Feast of the Kings

We woke up among the elephant dotted Cantabrian hills to a beautiful sunrise over the lake. I pulled on some jogging pants and a sweatshirt and headed out to take a photo or two.

A few more vans had turned up overnight, mainly Spanish, perhaps there is a renowned restaurant hereabouts or maybe the country has a small but enthusiastic band of Pachyderm enthusiasts.

Onwards! The plan was to reach Southern Spain's Atlantic coast with just two stops, the first in Salamanca, the second somewhere near Merida in Extramadura. The drive over the Cantabrian mountains was beautiful, snowy peaks, verdant valleys, wisps of mist floating in-between.

The picture book snapped shut as soon as we reached the plains of Castilla y León. We entered a bank of freezing fog that stretched for the next 200km. The temperature plummeted to minus two degrees, luckily visibility, though reduced, remained good enough to maintain a steady 60mph. Gill set the sat nav, I engaged cruise control and we wiled away the hours thinking our own thoughts interrupted occasionally with delightfully mindless chat. 

A few kilometres south of Vallodolid we stopped in a service area for a late lunch. The big car park was almost empty apart from a few trucks holed-up over the holiday period. Coincidentally, the only other motorhome parked up was a British registered Defleths that had shared the aire at Carbáceno with us last night. As we pulled out they followed suit 

By now we had reached the Duero valley. The Epiphany holiday had emptied the road of traffic, but we were in a convoy of four motorhomes all trundling steadily southwards at the same speed. Like wildebeests or bison, the winter migration of motorhomes has a tendency to follow a well established routes, a trend reinforced in recent years by the ubiquity of sat navs and the mass use of apps like Camper Contacts.

Forty kilometres north of Salamanca a stripe of lighter sky appeared on the first horizon we had seen for hours. The weather improved from very foggy to quite dull, the temperature struggled upwards past zero and beyond. Soon there were pallid streaks of blue between the clouds and the sun broke through. It felt warmer though the digital thermometer on dashboard only read 6°.

Almost there. As I pulled off the A62 towards the city the Defleths a couple of hundred metres behind us signalled as well. 'I bet they are heading for Camping Regio too,' we speculated. It was true, we arrived more or less together having spent the previous night in the same aire in Cantabria and the last 100 kilometres with the Defleths in our wing mirrors.

Not so tomorrow, they were planning to spend a few days here exploring Salamanca. A nice prospect, but this is our fourth visit and we have miles to travel, the south coast of Spain and double digit temperatures beckon.