Early onset endishness

We have got to that somehow or other stage of restlessness that harbingers journeys end. In fact this trip we surpassed ourselves by achieving an endish state a full week before we were due to sail back to dear old B. from Bilbao. We think the slightly fed up stage affects us more at the end of autumn trips than at other times, dark at 5.00pm. freezing mornings or mild mornings but wet - all contribute to feeling a bit downcast.

Which is silly really because the last few days have not been without their highlights. Each time we have driven from central Spain towards the north coast we have used a different route. This time we took the A67 directly north from Palencia towards Santander. On both the Phillips and Michelin road atlases it is marked as a secondary route; in fact it is a motorway. It seems little used by either cars or trucks.

I presume it was built to link the industrial hub of Valladolid and Palencia to the port of Santander. One reason why the motorway is quiet may be because a railway runs parallel to it. We spotted a long freight train of empty car transporter wagons trundling south, towards the big Ford factory in Palencia. When we passed the factory we had reflected that both  Ford Galaxies we had owned and possibly the Moho chassis had been manufactured here. We also reflected that during the decades that the UK had invested in banking and the service sector, Spain had encouraged manufacturing and modernised the country's road and rail infrastructure. It seems that the latter policy may well turn out to have been the wiser.

We chatted about this as we crossed the pallid plains of the 'Campoo', then watched faint clouds in the distance grow into mountains. There is something wonderful about observing a wall of mountains slowly materialise in front of you. It happens when you head north across the rice fields of the Po valley towards the Alps. If anything, because of the odd colourlessness of the Castilian plains the gradual appearance of the Cordilla Cantabria is even more spectacular. A few kilometres beyond the Cantabrian border the foothills retain an anaemic pallor. Then you top a rise, drop into a green valley and the only thing that prevents you thinking you have been miraculously transported into Mid-Wales is the fact the signposts don't mention Builith Wells.

Immediately it looked like home, a pastoral landscape of green hills and deciduous, autumnal woods. It was only then that we sensed just how foreign the endless plains of central Spain look to the English eye. We have driven through beige for days and days. Perhaps 'endishness' is merely our term for homecoming and our restlessness the result of the ambiguity it provokes in any inveterate traveller. We look forward to being somewhere familiar with home comforts like a bath, a dishwasher and timed central heating, but dread the routine.

We stayed overnight at the camperstop at the Parque de Cabárceno, paid our respects to the elephants, water buffalo and resident flock of egrets, then moved on to Santona on the coast. We like the workaday town and the tinned anchovies it produces.  Somehow we have managed to fill a couple of days doing very little, some shopping and updating the blog. The camperstop at Somo. across the bay from Santander, is inexpensive, provides ehu and has excellent free WiFi - always good.

Wales with elephants

Wales with egrets

Santona - no rusting trawlers here

A town centre statue honours the fish filliters - these days they tend to wear blue overalls and white plastic caps.

serious kit

I think we needed to slow up. I worked out that we have reached  day 72 of our trip, travelled 3400 miles and so far stayed overnight in 35 different spots. Eventually the constant adjustment to new places becomes mind boggling. I suspect I have a 10 -12 week trip maximum and I am close to that limit now. Tomorrow we are heading back to Camping Igueldo in San Sebastian for some end of trip pintxos, then it's a swift hop across the border into France to boost their wine industry. Monday night we'll be sleeping at Bilbao docks, Tuesday the ferry home. Endishness.... it's a funny business..