Miles of Scrub and Mud Houses

If the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain, then there must be no shortage of water as the Plains run on for miles and then scrub for miles and miles and miles as far as the eye could see and you can see quite far as it’s very flat. We stopped off at one of the very few pull-ins and stretched our legs with a walk up a hilly bit. We found a strange spring that had a little building built over it that poured into a pond. There were loads of frogs singing and croaking in the pond and with the birds and the cicadas also going it was far from quiet!

We saw this weird huge beetle here and these huge ants. The scrub is made up mostly of these pretty bushes of rock rose and heather.

We also saw this blue butterfly but it closes its wings when resting, I think it is a Common Blue.

Quite often the Satnav lady takes us on a wild goose chase and takes us through tiny little villages, mostly because Peter is too mean to pay the toll charges on the bigger roads! This has turned out to be the reason for us seeing some of the more out of the way places and strange and weird things…like these underground houses!

The first ones we saw looked quite old and we thought they might be tombs or suchlike. But then we saw that one of the chimney type things was smoking! We ventured through the little towns in the area all called Something de Los Oteros in the area South of Leon in Northern Spain North-East of the top of Portugal. After spotting loads more in many villages over quite a wide area we saw many that had built up entrances and doors with padlocks on. Perhaps they are inhabited all the time or maybe they are used during the extreme Summer heat or indeed Winter cold. We bought the Green Guide to Spain but there was no mention of these dwellings in there. Maybe there is a whole race of Spanish Hobbits still living in these underground burrow dwellings!

Peter really liked the houses made entirely with mud bricks and plastered with mud.

We passed quite a few that had been abandoned and were slowly being washed back into the soil. How’s that for eco-friendly and recyclable building!

Viva Espagne!!

We crossed the border near Ainhoa where a couple of Guardia asked to see our passports and waved us on (after telling Peter to put his seat belt on!)

The scenery is quite spectacular, with passes and tunnels through some very high jaggy mountains!

And like on the French side, little towns nestled between high mountains.

We headed for Haro the main town of the Rioja area famous for Rioja wines.

The view from the road approaching Haro.

We found this campsite through the Camperstop book. Spain doesn’t have any recognised camperstops and wild camping is not recommended. The municipal campsite here is very good and reasonably cheap - 31 Euros for 2 nights. About a tenner a night.

We took the dogs for a walk into the town of Haro the next day, Saturday 21 April and had a good walk round the town. We stopped at a café in the main plaza that had seats outside and had a beer and some tapas, small colourful cold or hot hors d’oeuvres or appetisers made from a combination of meat, cheese and vegetables.

We also managed to find a bookshop that was open and bought a Spanish – English dictionary! We found a little shop selling bread and bought some beer (San Miguel-what else!) and a bottle of Rioja. The woman in the shop offered me two types one costing 1 euro and one at 5euros. The cheap one was a ‘normale’ everyday wine and the 5Euro one she said was much better. We took the 5 euro one- still only about £3.00. This turned out to be an award winning 2001 Rioja, which was absolutely gorgeous with vanilla fruity loveliness!!! We now wish we’d bought a lot more. And this from a man who ‘doesn’t like Spanish plonk!’

We ventured up to the old church with its sculpted spire complete with saints and gargoyle spouts. Peter especially liked the storks with their huge nests on the tops of buildings.

And spotted this carving of the cowardly lion from the Wizard of Oz on an old building ;o)

We had a lovely sunset that night accompanied by the singing of frogs from the swimming pool!

In the morning we heard a roaring noise overhead which turned out to be hot air balloons!

Bayonne, Biarritz and Basque

We headed for the camperstop at Hendaye-sur-Plage thinking that this would be quieter than the huge stop at Biarritz (where you also had to pay… the first one we had encountered). The area from outside Bayonne, Anglet, Biarritz and down the coast through St Jean-de-Luz and Urrugne through to Hendaye is one huge built up area. We found Hendaye but after going round and round couldn’t find the Camperstop. We decided to head for countryside and a little place called St Pee-sur-Nivelle. The first ‘e’ in Pee should have an accent over it but I can’t find accented letters on this keyboard. This is a lovely spot by an artificial lake. There is a small charge for this one also – 5 Euros, but we didn’t have to pay as the barrier was up when we went in so we thought you paid as you went out. We discovered in the morning as we were leaving that we should have paid (all automatic done through credit or debit card) to get in which lifted the barrier. The barrier lifts automatically on going out. We think there was a ‘van parked near to the barrier that kept it lifted. We only had to pay 1 euro for the water and grey water dump in the end!
Some of the wildlife around the camperstop...
This is part of the Basque region and I knew they have a separate language and identity from the French and Spanish but had no idea just how different the language is. It looks a bit like Aztec with some Greek thrown n, all K’s and X’s!! Lots of the towns and villages have trees, I think they are plane trees, which they prune and shape to join up and form a canopy to provide shade in the summer. This was by far the best we had seen where the trees grow over and form a canopy over the whole road!

This avenue of trees was so narrow we only just got through!

This road lead us eventually to the road that crosses the border into Spain.

Bergerac, Bordeaux and Biarritz!!!

Heading South and West towards Bergerac, chosen because we like the wine from there! We stopped off for a brew and to let us and the dogs stretch our legs a bit at a place called Sadroc, which despite its name is a very pretty little village that has one of France’s many camperstops. There was one other campervan there and the driver approached us and started chatting. Turns out he sold his pub in England and moved to Spain where they had lived for 5-6 years. They had just sold up there as they found it too hot and had bought a house in France not too far away. On asking him where we could buy the blue stuff for the portable toilet he gave us a couple of the fancy sachets you can buy to last us until we found a camping shop. I remembered about all the paperback books we had both read and offered them to the man’s wife. She was thrilled to bits as she was almost finished her last book! I remembered reading in one of the campervan books that novels in English are very expensive to buy over here and highly sought after. We have left books all over the place. Usually in a communal area in a camping site, with a note on the front saying to read and pass on! It’s quite nice to have a foot in both camps; the motorhoming community, usually older people with a bit of money and all mod cons, and also the younger ones in the Mercedes vans who don’t! Both of these groups have been very friendly and helpful, but I think we belong in spirit more to the younger lot though ;o)

We made it to Bergerac and found the camperstop by the banks of the Dordogne river. It was a lovely spot, had good dog walking areas and was well within walking distance from the town.

The only problem was that being so close to the town and being on quite a straight bit of road we were kept awake by lads on scooters and small motorbikes buzzing up and down. However we spent a lovely afternoon wandering around Bergerac after we had dropped off our washing at a launderette. Smalls etc. we can manage in the van but not sheets and duvet covers!

We sat and had coffee and crepes with rum and hot chocolate sauce in a covered terrace outside the café in a part of the old medieval town and looked at a coloured statue for ages before realising it was of Cyrano de Bergerac…Doh!! We discovered a Chinese shop selling loads of freshly prepared food and bought lots of samosa /tapas type little goodies and chow mein along with a nice bottle of the local Bergerac wine! We also bought a replacement for one of the tiers of our bamboo steamer as it had started to come apart. We use this a lot as it only takes one gas ring to cook tatties, carrots, beans and broccoli etc. saving on gas and steaming up the ‘van! …and a lot healthier too!

Bordeaux

We drove on to Pellegrue to the camperstop there and found this lovely little spot just outside the village. Again this was complete with free electricity, drinking water for refilling the ‘van and a chemical toilet and grey water dump all in lovely clean condition with reasonably flat hard standing to park on … you gotta hand it to the French for looking after their campers! We cooked and ate the Chinese food washed down with he wine and had a lovely peaceful nights sleep!

This is a picture of the curious ‘Roman bath-house’ like building that was situated by the camperstop( or the other way round!) it looked very old and was filled with water from a spring … the dogs certainly liked it! We walked into Pellegrue the following morning and bought some food at the market before moving off in search of the vineyard we had decided we would search out; part of the ‘France Passion’ scheme. We called into the town at Caudrot on the way to stock up with food supplies etc. and while we were waiting for the supermarket to open we went for a walk along the banks of the river Garonne, which was very swollen. The swollen river was fast and very muddy and had lots of trees and other stuff floating along. It seemed a bit sinister and I didn’t like looking at it in case a body floated by!

The area here is full of grape vines as far as the eye can see… well it would have to be to produce the amount of wine!! We found the vineyard of Chateau Majoureau and met Monsieur Delong who said, I think, that his children, who were working in the vines at present could speak English and later that night we would could taste some of the wine. I think that’s what he said! We had our meal and waited and waited. Monsieur Delong nor his children came near where we were parked behind his barns to invite us to the wine tasting and we were unsure whether to go to the house or not, so we didn’t! So no Bordeaux straight from the vineyard for us! We left a note thanking them for allowing us to stop as there was no one about in the morning…perhaps there had been an accident or someone took ill???!!!

Heading for the coast at Biarritz; and on the way we passed through mile upon mile upon mile of pine tree plantations in the area known as ‘Les Landes’ in Gascony. We stopped for lunch and to walk the dogs in a pine forest between Uzeste and Prechac.

I liked the patterns of the deeply ridged tree bark and the regular swirls of the cone.

On the way back I spotted this snake on the road and shouted to Peter to come and see it…he always walks way ahead of me!

I got this pic of it going into the grass where you can see by the zigzag on its back that it’s an adder. Just after this the dogs spotted a hare on the road and dashed off to chase it not heeding our calls one jot! They were not gone long and came back knackered and panting hard after running I the hot afternoon sun!


The pines are all in flower and everywhere and everything is coated with the yellow pollen, including everything inside the ‘van as it too hot to drive with windows closed!

We stopped at Tartas looking for an internet Wifi signal and spotted this Mercedes van as it drew in beside us.

We invited the young couple (Andreas and Elo) that were in it for a cup of tea and as they spoke no English we had a very short conversation about Mercotribe and they told us about a lovely area in Portugal we should visit.

Barbecue and Jam session

The gasket finally arrived on Saturday, complete with new studs but no new nuts, we got some in the Renault garage in Eguzon and then we went back to the camperstop area at the ‘Pont des Piles’ where there was a tap for fresh water and a dump for grey water as we had left the campsite. Meantime we had found an internet Wifi connection we could tap into in Eguzon and had emailed Lolo as we had lost his phone number. Peter managed to fit the new gasket and I busied myself cleaning out the ‘van and puddling about with watercolours! We were heading back to the campsite for a shower but halfway up the hill we passed Lolo, Seb and Lulu in Seb’s car. They had come to find us to bring us back to Lolo’s house for a barbecue! We loaded up with food and booze at the ‘Super U’ supermarket on the way!

Some pictures from that night… Lulu - 'My English is very bad!'

Julie and Lolo internetting – trying to link up in virtual space with Sam and Pete!

Julie, Lulu and Sophie

Killer Lulu demonstrating classic Frenchman ‘shrug’!

Peter up a tree fixing up floodlight!

Lolo fire-breathing!

The next day Jay-Jay, Lolo and Seb set up their instruments and had a jam session in the garden, Lolo has a music studio in his truck complete with drum machine and mixers etc. They sounded really good, I particularly like the song dedicated to Bob Marley written by Lolo. You can hear some of the music from the ‘Rasso’ that backs the video on the Mercotribe website www.mercotribe.com that Lolo made with a montage of images from the weekend. The headlights that you see near the end of the video are from our van as we arrived!

In the evening we all went to a nearby bar/restaurant called the Cottage run by an Englishman!

And in the morning… a mist settled round the scene … and a mountain of bottles! We said our goodbyes to Lulu and Seb that night and in the following misty morning we bade a sad farewell to Lolo, with confirmation that we will be back for the next rasso around the 4th of June for Lolo’s birthday!

Off to Bergerac, Bordeaux and Biarritz!!!