Another night with eagles.

We left you at Piñeres, a little mountain car park, where over the ridge the vultures and eagles soar.

It was too good to leave. The clean air, crisp in the mornings, warm through the day. The near silent night. The comings and goings of day walkers, vans and pilgrims (there are plenty of pilgrim walks in these parts, it’s not just the Camino de Compostela).

There’s a series of four water falls that the car park guy directs you to. Now I can’t say my Spanish is great, but there’s no way that he used enough words to explain the precipitous path. It’s the kind of thing that we were too old for as soon as we learned to walk on two legs, but hey, we gave it a go.

Faced with a pool of freezing cold mountain water on a hot day there was only one thing to do. I write that easily, but I hesitated longer than I might have done in the past. I considered the fast flowing water, the temperature difference, the slippery rocks. It was only when I realised that I was thinking of such sensible things I discarded all such thoughts and went for it. I’m sixty, not ninety.

It’s just after nine as I write. The sun (and my coffee) is beginning to bring some warmth, every contour of the hills ahead is emphasised by light and shadow. I see only greens, and blues. The soundtrack is birdsong and cow bells, there’s a plane, but it’s distant. This is a simple place, and I think it’s where we’ve found the most perfect beauty of this wonderful trip.

Others have realised the magic. The small villages of Piñeres and Cicera are not the usual half and half mix of tumbled down, and lived in. Both have only sixty or so homes, but in both there are houses that have seen much investment, or have been built new with architectural delights and considerable cash.

In the night

When I get up in the night I place my feet gently, still expecting Polly’s paws.

Indecision

After a place of beauty comes a challenge.

Minty’s birthday was approaching and we were keen to be on the coast, ideally for a few days in one spot. We saught simplicity, beach and somewhere for a birthday dinner.

We didn’t find it.

Spain is already shutting down for winter. 

Huge resort towns with thousands of flats are empty. The restaurants and shops are firmly shut against unwanted visitors, but mostly they’re shut against the Atlantic winter.

At Noja the beach was stunning. The campsite has 1,000 pitches! So does the campsite next to it. I’ve described these sites as villages before, but I’ve never been to such an extensive place. Most pitches are permanent. The caravan hasn’t moved in years but each summer another awning is added to accommodate more stuff.

Even though the site is about to close for winter there’s the equivalent of an Argos lorry delivering a new fidge freezer near us, and the gas bottle delivery truck has so many drops that it’s there all morning. The on-site conveience store is bigger than the Co-op in St Just and it’s well stocked. The café restaurant is bigger than any restaurant I can think of in West Cornwall. It’s camping, but not as we know it.

Shared washing facilities, shared laundries. Despite the excess of new stuff every summer, these places must be more efficient than us each having our own dwelling. Except of course that these folk will have one of those too.

One place is still abuzz though.

Comillas

Here’s the Netflix version of the rise of Comillas (not to be quoted in your Spanish history exam). 

Local boy Lopez Lopez took the opportunity to hang out in Cuba in the mid 1800s and quickly found he had a knack for opportunist management.

First came helping people find travel and unpaid work (sometimes known as slavery), then he found himself helping those with deep pockets as he expanded his enterprise into banking and that ancient health bringing crop of tobacco. When there were uprisings to be dealt with he found the required forces and with that came favour with the crown.

Back home in the simple fishing port of Comillas, Lopez bought up his old neighbourhood and then brought in architectural types from far away Barcelona to build a palace the likes of which the north coast had never seen. It’s important to maintain balance, even in excess, and so he commissioned a beautiful church to adorn the garden.

Lopez was  becoming a big shot and invited the best of Madrid to join him in little Comillas by the sea. He invited the government, and the government came. In order to host a cabinet meeting, Comillas had to officially become the capital of Spain for a day (true) but that didn’t stand in our man’s way.

Once the king started coming to stay, other hangers on wanted a part of the action, and soon the Comillas skyline saw as much action as Manchester in its post-crisis boom.

Lopez’s sister in law’s brother commissioned the upstart of all upstarts, Mr Mustachio himself, to come design a little holiday home down the hill. Gaudi’s Capricho is a magnificent over the top edifice. All glazed brick and sunflower ceramic tiles outside and the modest touch of a sculpture of Gaudi himself gazing towards his work of genius.

Netflix isn’t happy about this, but unfortunately old Lopez died before his palace was complete. And his mate Max, who commissioned El Capricho never saw his pad finished either.

By then though the stage was set and every hill soon had its own grand design in construction.

Every gang leader and stone merchant in Northern Spain was growing rich on the proceeds of Comillas, and just like Polzeath, you couldn’t move for Arab horses (the Range Rovers of the day). Fancy restaurants started opening and charging prices that the proletariat wept at. But the clever poor knew that muck brought brass and by doing the dirty work of the rich they rose above themselves faster than they could have dreamed.

Today Comillas is dragging itself up again. The buildings are still there, although many fell into disrepair through the dictatorship. Their value has been recognised, and restoration is the order of the day. If it’s on your route, stop off.

Motorway. Bilbao.

Read this fast as if it’s happening at 70mph…

Five lanes, three lanes, two lanes, but one’s closed, seven lanes, two simultaneous junctions with traffic joining on both sides. Plunged into the darkness of a tunnel, it’s a long one, with junctions in the tunnel, your eyes adjust, then flash, you’re out in the bright sunshine for just 100m then back into darkness. There’s a truck struggling to do 30kmh, in the outside lane another is doing 90kmh, spewing melted fish ice for extra sensory stimulation. There are signs all over. All over. Above, the road signs are bigger than tennis courts. Either side of the road smaller signs, warnings, directions, instructions. The first language is incomprehensible, the second is Spanish, but you’ve spent too long considering the first to have time to read the second. Mountains soar up on one side and there’s a beach over there, but you can’t look at either, the road demands every shred of concentration. Now huge flames flare up from an oil refinery off to the right. There are lanes flying over, diving under and the gradient is steeper than any British motorway. The bend signs include illuminated moving arrows for greater emphasis. Then the dashboard lights up with new warnings and pings. I don’t need any more information!

Woodland Birthday.

Two beaches. Then for complete contrast back into the mountains. We’re determined to find our two night stay. At Listorreta there are woodland facilities that the Spanish flock to, cooking huge feasts on the permanent barbecues. 

It’s late September and most places are closed now, but nothing has been updated on Google since pre-Covid times. Heading off to a bar deep in the woods hoping it might be open was wishful thinking. But. After 40 minutes hard climbing, the joy at seeing cars outside our destination made the simple fare all the tastier. And downhill all the way home. The birthday was saved.

Spain. In forty words.

Vast, varied, verdant, forested, dry, savannah, mountainous, littoral, stunning. Fabulous wines of Rioja. Exciting pintxos. Crazy, incomprehensible festivals. Linguistic challenges. Friendly. Easy driving (in the main). And, not once, did we utter the Yorkshire war cry of “HOW MUCH?”

Border Crossings.

We couldn’t do our two night stay at Listoretta, for the welcome shade meant there was too little sun getting to the solar panels to feed the already weak batteries.

ArchieVan rolled back down the long long hill, back onto the phenomenal motorway that links the whole north coast of Spain. Soon there was the border. We hadn’t planned to leave Spain so soon, but before midday we were in France.

The Joy of Understanding.

Staring at anything written and trying to guess its meaning is certainly one of the joys of travel. Staring at something in French and having a good chance of actually understanding brings a lightness to the journey.

At St Jean de Lutz we pulled into the packed municipal camp site of Chibau Berria, it was still morning but there was only a single pitch left. I understood. I was grateful. And being able to converse again felt good.

The sun beat down. The site isn’t the sprawling 1,000 pitch flatland of our last Spanish site. Instead Chibau Berria is all hills and randomly parked vans.

It’s a place of activity. Loads of fit and healthy types are running all over. There’s swimming. Paddle boards. Surf boards (hopeful, but unfulfilled). Bikes. Bikes. Bikes. And the unhealthy. People who should walk but save their fat stores by stealthy scootering.

The beach bars are open. There are food trucks. The smells are wonderful – grilled fish in the sunshine. There are people all over. How strange that 50 miles south west on the Spanish coast they’ve given up on 2024 already. I ask at the site – they stay open until mid-October.

St Jean de Lutz – the real St Jean.

40 minutes’ walk west from our campsite is the real St Jean de Lutz. Little did we realise that we’d happened upon an old money French resort. We’re only 10 miles south of Biarritz, and I guess this is where you retreated when the turn of the 20^th century glamour became too much.

Among the throngs of tourists the old money is still here. Glamorous octogenarians turn up at the cafe in clothes we’d be proud to wear to the opera. There are few Ferraris, instead those in the know drive the beaten up French classics their parents left them. On the shopping streets there are cheese and meat shops that would be the envy of Harrods. There are places that thrive selling only belts, or several that specialist in the Basque beret.

And yet.

Despite the finery, prices are not excessive. We had a delightful lunch on the Croisette, among the beautiful ones. I’m sure it would have cost far more in an English pub.

Time. Thoughts from the road.

While we were on our long tour I often considered time and how varied it can be.

Spend a day at home doing little, perhaps laid low by a cold, and each hour drags, yet the end of the week comes and goes in a flash. There are few memories of distinct moments in the time passed.

But pack life in, getting as much out as you can, seeing more, doing more, and chances are you’ll feel less tired, have more memories, and it’ll feel as if the week has been a month, or longer.

This works for us. We both enjoy our work, and it varies every day, but throw us into foreign lands in the van, with the unknown around every bend and life truly kicks in. It already feels as if we have been away for months. 

Domaine Chataigniere.

Minty has a knack of sniffing out the festivities on this trip. As we roll into the vineyard of Français Laurent, the man himself comes out to invite us to his party later in the evening before directing us to park literally among the vines.

Who has heard of the European Heritage Days? I know Britain wasn’t great at entering into the spirit of Europe, but I’m reasonably well informed and I hadn’t heard of this. 

The French clearly have. Later in the evening the sky was alight with fireworks. Before that there was a meal in the barn for over a hundred folk, with music and dancing. The food was simple and authentic – billed as a vegetable soup but with big chunks of meat, followed by Minty’s favourite of steak frites. The best steak. 

To help with the heritage theme an old boy was baking baguettes in the wood fired oven in the corner, and the family served their wines which guests were buying by the box.

Fireworks. I used to love fireworks. Now I generally look at a few thousand pounds going up in whizzes and bangs and get annoyed at the waste. This night though, with no terrified pet, we both enjoyed them more.

Mystery drip.

ArchieVan is testing us on this trip. The brakes, fair enough, they needed replacing, but sensors are pinging randomly telling us scary stuff – ESP (the van’s a witch?), ABS and tyre pressure warnings. A bit of research shows the tryptic is a common VW/Mercedes issue.

And then the drips. 

Light rain in the vineyard. Nothing like the torrential downpours of the early days in Spain. Awakened by the unmistakeable regular splash of water hitting bedding. Grrrr. Both yanked from deep sleep, fumbling for torches, trying to find the source around the roof light. No source. And it hasn’t happened again since despite much heavier rain.

Can there be more parties?

Sunday. Pont-Chateau. Small Brêton town, unremarkable. River. Bridge. Chateau. I wonder how they thought up the name. Good motorhome parking area. Grotty toilets. Slightly run down feel. 

Except. There’s a classic motorcycle Grand Prix with street racing!

Crazy old fools race motorbike and side car combinations from the 1920s onwards through streets with barely room to overtake. Guys in their 70s thrashing their ancient machines while the women (and a grandson) perform sidecar acrobatics in an effort to keep enough wheels on the ground.

Sidecar is a misnomer. It’s a protruding platform with hardly a pad, but with various bars for the grannies to hold on to. 

This leads us to wonder at what point in their relationship did the loving fellow breach the subject of his fantasy and ask her to risk life and limb by hanging off the side of his already deadly contraption?

Van behaviour worsens.

Small difficult roads. Big van. Wrong side of the road. Hard enough to drive anyway. A speed bump. The van starts revving uncontrollably. Engine roaring. Trying to surge forward. Third gear, braking hard. As quickly as it happens it clears. You’re left wondering whether it was real. Your thumping heart tells you that it was.

Ten minutes later it happened again. Revving to 5,000rpm, just the noise terrifies.

With shredded nerves we limp to our destination through narrow residential streets, aware of the danger should it happen again.

Odyssee VW – we can see you in a few months time.

OK. I exaggerate. But after painstakingly explaining the issue and my fear, the local VW dealership told me they can get ArchieVan on the diagnostic tool in 10 days time! My protests that it’s a five minute job got me nowhere.

Up the road at the small independent garage Utilicare there’s less expanse of glass, no fancy coffee machine or designer seating. Instead there are helpful people. The boss comes out with exactly the same tool as VW use. He checked the dashboard warnings and confirmed there’s a sensor issue rather than impending doom. Regarding the revving he suggested that if it happens again I engage fifth and brake like hell until it stalls. It’s not a comfortable prospect, but it will have to do for now.

How much did he want for this most welcome news? “Just leave a tip for the boys. Cheers and gone.”

We shelved our plans to visit the fabulous art deco bar in l’Armor Plage where we’d had a great night in February. Instead we drove another silent and stressed 75 miles up to Roscoff to have a quiet day before the ferry. 

Trogloogot.

A hard drink, a shower and a sleep at the lovely Troglogot camp site near St Pol de Leon. 

The wife of the owning partnership is supremely grumpy on reception. The husband runs the snack bar and cheers everyone who has been terrified by her on their arrival. He lands your drink with a knowing smile and says “Hey, hey, I’ll be working late tonight!”

We sat in this site listening to Evan Davis on 8 September ’22. Just after his programme it was  announced that the queen had died.

I’ll leave you now. I hope there are no more adventures between Roscoff and St Just, if there are I’ll keep them between us. 

Beyond the van playing up this has been a magical journey. France is best outside of holiday time, it’s quiet, they’re pleased to see you, and there are few English (except in the Bordeaux region). Spain brought unimaginable variety, and it was so cheap compared to home. Our luck at hitting parties and festivals at every turn I’ll put down to fine planning from Minty. We will have covered a little over 2,000 miles in almost a month.

I uttered a telling statement during this past week. When I’m at home in the house that we both love, in a place that we love too, I often think I’d like to be away in the van. When I’m in the van I don’t recall ever thinking that I wished I was at home. Despite the issues of this tour, the simple life in the van is a fantastic thing. We can’t do another big trip for a long time, but I’m sure we’ll be touring locally soon.