Spanish Adventure Part 2

 

Spanish Adventure

Part Two.

 

Overnight in Valladolid and another bright sunny morning to explore the old historic town. Not much time to do anything with the prospect of temperatures reaching into the thirties as the day progressed and so did we, south towards our next destination in Caceres 217 miles. The old part of the town had restricted access and parking was in a secure municipal underground facility that was in amongst the narrow streets. You have to go slow as junctions are not marked and there is no right of way. I remember a moron in a white van even trying to overtake on a street that was only one car width. That was the most eventful part of the journey. It was all motorway work keeping at a speed not quite with the lorries. The long inclines were too much for 602cc with frequent excursions into third gear to cope with the load we were carrying and mindful of the cost of fuel at 2.20 euros per litre. Care with the throttle to get as many miles as we could from each drop of fuel.

The hotel was right on the main square and it being a Friday night it was a bit noisy. We grabbed a beer in a bar and watched the world go by for a bit and then went to a restaurant for a meal. Accommodation for Saturday night was a problem with booking as I had a plan to visit Cordoba but hotels in our price range were just not available. Saturday is wedding day in Spain and finding paces if difficult so the reason for the location of the next hotel. For want of a better description it was a gastropub. It was in a relatively remote village of Hornachuelsos on country lanes, some 175 miles away and more than four hours of slow driving up hill and down dale hairpin bends and steep off camber corners to keep you on the ball. 

We arrived just in time to pick up the keys to the room and get two beers before they closed up at 4pm until 7pm when they opened for the evening session. In this small village there was no street parking only a car park at the back of a block of flats that everyone seemed to use. It was not a secure set up.  We escaped for a walk around the village and found the church and the castle. Highlight was finding the Ferreteria. It is as the name suggests somewhere to ferret around in. It is the local general store which has everything in from electrical goods to building materials, cooking utensils and stationary. A gold mine of stuff!

We eventually ate in the pub and after a walk around the village left the locals to it which was around the pizzeria. There was not much to do there so it was not surprising they had a play with the car stealing the tow ball cover and bouncing it a few feet from where it was parked over night. Other than that incident people were very respectful and left things well alone and in other parking areas there were no problems.

Hornachuelsos was bitter sweet and no breakfast as they did not open again until 10am. I left there annoyed but by the time we had reached the next town we found somewhere to have breakfast  my demeanour improved. Our next destination less than a hundred miles away and again another country lanes drive to Ronda and a two night stop in a five star Paradore.

 

Spanish Adventure Part 1

                                                          Spanish Adventure.

Part One

We had just packed our Indian side of the family off home on the Sunday and set about packing for our journey. We were on our way to Barcelona to see our daughter Neema in a Musical. We were to drive there in the El Cid with all of Neema’s stuff that she could not take on a plane. The car was full to overflowing. The cat went into the cattery on the Tuesday morning and we went off to Bristol to stay with my brother Adrian overnight before continuing on to Plymouth to catch the ferry to Santander. We thought it best to break the journey as neither I nor Gita had done any big journeys in a car since the first lock down and were a bit a bit “rusty”. We filled up with fuel at Sainsbury’s at Plymouth and headed in to the ferry port. All going quite smoothly until at check-in we needed a Covid passport. Shock-horror the proof of vaccination was not enough. It had to be digital. I have two gripes here. The Government website gave all the either, ors but did not say that it was essential. Brittany Ferries only told us that at check-in. As a first-time foreign traveller since 2019 I had been on-line checking what was needed and no-one said that you MUST have a Covid Passport!

So sitting with one hour to go I went on line and registered ten finding out how to do it showed Gita. I hate doing things on my phone. My fingers do not work well with touch screens. I found that out when they were first introduced in 1995 where it is with laser beam or touch sensitive screens they will not work consistently because that I have trepidation about using them. It is infuriating when you touch an icon and it does nothing or something that you have not touched and I can demonstrate that time and again that modern technology fails me. People with size one fingers complain I am doing it wrong but then they are not using my size 9’s. My Covid passport arrived in minutes but Gita’s was still pending. We were waiting still as the last cars checked. This level of tension I could do without. We may not be able to travel and that would mess up all the pre-booked hotels. We had help from the check-in people who were pleasant and considerate as we waited for the Covid passport to come through. It had started to rain to match our desperate mood.  Just over the hour it came through and we checked-in. Relief there was still time as we joined the Passport queue. We had made first trauma of the holiday had been dealt with. Plain sailing now but that was not to be. Gita was seasick and wasted a complete dinner until she took some seasickness pills. Sea Legs. They are good for her and bought them in New Zealand in 2011. As we disembarked from the ferry there was a niggling rattle that was like a loose tappet but did not match the engine noises. It was not the engine.

 Pressing on we reached our first hotel 155miles south of Santander. Enjoying the sunshine and heat that we both needed and can only get from southern Europe. The overnight stop was at Valladolid in the four star Filipe IV hotel which was a great place to stay  but the car parking was in a prohibited pedestrian area and going, what seemed, the wrong way down a one way street.

We had survived day one in Spain and driving through rush hour traffic to find the hotel was an experience to be repeated a number of times as I had booked hotels as near to the centre of town with secure parking.