Childminding, Zarautz and Navarra

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, and persuaded me to dismantle our pump (he did the same to his) and we then cobbled together one that would fit.  And it worked!  So, we now have water ‘on tap’ so to speak until Sunday at least!

Meanwhile Karol also made friends with our German neighbour’s children.  They’re a lovely young family of four with a 4 year old daughter Jana and a 1 year old boy called Jasper.  Jasper managed to crawl under our caravan before his Mum spotted him and dragged him out.  Unperturbed he continued exploring our pitch, and then the inside of the caravan – all whilst I was taking apart and reassembling water pumps!  His sister then joined us too, and conversed with Karol in german.  Mum and Dad were very happy to let us babysit (they did ask if we minded though) whilst they packed up.  Dad was very chatty – they’re on a 2 month parental leave break doing Spain and Portugal.  He confided that they were having trouble with gas too (as we had last time) so I gave him the benefit of my experience, suggesting he asks the site to recommend someone who can fill his bottle.  He seemed very grateful!

As an aside, Karol was very impressed with the yellow waterproof and wipe clean dungarees that the kids were wearing. If they’d only been available when Rob was that age!

When we eventually waved them off it was gone 11 o’clock, and our breakfast toast had gone soggy, but we both agreed that it had been a much better morning.

That afternoon we visited Zarautz some 10km down the coast and which has a 2km promenade and beach.  We walked the length of the prom, stopping at the far end to watch some of the televised surfing competition before moving  onto the old town to explore further.

Unfortunately most of it was shut (most businesses shut between 2 and 4 every day) so we headed back to Orio, stopping to stock up at the supermarket on the way back.

We then christened our new electric pizza pan by rustling up a spicy chicken, chickpea and tomato stew which we served with rice. Delicious!

Saturday was forecast to be cloudy again, so we’d decided to explore inland a little.  We’d brought a book with us from our last trip called Back Roads Spain which had a suggested route into Navarra, an area just south of us.  The drive was spectacular as we climbed over 3,000m almost up into the cloud before descending once more and arriving at our first stop Iruna, which is the Basque name for Pamplona, famous for the twice annual bull run, fortunately not on this weekend!

We’d expected a smallish town, but Iruna is in fact a pretty big and very modern city, with frankly not a lot to see.

There was a bit of excitement in that there was a political rally taking place outside the town hall, and we did manage to get a coffee at the famous Cafe Iruna in the Plaza de Castillo where Ernest Hemingway was a regular visitor whilst writing The Sun Also Rises.

Otherwise we didn’t find it to be a particularly attractive city and it was very cold, so we quickly decided to head off to our next stop, the Parque Natural de Senorio de Bertiz. What a beautiful place! We did a two hour walk through the oak, beech and chestnut trees, with so many wild flowers, it was gorgeous and a lovely contrast to the cities we’d visited.

We then headed back to the campsite through fabulous countryside and treated ourselves to dinner at one of the beach bars near the site.

This was slightly more problematic (language barriers again!) but eventually managed to order salad, mussels and sea bass. We discovered a local wine which we really like – Rueda Verdejo – but were unsuccessful in ordering a bottle of fizzy water – we ended up with one glass between us!