Category: General (Page 25 of 37)

Biarritz, now and then!

10 July 2018 / Juliet Stratton / 0 Comments

At the end of June we moved over the border into France, and spent a day or two out and about. Our next site was recommended by friends, turned out to be lovely – ideal for kids. It has an indoor heated pool and an outdoor lake with an inflatable assault course. I refused to do the assault course, the water is also home to fish and ducks, and I’m sure it is acceptable to kids with strong stomachs, but not for me!!

Leaving our last site in Spain, El Helguero, near Comillas.

This is what greeted us at the new site in Urrugne, France!!!

We re-visited Biarritz, about 10kms away, and what a difference we saw! We first visited September 2017, a warm and sunny day and again in 2018, at the end of June, when the sun was shining and temperatures were on the up.

June 2018.

September 2017!

Comillas & Oriental Gaudi

25 June 2018 / Juliet Stratton / 0 Comments

Comillas Town

We spent three days at a site on the north coast of Spain, inland a little, and found ourselves a few miles away from a village called Comillas, home to one of the few houses that Gaudi built outside Barcelona.

Being a Gaudi fan, I just had to pay a visit and was not disappointed. As a friend Paul commented recently, should we wish to build such a house in the UK nowadays, we would have to talk to several medical professionals before we were given permission but in the 1880’s this was seen as a “piece de resistance” for the owner, a wealthy businessman. It was built during Gaudi’s “oriental period” and this is obvious with the Minaret type tower and decorative external tiles. He was also an assistant when a “summer house, the Palacio de Sobrella” was built for another wealthy client in the same town but that day it was closed to the public. I had a good chat with Antoni himself, who was in the gardens 🙂

The town also had the most amazing cemetery, built on and in the remains of an old church, with a huge angel statue perched on the top of a wall, donated to the town by a local; he had the statue made to place on his own child’s crypt buried in the cemetery but changed his mind and gave it to the town. Several houses in the town were built in the modernist style, paid for by money made by local businessmen in the Americas, all fitting in neatly with the old traditional coastal style as well as the “montana” style chalet houses on the surrounding hillside just outside the town.

Some modernist style houses!

The town’s monastery is currently used as a teaching college for new monks.

El Capricho, built by Gaudi

A 1902 chair made by Gaudi, very ergonomic and comfortable.

The attic rooms in the house, with wooden steps to the outside terraces (right) and some furniture made by Gaudi.

Another example of some furniture made by Gaudi.

Having a chat with the man himself in the gardens….

The old church yard.

Llanes

We also visited another local town called LLanes (pronounced Yann-nes) which was worth the short drive. This town has a small fishing port, a working light house, old ruins of a monastery in the older part of the city and amazing views of the coast from a coastal walk.

Gijon

We arrived at this large seaside town just in time to witness a wedding, complete with local pipers! The bride arrived in an old 1940’s Citroen, cars that the SS used to drive during the second world war. The bride and her entourage were beautiful as were the attendees, a real fashion show!

Gijon is a hillside town, topped by a large park which once held the battle stations that protected the town, now a tourist attraction within the park. An old tobacco factory overlooked the old square which was full of sidre selling bars and restaurants, leading down to a marina, which years ago used to support a dying fishing activity but has now given way to the modern activities of jet skis, small yachts and pleasure boats.

Old look out posts.

Santander

We also paid a visit to Santander, and found it to be a bit of a disappointment. It is a port and ferry town, very industrial and commercial but around a peninsular was a thriving coastal side to the town. We found there to be very little history in the town; we walked for ages up a very steep hill to find a “funicular at the top of a viewpoint”, the funicular only went a fifth of the way up and down, and the view was only of rooftops!

View of the rooftops from the View Point! Red faced, from all the walking uphill!!

Santander Bank HQ.

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North, South, East, West, Where Does The Sun Shine Best?

25 June 2018 / Juliet Stratton / 0 Comments

This week we completed the circuit!!! We passed Zarautz in the Basque country in northern Spain on our way to France which is where we started in September 2017. We have travelled around the coast of Spain and Portugal in just 84 days short of one year, visiting at least 73 towns or cities. And we are keen to keep going!!

We have driven 11,152 miles spending approximately 2500 on fuel which averages out at £0.23 per mile, with prices ranging from 1.05 (about £1) a litre to 1.40 (about £1.30); we have spent approximately 18.50 a night on campsite fees including electricity and approximately 200 a month on tourism which we have classed as visiting monuments, castles, palaces, ruins and historic houses.

We have been to the very southern point of Spain (Cap Vincent), the most easterly point of mainland Portugal in Cabo de Roca (outside Sintra) and now close to the most northern point of Spain (which is O Porto de Bares in the county of A Corúna). We have been up mountains in the Sierra Navada, been down the bottom of deep valleys in the Ronda and on very flat plains in Zaragosa as well as on cliff top sites in the jagged northern coast. We have been 500m above sea level in the mountains, and in caves at sea level.

We have learned how to speak in Spanish but gave up learning Portuguese as it resembled Russian! We have eaten all sorts of different foods not normally found in the UK; liver and bacon in a sandwich being the oddest but tastiest! Nibbles varied from pinchos in the north, to tapas in the south to racions in the west; we have drunk red and white wines in Rioja, port in Porto, sherry in Jerez, beers in Basque Country and sidre in Cantabria.

We have met some lovely British people on the way and found the Spanish to be friendly, the Brazilians even more friendly, the French snooty and the Dutch inquisitive. Samson has always been a source of entertainment to everyone, if we had charged 1 for each photo taken of the rig, we would be millionaires by now!!! we have only met one or two other fifth wheelers but this week, in France, we have met a Swiss couple with a German equivalent! Two touring fifth wheels on one site is unusual so it created lots of interest!

However, we have enjoyed the weather, sunny and warm along the south coast running up to December, wet during our three months in Cadiz, wet and windy throughout our stay on the Atlantic coast and into the Bay of Biscay’s northern coastline, so the SOUTH WINS!!! As the sun shines mainly in the South, guess where we will be heading now??? Correct, Southern France then Italy!! ‘,

Caravia Cows in Asturias

15 June 2018 / Juliet Stratton / 0 Comments

Caravia Alta, Playa de Arenal Moris

Back up on the coast for a week, we parked up on a lovely hillside site in a village called Caravia Alta (Upper), we were given a spacious pitch all on our own! The real reason was to keep us off the grassy plots; motor homes and larger caravans were sinking into the soggy rain drenched grass and needed to be towed out! The beach was a good 200m walk downhill, the beach side bar opened at weekends and it was a really peaceful haven. Apart from the local cows in the surrounding fields, they had bells on!! The viaduct overhead was surprisingly quiet, you could hear the odd lorry, maybe it was drowned out by the continual mist that capped the mountains!

The local cows are beautiful and several have little calves alongside, they produce the milk for the majority of Spain, plus 70% of Spain’s cheese!

Several small villages nearby kept us out for the odd day, and my love of ancient and different buildings caught my eye again as well as the different “horreos” buildings in this area – not only are they are a different shape compared to those down south but they are much bigger and mainly made of wood not stone. Several we saw had been modernised and converted into what looked like “granny or teenage annexes”!!!

Villaciciosa

We went into Villaviciosa one day, the small market town was interesting; it had one church and several palaces and monasterial buildings but all were closed to the public except the one very plain 13th century church; it did have a good tourist office where we were given lots of information about the Jurassic coastal areas and that was about it. Seems this is a “sidra” (cider to me and you!) making area, apple signs are everywhere, but we have yet to see an apple orchard. However, several beautiful buildings were in the square…

We visited the Jurassic Museum, a modern building interestingly filled with dinosaurs (and I don’t mean David and I) and their relevant information…..well I’m sure it was interesting. It was all in Spanish. The replica monsters were well made and interesting.

Lastres

We then went along the coast to a small fishing village called Lastres, climbed to the top of the hills above the village and looked down to the port and the rooftops. Amazing view. We found a small chapel at the top, very plain apart from a small table and an unusual array of prosthetic limbs on a shelf!!

Miradour de Fitu

We had lunch before coming back along the coast road to go up a mountain to a Miradour de Fitu. We climbed a 13% gradient through the mountains for about 5km, through clouds to a height of (approx) 590m above sea level and finally reached a platform, which on a good day would have given us a superb view of the coast below. As it was cloudy, we saw a valley below and loads of passing clouds as well as a herd of very inquisitive cows!

Ribadesella

Finally we visited a lovely fishing town called Ribadesella, a town split in two by a meandering river, The Sella; every year the first Saturday in August the bridge forms the finishing line in most Asturias’ most famous festivals – the canoe descent of the Sella River. The historic town of Ribadesella was founded by King Alfonso X the Wise in the 13th century, it is made up of a medieval town on one side and Modernist architecture on the other.

The lovely promenade walk is home to several large Modernist style houses, all built to order by businessmen who made their money in the Americas around the early 1900s. Some are now hotels, some are still privately owned but all have a fabulous view of a wide sandy bay. This side is mainly made up of holiday properties, bars and restaurants and modern urbanisations. The other side of the river encompasses a small harbour of fishing and leisure boats and low rise blocks of residential flats lining the river side, with the small medieval town behind. A little further upstream are some caves and paintings claimed to be from 10,000 BC, as well as a museum containing the prehistoric findings in the area.

Related image

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Ponferrada Wine & Rain!

15 June 2018 / Juliet Stratton / 0 Comments

Coastal or inland, the rain in Spain falls mainly on the Strattons and not on the plain!!! I know as a Brit we should not complain about the weather, but it truly has been terrible so I feel I have cause to complain! We came to Spain expecting better weather but for three months between January to April we had heavy rain in the Cadiz area. In April it sparked up and the sun came back, but May and June???? More rain. I have been considering renting a sun lamp to stop me losing my colour and purchasing some wellies!!!

Days out have been limited, but we have still got around. After we headed to the very north coast to see an area called Valdovino (and A Coruna), then moved back inland to an area recommended to us called Ponferrada, then back up the the coast but further east.

Ponferrada campsite turned out to be about 10kms away; a lovely level field that looks great on the website – running stream with a small “beach”, restaurant, bar, pool, kids play area, bungalows etc. In reality the field was a boggy (not their fault I know) open area with little character. The bar and restaurant had been closed for months, the pool had been sectioned off after being shut down by the local council, the edges of the site were cordoned off so the river was out of bounds, no washing machine (eekkkk!)…..so let me summarise: a field, with power nearby……..oh yes and hot water in the showers 🙂 So we thought, no facilities (even the local bar and hotel/restaurant had closed down) means cheap rates. No such luck. This turned out to be the most expensive site ever!!! 3 nights for the price of 5 or 7 at other sites. Still, a lesson learned – check prices first!!

Enjoying some peace one hour or so when it was not raining!

One particularly rainy Friday afternoon, in between the downpours, we decided to take a drive out for (a) some fresh air and (b) if possible to find some some fresh bread. We found the local village, which had a pharmacy, a school, two bars and council offices but no supermarket or open bakery. We took a left turn and just drove, and came to a vineyard with a pear orchard attached and a shed, a large shed. There was a board outside, telling you the history of the Fernandez family and their vineyards, some of them are over 100 years old but the family only purchased them from local farmers in the 1980s. As we were reading that opening times were seasonal and visits had to be pre-booked, the owner came out and started talking to us, eventually asking if we wanted to take a look around. Did we??? Silly question:)

So we had a private guided tour of the distillery, tasted a few whites and reds direct from the barrels and ended up buying half a dozen bottles from his very fine cellar. He explained that the geography of the basin his 120 vineyards were in were producing fruits that in the past 30 years have overtaken French wines in awards and purchasing quantities and he has received a lot of attention from international purchasers!! His secret? The grapes from different mountainside levels are kept together and not mixed or blended. BUT most importantly, he removes the stems from the grapes and adds the WHOLE grapes to a steel vat for 7 days before crushing them with a giant potato masher type device, allowing fermentation to take place. No foot crushing in these giant vats, the men would drown! He claims that by leaving them to ferment for 7 days before breaking the skins creates another layer to the taste, and we had to agree!

Turns out this is a great wine and Sidre (cider) making area, the local wine is called Bierzo and his particular vineyard is called Bodega Casar de Burbia. Isidro Fernández Bello is the owner, his website shows a great picture of him, just as we saw him!!! Picture below shows Isidro on the left, Nemesio (father, in the middle) and his wife who does the artwork on his labels.

Contact-Casar-de-Burbia

Oak barrels storing the new wine.

These are the steel vats used before the wine is crushed and placed in oak barrels.

Isidro sharing some new white wine with us.

Would you like to try some new red wine?

This batch will be ready in 2 or 3 years time.

The smallest bottling factory we have ever seen!

Ponferrada has a fantastic fort/castle/museum which we dashed out to on Saturday morning before the rain returned. We met several “pilgrims” heading to Santiago de Compostelo, one particular Frenchman engaged in a conversation about “you English love your history and do it well”. Thanks! There is also a Museum of Radio and a Steam Railway museum, which we didn’t get to due to the arrival of torrential rain. We were surprised to see a fairly modern neat town from the castle but had not worked out when it was built. Some properties around the castle were traditionally tall with slate roof tiles and balconies. So below are some great pictures of the castle.