May 2019

Wednesday dawned bright and sunny with a clear blue sky – at long last!  We decided we’d cycle to La Roque Saint-Christophe, a UNESCO World Heritage site, about 2km from the site.  It’s a really impressive set of caves that have were first occupied over 55,000 years ago, and were continuously occupied for most of the last 15,000 years.  In the middle ages they were altered to become a fort and town with stables, kitchens and even a forge! It also includes a range of working civil engineering machines which have been reconstructed to showcase the ingenuity of the medieval builders.        Read More →

We had a very leisurely start on Saturday, not getting going until late morning, but the weather hadn’t really improved much and was still damp and overcast, so there wasn’t much reason to push ourselves.  We did however manage to get the canopy up so at least we had a dry area to protect our outdoor stuff, and had a walk round the site which is even better than we had thought. There is access to the river Verzere and we watched families canoeing with a guide for a while. There is a produce garden where you can pick herbs and basically anything else thatRead More →

Thursday started out bright and sunny, but with still no news on the pump, so we decided to walk to the local beach and spend the morning there.  We duly carted our deck chairs the 300m to the beach and set up facing the sun, which 10 minutes later went behind a cloud and didn’t reappear!  And then the wind got up and it got quite cold so after about an hour we decided it wasn’t going to improve and adjourned back to the site. Karol did a load of washing as it was good drying weather (!) and as there was still no newsRead More →

The countryside is stunningly beautiful, with huge mountains, more trees than we’ve ever seen before, and a fabulous coastline. Definitely worth visiting and exploring again. The people are mostly very friendly, although some can be abrupt or blunt – a bit like Yorkshiremen really! The language is very difficult to follow let alone speak and bears no relation to any other European language. The only word I learned in 10 days is Agur – pronounced Ahorr – and means both hello and goodbye. The food is great but very heavy on the bread. The wine is excellent, Rioja is the local wine. The roads andRead More →

Sunday we had a housekeeping day – doing the washing, cleaning the caravan, dealing with the waste – you know the sort of thing!  I was also quite pleased with myself – our ‘sharp’ knives were as blunt as a Yorkshireman’s critique, so I sharpened them using the claw on my hammer.  Now they’re really sharp again, so full marks to me for ingenuity! The weather was lovely and sunny so we also took the opportunity to sit in the sun too, that is until the football started!  I’d managed to get the match on my iPad via Sky Go using the campsite’s wifi whichRead More →

What a difference a day makes!  Whilst Thursday night was once again quite wet with a lot of rain, we were relieved to see that the roof light hadn’t leaked again, and by the time we were up and about the sun had come out! Karol made some new friends on her way back from the shower – Peter and Carol from Consett, who she told about our ‘pump’ problem.  Peter said he had a spare pump which he was happy to lend us until they moved on, but on closer inspection decided it had a different fitting.  However he wasn’t to be put off,Read More →

Wednesday afternoon we spent exploring Orio town which whilst small has some lovely old buildings and appears quite affluent.  We also found the railway station (useful for our planned visit to San Sebastian later in the week) and had our first Spanish coffee of the holiday which was lovely. As the forecast for Thursday was OK if not very sunny we decided to drive to Bilbao and spend the day there.  It’s about an hour’s drive from Orio, and I’d booked us on a walking tour around the old part of town at noon, so we thought we’d get an early start and visit theRead More →

Surprisingly for us we managed to set off on time, 11.30 am on 5 May, allowing plenty of time for our journey to Portsmouth. Our first stop was a late planned but lovely start to our trip – a fab picnic lunch with Debi at Woodall Services on the M1! The sun shone as we sat at a picnic table alongside the motorway, with our car and caravan dwarfed by the lorries alongside. We left about an hour later and made such good time that we arrived near Portsmouth with hours to spare, so we had our second picnic and then arrived early at theRead More →