Portuguese border and now our new route would take us along some narrower country roads through a more central area of the National Park. But come on, alternative routes, pre-planned or otherwise, isn’t that what part of this road trip is all about, at the end of the day we didn’t actually need to be anywhere in particular 🤷‍♂️ Well, except that on this our first day we actually did, as Shazza had pre-booked and pre-paid for the accommodation, and at such short notice their was no refund if we cancelled, so no matter how many deviations we may take, we did have to end our first day of travelling at the hillside town of ‘Jerez de los Caballeros’.

Once we were on the roads within the National Park we noticed the change in the surrounding scenery, from long views of miles upon miles of Olive groves to now some many different types of trees, including a lot of Pines, and there were a lot more undulating hills, but the neatly aligned rows of Olive groves had now too become less regimented just acres upon acres of Olive trees. We still hadn’t, as yet, escaped the searingly hot Southern temperatures, it was now registering 34 degrees(c) 🥵 so, even though we had the Air-Con on full, our bottles of water were getting a little tepid, so we decided to stop at the side of the road, in a small village, for a very nice ice-cold cervesa (beer), although the bar initially looked closed, but as we passed by we saw the the front doors were open and their were lights on inside, I don’t know who was more surprised, us or the man sat at a table inside, but he stood up with quite a start as we entered, we passed the usual pleasantries and then ordered our two small beers. We took our beers outside and sat under the shade of a large sun canopy, it certainly did the trick for him, as shortly afterwards two small Spanish registered camper vans passed by, looked at us, gave a smile and then parked further up the road. Six adults alighted from the two vehicles, they were obviously travelling together in convoy, they said ‘Buenas Tardes’ as they passed our table, for it was now after 2pm, so the greeting changes from ‘Dias’ (Day) to ‘Tardes’ (Afternoon), much later it would change again to ‘Noches’ (Night), we responded appropriately, as you do. They sat on a large table adjacent to us and engaged in their own conversation. Suitably refreshed, and availed of the establishments other ‘conveniences’, after saying the usual ‘Adios’ (Goodbye) as we departed, in a general way to everyone, to the response of ‘Luego’ (Later), which always seems odd to me, unless they knew something that we didn’t, but it was very unlikely that we would ever see any of them ever again 🤷‍♂️ Although we were still heading towards the Portuguese border, we would not, on this occasion at least, cross into Portugal itself, although we hadn’t ruled out perhaps doing so at some point, dependent on our selected route up to Galicia, or perhaps even on our return trip 🤷‍♂️

Not needing to now stop for lunch actually turned out to be very advantageous, as we got to our hotel, ‘Los Templarios’ (The Templars) which was a quite basic but comfortable 3* hotel in the small town of Jerez de los Caballeros, a little earlier than we had anticipated. In the main reception area their was a suit of armour standing guard near the entrance, the cogs in my brain started to turn and my association with the name started to resonate with the ‘Medieval Knight’s Templar’, as you know by now, we are both self-confessed history heathens, but you may also know that I, much more than Shazza, have an interest in Castles and their inhabitants over that period of history, so this had intrigued me and I needed to find out if there was actually any connection, but more about that a little later.

Once we had got booked in and settled in our room we got changed into our swimwear and enjoyed a couple of leisurely hours in the hotel’s relatively large open air pool, it was a little after 4:30pm, six and a half hours after leaving home, a little longer travelling than we had planned but we did have two stops en-route, the temperatures were still in the very high 20’s and so it was refreshing to spend time in the cool water, we had to share the pool though, with a small family of four, but there was more than enough room for the six of us 🤭 so after our long hot drive we enjoyed swimming lots of lengths and getting some exercise, however, had we have known the physical effort we were to need, to explore the town later that evening, and also where we would get some dinner, we may have just decided to have had a late afternoon siesta instead 😲

After our refreshing swim we returned to our room, it was still far to hot to venture out to explore the town and the reception staff told us that the Restaraunts in the town did not generally open until after 8pm. We made ourselves a coffee, we had brought our own travel kettle and supplies as hotels here in Spain do not always provide such facilities, unless you want to pay for the more luxurious type of establishments. Shazza lay on the bed and read a book on her Kindle device, for me it was an opportunity to research a bit of history around these ‘Knights Templar’. Now to be honest, their is lots of stuff on the Internet, so I am not going to write a ‘War and Peace’ type novel in this ramble, my interest was purely on who these Templar Knights were and, what connection did they have to this particular part of Spain.

The ‘Order of Santiago’ were a Christian Military-Religious Order of Knights founded around the year 1160 in Spain. Their purpose was fighting Spanish Muslims, and the protection of ‘Pilgrims’ on a series of routes on their way to the shrine of St. James in ‘Santiago de Compostela’, these routes later became known as the ‘Camino de Santiago’ or ‘The Way Of The Saint’. The Order of the ‘Knights Templar’ got established in Andalusia between 1253-1258, when Islamic power began to dwindle and the Knights Templar made ‘Aracena’ one of their strongholds. symbols and signs of this mysterious order of Christian Knights can be found just about everywhere in these parts, even the town’s ‘Coat of Arms’ includes many of them. It was here that the Templar’s rebuilt the fortress they found upon their arrival and some of the rooms can still be observed, as well as part of the Towers and some of the Wells.

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The Christian rulers in Northern Spain and the Muslims ‘tolerated’ each other in a ‘Political-Financial Arrangement’’ in a form of ‘co-existence’ after the Northern Kingdoms took advantage of Muslim Principalities (Taifas), that had become fragmented and weakened. After having fostered the ‘threat of Civil War’ the Christians intimidated Muslim Ruler’s, charging them a form of ‘protection money’ called ‘Parias’, in the exchange for their ‘Alliance’ and ‘Loyalty’ and in return for NOT attacking them. The situation was similar to that in the ‘Holy Land’ in the 12th and 13th Centuries, where the Latin Christian Lords allied with Muslim Lords for ‘Mutual Advantage’. As in the holy land, Christian Ruler’s in Spain, would also ally with Muslim Rulers ‘against other Christian’s’. Far from being straightforward, the bloody history of Spain and its early presence of Muslim Kingdoms demonstrates a turbulent power game between Christian Rulers and Muslims, where a level of tolerance existed usually because of the exchange of money maintaining the status quo.

Jerez de Los Caballeros’ is a town located in South Western Spain, in the Province of Badajoz. It is located on two hills overlooking the River ‘Adrila’ and is situated 18Km (a little under 9 miles) from the Portuguese border. The old town is surrounded by a Moorish wall with six gates. The town is said to have been founded by ‘Alfonso IX of Leon in 1229. In 1232 the town was extended by his son, ‘Ferdinand III the Saint, who gave it to the Knights Templar, hence the name ‘Jerez de Los Caballeros (Jerez of the Knight’s).

Now I found this information, and believe me, a heck of a lot more, a very interesting read and in my opinion it would be very easy to ‘interpret’, or conversely to ‘mis-interpret’, some of these past historical events, and arrangements, to what is going on in today’s world between Christian Rulers and Muslim Rulers, but food for thought eh 🤔 What also intrigued me was to discover that the ‘Knights Templar’ may have been founded in the Middle Ages, but were then accused, some say falsely, for heretic and other crimes and all members were hunted down and sentenced to death. But keep researching and you find that the Knights Templar’ continue to exist ‘globally’ today, in a more modern form and are a quite separate, but not totally un-associated organisation, to the ‘Masons’ and other similar organisations. But, as they used to say at the end of the weekly televised ‘Crime Watch’ programme, please don’t have nightmares and in todays technological world where Social Media channels are rife, mis-information can often be very difficult to distinguish between fact and fiction 😳

Having read all of this history, I was sorry that I hadn’t known about ‘Aracena’ beforehand, the castle looked magnificent and it would have made a very interesting stop, without actually deviating off our route as we were only 2Km from it 🥺 Perhaps worth a weekend visit at some point in the future 🤔

So back to the script…………………….

The evening was still warm, but much cooler than it had been, so we showered and changed into, cleaner and smarter, shorts and tee-shirts. We headed towards the town but could not find the actual ‘Old Town’ area or where the shops and eateries were located, we just got ourselves lost in narrow streets with lots of residential dwellings and more modern type small supermarket style retailers. So I stopped a woman who I made the assumption of being a local and asked, in my bestest Spanglish, for directions, she smiled knowingly and gestured with her hand that we needed to walk in a ‘downward’ direction, the way she stabbed her finger in the downward direction got me a little concerned. We should have known, we had had to drive ‘up’ to our hotel accommodation and as I looked from the poolside balcony, all I could see were the roofs of the houses 😲 Of course, going down would not be the issue, but walking back up may very well be another matter !! The ‘old town’ itself was typical, quite pretty in a narrow cobbled street sort of way, all of which eventually seemed to meet up around a central Plaza, which are generally either overlooked by a large church or a town hall, this one was in the shadow of a church. However we were to discover that Monday was actually ‘closing’ day, although obviously nobody had informed ‘Mr Google’ 😡 So many of the shops and formal type restaurants were not open, but we always find that their are always a couple of Cafe/Bars available to quench the thirsts of both the locals and visitor’s alike and they all generally serve some sort of food, as long as you didn’t want A’La Carte, right now we could have eaten a scabby donkey, one each 😂 Their were two Cafe/Bars located directly next to each other, we chose to sit at the one that looked the busiest, but we soon came to rue that decision 😳

We know that we will never be considered as Spanish, nor do we actually want to, to be honest, no matter how good our Spanish becomes, we do not speak with the right sort of dialect, a bit like a foreigner who speaks very good English but goes to places in the UK, like Merseyside, Tyneside, the Midlands etc. well the same applies here. However, we do always try to speak in Spanish and we are always polite, saying ‘Please’ and ‘Thank You’ where and when appropriate and we know sufficient to make other conversations now and especially ordering food and drinks. So we sat down and waited for the waitress to come and take our order, she was young, probably mid-twenties, but her whole demeanour was one that said, “I don’t really want to be here”, she was dower and even though I said, in Spanish, “Good evening and how are you ?”, which generally promotes some sort of response, she remained aloof and expressionless, so I ordered our two drinks. It was quite evident that this was nothing personal as we observed that she was exactly the same with all the customer’s, the majority of whom were actually Spanish. When she eventually delivered our drinks, and with no exaggeration, she slammed them down on the table with such force that other customers looked around, she then just turned around and walked away, she was obviously having some sort of personal crisis 🤷‍♂️ The actual ambience, the warm evening air, the tables with the sounds of the other customer’s chitter chatter had, initially at least, made us feel quite relaxed and so we planned on staying where we were, ordering some more drinks and some food, then afterwards we would have a wander around the narrow streets before we made our ascent of Everest. However, we promptly changed our mind and after consuming our drinks we paid the bill, leaving no tip, as we normally would have done, which I am sure would have done nothing to cheer her up, but we hoped she got the message although we doubted it. We spent some time wandering the small alleyways and were quite surprised to discover a medieval style archway entrance that led into an inner courtyard and a rather nice well maintained park. It became evident that we were inside the walls of what was once a Castle and the views out over the surrounding countryside stretched for miles into the distance. It seemed a bit odd because Castles are usually at the top of a hill, with the newer more modern residences built around and below it, but here, the new more modern township had been built above it 🤔

We were all walked out, and as the evening turned to night we were now pretty ravenous, we realised that we hadn’t actually eaten anything since our brick sized tostadas earlier that morning 😲 The lights in the narrow streets and around the small central Plaza streets, took on quite a different but still pleasant ambience. We would rather have gone hungry than have returned to that same Cafe/Bar, so we decided to try the one right next to it, and what a difference, the waiter, perhaps even the owner, greeted us with a warm and friendly smile, showed us to one of the tables in the cordoned off traffic free street and asked us what we would like to drink and wether we wanted to eat something. As usual we spoke to him in our bestest Spanglish and he asked us where we were from, we engaged briefly in the usual pleasantries and then he brought us two menu’s, in Spanish, although he asked if we would like the ‘English’ versions, we declined and stated that we understood enough Spanish. Now I will not go into all the intricate details, suffice to say that the service we received was first class, friendly and attentive, the food was served hot and tasted delicious and when we came to pay the bill, which was amazingly good value, we were offered ‘shots’, gratis of course, one of us refusing, the other accepting, well it would have been rude not to, although I may have suggested that he used Shazza’s shot on the waitress in the establishment next door 😂 The walk uphill back to the hotel was not actually that bad, although that may have had something to do with the very nice large glasses of Anti-Covid Vaccines the waiter kept plying me with, I did protest but perhaps something got lost in translation, our Spanish isn’t as perfect as it could be maybe 🤭 Anyway, I did manage to submit two establishment reviews on Google, you can I am sure imagine for yourselves just how different they were.

just as a conclusion to the end of our first day on the road, I have to say that the hotel was very large, with several floors, but it was virtually empty of guests, it appeared to be more one of those accommodations that served larger coach trip type customer’s, but it was now nearing the end of the season. However, on saying that, the staff were all exceptionally friendly and we both enjoyed a comfortable nights sleep, and although the facilities were pretty basic everything was meticulously clean, although the rooms did look a bit dated. Breakfast had been included in the cost of our accommodation, however, when we went into the large, but virtually empty, dining room the next morning, their was very little to select from on the buffet style offerings and the coffee machine was not working 🤷‍♂️ We decided to leave and get on the road to commence Day two of our road trip with a stop, for our usual breakfast, somewhere along our route.

To be continued………………….

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, La Vida Es Buena

Footnote:

I have to offer an apology to you, to you the readers who have read this before I added the below amendment. As I don’t make any notes, I often get quite carried away with what I am writing and only after publishing it do I remember something that I had wanted to mention, usually it isn’t of any major importance so I don’t re-publish. however on this occasion I discovered that I had missed something of relevance in respect of the association of Jerez de Los Caballeros, the town where we had our night stop, and the Knights Templar.

”The last of the Knights Templar were actually killed here in the town of Jerez de los Caballeros, they were besieged in what is now known as the Bloody Tower”

I know that after my last ramble, I left you with an anticipation that I would be publishing another one just a couple of weeks later, which would have been shortly after our last family visitor’s had departed. But to be completely honest, albeit I enjoy writing, I thought to myself, who really wants to read about someone else’s grandchildren visiting their grandparents for a fortnight, that sort of stuff doesn’t really mean very much to anybody else, or does it 🤷‍♂️ However, all I will say is that we did have a great time and it was really good to see them all again, although we do speak with them, via video chat, on an almost weekly basis, but it isn’t the same as actually seeing them in the flesh so to speak, the last time we did so being a year ago now. With the twins now having literally just turned 9 years old, and the youngest a couple of weeks short of becoming 6 years old, my goodness, how much they had grown up over those last twelve months.

It would be fair to say that we have recently had quite a busy time, what with our recent trip to Austria, and then, within twenty-four hours of our return from that trip, having our family visitors staying with us for nearly a fortnight, so the week after they had departed we felt that time was right to take a bit of a break ourselves, but not before doing some necessary domestics, which involved washing all the bedding and towels used by our guests, then catching up with our own laundry and doing a thorough clean, at least then, when we returned from our own rest break, all the domestics will have been done 👍

You may recall that for a couple of months now, if not more, Shazza and I had been considering taking a road trip to Northern Spain and, what with the continuing high and very oppressive temperatures that we have been experiencing in our part of the world, for months, with no rainfall worthy of any note since March, so we decided that now was the perfect ‘Time To Get Out Of Here’ to hopefully get to some cooler temperatures. Northern Spain, particularly the Region of ‘Galicia’, is commonly referred to as ‘Green Spain’ and that is for a very good reason, it tends to rain a lot in the Autumn and Winter months as well as it being quite Foggy with Ice and Snow and battered by the Atlantic storms, so we were hoping to get some hiking done on the trip, especially in the areas in and around the ‘Picos de Europas’ mountain regions, before they started to get covered with the white stuff which can start to accumulate in October, many parts of Northern Spain are very popular with Skiers in the Autumn and Winter months ⛷️🎿 However, on many of the roads at that altitude, it is mandatory to have winter tyres fitted between October and April and it is quite possible that some of the roads can get closed at short notice. So if we wanted to get a road trip in we needed to do it sooner rather than later. However, like most other parts of Spain this year, Galicia and Asturias regions have also suffered with unusually high temperatures and the subsequent drought conditions, so we were hoping to catch the latter end of the good weather by going now, at the start of September, when the daily temperatures would hopefully remain between 24-26 degrees(c), although the night temperatures could fall quite significantly, a drop of between 10-15 degrees (c), but for us that just meant not having to suffer with the intense humidity, either in the mornings or at night, like we have been doing, but the cooler temperatures often brought morning fog and low cloud so that too could potentially have an impact on where we could venture once up there, and what we could or could not do, but we wouldn’t actually know that until we were there.

Our plan, apart from heading North to Galicia, was to have absolutely no plan, with no predetermined route, no advance pre-booked accommodations and no particular time constraints, apart of course from us having to be back in four weeks time, as that was when Shazza’s mum would be flying out to stay with us for a fortnight. So, we had the potential, if we so desired, to spend anything up to four weeks on our road trip. Now such a trip would normally have involved me making some detailed planning logistics, with of course, pre-defined routes, pre-planned and advance booked night stop accommodations and with some sort of schedule on how many days we would spend at each hand-picked location, however, that was not going to happen this time, for I had promised Shazza that I would just try to ‘go with the flow’ on this occasion 😱 Although it has to be said that my constant companion, no not Shazza, my other constant companion, my OCD buddy, on hearing my agreement to this revelation, was already on the verge of having severe cardiac palputations so we shall have to see how that works out 😲🫨

From all of our frequent travels over the last nine years, we knew that the Northern coastline of Spain, namely Santander and Bilbao, were actually only a little over a ten hour drive away, easily reached, if we wanted to, within a day’s travel, but on this occasion we didn’t want to rush straight up there, there were still places up and along the route North that we had not yet visited, so we would just zig zag our way up and when we came across a village, town or even a city that we had not explored before we would then stop and have a look around, and dependent on when we got there, and how much time we spent exploring, we may then perhaps choose to then move on a little further and get a few more miles under our belt, unless of course we felt that we had done enough driving for one day, then we would look for a convenient place to park our heads for the night, wether that be B&B type accommodations or hotels, we were not looking for luxury accommodations, just comfortable one’s, a bed and en-suite bathroom would be our only preferences, we could stop en-route somewhere for breakfasts and lunches. We had a number of Accommodation type ‘Apps’ on our iPhones along with our trusty ‘Google Maps’ and even an old fashioned form of navigation, yes a well worn Portugal/Spain road atlas that we had kept from our Motorhome travelling days, although by now, as it was five year’s old, how useful it would be we would soon discover 🤭 Shazza had said that ideally she didn’t want to be driving for more than 4-5 hours each day, which seemed reasonable, she also said that she didn’t want to be travelling every single day, so hang on a minute, basically she did, when all is said and done, have some sort of a plan 🤔

Anyway, that is why I have not, until now, published another ramble, but, with our upcoming road trip, you can be assured that there will be several to follow in quick succession with, I dare say, the usual deluge of photographs just to give you a flavour of our road trip.

On the subject of photography, unfortunately, I had a slight accident with my trusty Canon ‘pocket camera’ when our family visitors were staying with us, whilst trying to take ‘action photo’s’ of the granddaughters playing in the sea, an unanticipated wave crept up on me and hit me with such force that I fell over, although natural instinct made me hold my arm out of the water, but still some sea water did get into the camera and, although I managed to recover the images from the SD Card, the camera, although it is still functioning, it is not working properly, so I have now had to resort to bringing my older, much larger and heavier Canon camera, out of retirement, for this particular road trip at least. I guess that when I eventually replace the smaller pocket camera I should also perhaps consider investing in a waterproof one 🤔

Now I do have to make a confession at this point, for although we had agreed, in principle at least, to not making any plans, other than perhaps to not doing any more than 4-5 hours driving on any one day, we had both agreed that we wanted to get out of our own Andalucía Region as quickly as possible as we had already explored a lot in this area, although perhaps not all of it just yet. Anyway, I knew that it would take us the best part of 3-4 hours, on Motorways, to clear this region, so armed with our already pre-agreed information, that being about limiting our driving hour’s, I may have just taken a sneaky peek at our proposed route out of Andalusia, and yes okay, I may also have taken a second sneaky peek at a potential hotel, in a town that we had not visited before, just for our first night’s stop you understand, but of course I chose not to share that bit of information with Shazza, well not just yet at least, what the eye doesn’t see the heart doesn’t grieve about 😉 I am certain that Shazza will ask me the question about where we should make our first stop, once we actually hit the road on our Spanish road trip…………

By the time I actually get around to publishing this ramble, and you are reading it, we will already be on the road, somewhere in Spain 🤷‍♂️

To be continued…………………….

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, La Vida Es Buena 😉