Doom scrolling towards the Sherry Triangle

We're in Jerez de la Frontera, the sun is shining, at least for the moment. It remains a moot point as to whether our 800km detour via Valencia gained us any additional sunny days. 

Looking at the medium term forecast we seem to be stuck in a repeating pattern of westerlies driving fronts across the whole Iberian peninsula. Rainy days with drier intervals in-between is what we can expect for the next two or three weeks. 

So was there any point to our detour, does chasing the sun ever work? Rarely, but we never seem to learn to just patiently stay put until the weather cheers-up.

We made two stops between the Cabo de Gata and Jerez. The motorway across the Tabernas Desert, then onwards past Granada towards Antequera. It a is magnificent drive - truly road trip territory - I love it.

We spent the first night in a free area autocaravanas at Loja, an unassuming small town that sits astride the Rio Genil. It's a rare example of a river in this part of Spain that actually has water flowing in it. The parking area is next to the town sports hall, utilitarian and practical, it's all we need.

Then onwards to spend the next few days in the campsite a couple of kilometres from Olvera. The town is a spectacular example of an Andalucian white hill town, not as famous as Ronda but almost as beautiful. We visited here in 2016 mainly because the old station has parking places for motorhomes next to the Via Verde de la Sierra. What was less than clear from the map is that reaching the cycle track involves a very steep descent down narrow back streets. We gave up and used the nearby campsite instead. 

Olvera certainly warranted a return visit, but somehow we simply didn't manage it other than cycling to the Mercadona in the outskirts. It was a peculiar experience. When we arrived outside the store I realised that I had forgotten the bike lock so I stood guard while Gill went shopping. I did have the pump in a pannier however, so I took the opportunity to put some additional air into the tyres. 

I was part way through the job when an oldish guy on an ancient scooter glued together with strips of Gorilla tape, stopped angrily beside me, gesticulating and shouting in Spanish. I presume I had parked in his preferred spot opposite the store entrance. He parked beside me then watched as I inflated my front tyre. I picked up the word 'problemo' in amongst the gabble of Spanish and tried to explain that I was just inflating my tyre. He shrugged and went inside.

By the time he re-emerged a few minutes later I had moved on to Gill's bike tyres. Again he paused next to me and enquired in Spanish if I had a problem, it was as if he had no recollection whatsoever of our previous encounter. He interrupted my reply with a question, "Do you speak English?" 

"I AM English," I replied, more tersely than I had intended.

He apologised immediately in broad Scouse, explaining that he shouted at me previously because he thought I was Spanish. This made no sense whatsoever, in fact nothing he said made much sense, he rambled on incoherently repeating things he had just said. At first I wondered if he was suffering from early stage dementia, then realised from his slurred speech that actually he was very drunk indeed, though not as inebriated as he was going to be judging from an ominous clank of bottles as he loaded his carrier bag into the luggage space beneath the scooter seat.

Gill returned with two big bags of groceries which we started to pack into our panniers. Scooter man talked at us for a while then wobbled off down the road. He seemed to be a bit of a mess, unkempt and unshaven. Piecing together his story from the chaotic ramblings it seemed he owned a house locally and had lived in the area for more than two decades. He said 'twenty years' but mentioned that he bought his place using pesatas, which  means it was actually over a quarter of a century ago when he moved here.

Many people, including us, harboured dreams of owning a place in the sun. Even before Brexit buggered things up altogether in all likelihood the reality of growing old abroad was destined to have challenges not fully appreciated by the people who made the big move in their forties or fifties. 

Gill had been in the queue at the checkout behind scooter man while he made his purchases. He struggled with paying and packing, needing the assistance of the woman working on the till. She was patient and kind but when Gill took her turn straight after him the cashier glanced heavenwards as if to say 'God give me strength!' Scooter man quite clearly was a well known local 'character', but Spanish people are amiable and kind  and hopefully people will look out for the guy.

The encounter dampened my spirits which in truth over recent days had been less than perky anyway. Some time in the late afternoon of January 20th, as we relaxed in Valencia Camper Park after a tedious two days drive from Santander, Donald Trump was sworn-in as the 47th President of the USA, in exactly the same area of the Capitol building that a Maga inspired mob trashed on January 6th five years previously. 

Every sane person on the planet suspected that Trumps second presidency was destined to be a total shitshow. Ten days on and it's beginning to dawn on the world that it's going to be considerably worse than any of us could have ever imagined. Some things have been predictably Trumpian - renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America or slapping tariffs on Mexico and Canada to gain diplomatic advantage. Other stuff is off the planet, like annexing Greenland or envisaging Canada as the USA's 51st state. 

Is the man deranged or is the Trump show simply a smokescreen to grab the headlines? A ploy while Musk, his unelected hatchet man, dismantles the American state, edging it ever closer to an autocracy like Orban's Hungary, but armed to the teeth with unmatchable economic and military might. 

So whereas previously we have entertained ourselves in the evening by watching a box set, this trip we've become immersed in political podcasts or US TV channels on YouTube observing with dismay,as the values of the Western world we grew up with seem ever more fragile. So we have some new fellow travellers - Alistair and Rory ...

Katty and the 'Mooch'...

And a very cross American woman attempting to rally progressive opinion by yelling at people...

It's horribly fascinating, but not good for the soul.

 The result is I feel demoralised, it's little wonder I'm demotivated to go sightseeing. We managed to do some laundry and housework around the van but not much else. 

Luckily the site itself is prettily situated, on a slope with a view of olive clad hills to the north and to the south the craggy mountains that lie between here and Ronda.

We've had some spectacular sunsets too. Then after dark the night-sky lights up like a planetarium, the misty milky way at the zenith., bright planets just above the horizon. Venus and Mars are easily recognizable, but the third? Jupiter or Saturn maybe.

In tricky times Nature is a great solace, the sense that in the great scheme of things we are very insignificant indeed. Shame Elon has his eye on Mars, the cosmos does not deserve to have more than one of its planets fucked-up by humans.

Anyway, on a more practical note we've decided what we want to do in the next week - Go for a bike ride on the Via Verde de la Sierra: have a sherry in Jerez; visit our favourite tapas bar in Andalucia - Casa Balbino in Sanlucar de Barrameda; have a manzanilla in the bar next to the Castillo in Chipiona.... small pleasures to nourish the soul as we watch the world grow stranger day by day.

Small patches of paradise

We headed out of the Valencia Camper Park fully committed to our plan to 'stay put until the weather improved in Andalucia'. All we needed to do was drive around the motorway to the south of the city and install ourselves in one of the beachside campsites near Saler, a journey of less than 40kms. Somewhere along the way we changed our minds and I can't exactly work out why. 

It's a very lived-in landscape beyond Valencia city limits - sprawling commuter towns, mixed with a patchwork of industrial estates and intensive agriculture. Market gardens and big orange groves cover the coastal plains backed by a chain of pale grey mountains ringing the horizon. It's not unpleasant or ugly just very humanised and maybe what we wanted was to spend time somewhere emptier where nature rather than culture predominated.

 

So we headed south believing the forecasts - that the rain bearing fronts were going to dissipate before we reached our destination in Murcia province. We attempted to book onto the campsite at Isla Plana, it was full. The gulf of Mazarron is popular, but the eastern part next to Cabo Tiñoso used to be quieter. Not so now. We called into Mercadona in Mazarron because we know its car park is moho friendly. Over lunch, despite my assertion last year that we wouldn't return, we decided to head for the area autocaravanas at Puntas de Calnegre. 'It's bound to have space' we agreed. It did.

We first stayed here in November 2014. This is what I wrote about the Puntas de Calnegre back then:

As for the place itself, there is very little here, it exudes the beauty of the overlooked, the half forgotten, the dilapidated. - an empty sea of the deepest blue next to an empty road; grey misty mountains beyond a beige stony desert. But colourful too - bougainvillea draped the gables of the village houses, some  painted brightly, some gleaming white, others crumbling, their painted facades faded and peeling. I could understand how some people might find it desolate and melancholy, to us it seemed peaceful and sublime.

In just a decade, year by year, the place has developed. The old fishing village hasn't changed that much, maybe some of the single storey Greek looking cottages have been re-whitewashed. However, the landscape itself has been transformed. Plasticulture covers the stoney garrigue. 

Two enormous 'area autocaravanas' stretch along the coast road, each, when completed, will accommodate over a hundred vans. Both are simple gravel car parks with electric points and services. Because they are open plan and easy to manoeuvre around they attract the owners of moho behemoths - coach sized Concordes and Cathargos with rear garages big enough to transport an on-board Smart car. Predominantly they were German owned, a small, temporary colony of well-heeled retirees from the Bundersrepublik. It didn't feel welcoming. 

We pressed on next day, first to a petrol station south of Aguillas to refill our dwindling supply of GPL, then onwards to the Cabo de Gata. Very few places on Spain's Mediterranean coast have protected status. The Cabo de Gata is the largest, a precarious island of wilderness marooned by the Mediterranean on one side and a man-made sea of plasticulture on the other.

These days it's very difficult, even in winter months, to get 'far from the madding crowd' anywhere on Spain's Mediterranean coast. However the Cabo de Gata is the exception, it feels empty and remote. The area is sparsely populated, 460sq kilometres of volcanic mountains next to the sea with only one settlement - San José - that looks big enough to count as a town. Then you look up the place's population and discover it's only 894, so it's a village really. The other settlements - Las Isleta, Agua Amarga, Las Negras, are even smaller. There are few roads and in the winter months only three campsites are open. Wild camping is banned and in recent years the prohibition has been strictly enforced. Apart from three or four small areas autocaravanas that have sprung up since we first visited here a decade ago visitor numbers in the winter months remain low because development has been so strictly controlled.

I love the sense of seclusion you get, it's a rare thing these days especially near the sea. This is inevitable I suppose, we live on an ever more crowded planet. It took over a quarter of a million years for the human population to reach one billion, sometime in the early years of the nineteenth century. By the time I was born in 1955 that figure had tripled. Seventy years later there are five billion more humans using ever more resources, the last billion of us added in just thirteen years. 

Given the scale of population growth then the fact that Spain's Costas are awash with motorhomes and campsites are fully booked by retirees from the north seeking some winter sun is hardly surprising. Nevertheless it does not stop us seeking roads less travelled and places where tourism is small scale and unobtrusive, even though year by year it gets ever more difficult to escape the creeping tide of mass tourism.

For the first time ever Los Escullos was fully booked when we phoned ahead. The alternative is a WeCamp site at Las Negras. The place really is in quite a remote spot down a single track road of hairpin bends with a sheer cliff on one side dropping straight into the sea, unprotected by a crash barrier. Even here was busy and booking it complicated by having to use a central call centre.

The operator's English was very limited, we hoped we had booked in for two nights but without a confirmation email we could not be sure. Moreover, though she had taken payment (well over the Acsi discount rate!), the amount did not appear on our account. 

We arrived only slightly traumatised by the precipitous goat track, and once the receptionist had unscrambled the approximation of our surname on the booking system she managed to find a spot for three nights and charged us the Acsi discount rate.

"Why are we so crazy busy?" She mused. Adding, "It's the middle of winter!" True, but the waysides are covered in yellow sorrel, asphodels bloomed among the boulder strewn garrigue and the chill northerly breeze washed all moisture from the air turning the sea and sky to deepest azure. From a northerners point of view it's a very benign kind of winter.

So If you are seeking a small patch of paradise to dream about on cold drizzly days in northern England hereabouts fits the bill nicely.

The campsite itself is sequestered in a small valley running inland from Cala del Cuervo. The small cove has a rocky bluff to the west, then curves like a sickle eastwards; the rocks at the far end are marbled with reds and yellows stripes. The entire area was once volcanic.

The small village of Las Negras is in the next bay, less than a kilometre distant.

There are still a few small fishing boats drawn up on the beach put the place is now a small resort really, slightly scruffy with a laid back ageing hippy vibe. We love it

One restaurant was offering a two course lunch with wine for €15, including a fish course - remarkable! A bit too much though for us at lunchtime so we found a café that served delicious tostas and Breton style crepes. 

The village takes it's name from the sinister dark headland to east. Even under a deep blue sky and sea, Las Negras, shaped like a giant's clenched fist, looks a tad unsettling.

The coastline of the Cabo de Gata reminds me of the far south of the Peloponnese or Southern Crete. Will I manage to realise my dream of driving the moho back to the Mani, or even the more radical idea of taking the ferry from Piraeus to Chania and exploring Crete? It's now over two decades since we were there, a return visit is overdue. Time ticks by. During our first big European trips in 2014 -15 we celebrated our sixtieth birthdays, a travelling life stretched out before us as an alluring prospect. Ten years on and the sense that we will not always be able to do this nags at the back of my mind. 

Next autumn we hope head to Sardinia. That's easily doable, but further afield - Puglia, Greece, Sicily - are more of a challenge. Our previous long trips all occurred before the Schengen rules applied and we were able to split the journey by placing the van in secure storage then flying home for a month or two. It enabled us to travel long distances at a leisurely pace. Since the 90/180 rule has applied we have juggled the dates so we do two 60 - 70 day trips, one in the early months of the year then a second in September/October. Then with carefully planning wr can squeeze in a third, thirtyish day European trip in May/June. So this year, for example, we are in Spain from mid January to mid March then heading to Sardinia in late September until mid November. Then with luck we might be able to re-visit Denmark for a month or so in late Spring.

All of this needs to be fitted around routine medical check-ups and family events. Three significant ones - in late March Sarah and Rob's first child is due to arrive - our first grandchild; then in August Matthew and Kristina's baby is due. Laura and Brian have decided to get married in Tokyo, it makes sense practically as well as romantically as it will simplify their visa situation. 

Looking further ahead, if we do want to take some longer trips to Sicily and Greece then we may need to change the way we travel, reducing our habit of visiting Europe three times a year to just two, but making both of them 90 days to maximise our Schengen visa allowance. We have to be home over Christmas. So one possible pattern might be a longer stay in Iberia in the first half of the year, say from late February to late May, followed by a three month trip in the autumn from late August to late November. This would give us time to explore further afield in Sicily and Greece. 

The downside to this travel pattern would mean we would be stuck 1000' up in the Pennines during the coldest months of the year. Perhaps we could soften the blow by seeking a couple of weeks of winter sun somewhere outside of the Scenghen zone, perhaps in the Cape Verde Is. or the Caribbean. That would come at a cost however, both financial and environmental.  

Other factors also impact on our travel plans. Laura is likely to be in Japan at least until the end of Brian's contract - the computer game he is working on is due to be launched in eighteen months time. After then I can't see them returning to the UK, Brian is Canadian, it's more likely that his future work will be based in North America. It looks as if we are going have to become more frequent flyers in the future!

So a lot think about and exciting, positive things to look forward to. It's good, as you get older 'same old' is really bad for you. Nostalgia is toxic, 'the good old days' one of the most debilitating myths we have. Cue Roisin - the time is now!

 

Once again, thank you Richard Camarena

If you head by motorhome for Spain's sunnier climes in January or February, even when you've shelled-out for a long sea crossing to avoid wintery weather in  France, you are unlikely to avoid freezing temperatures entirely. Salamanca, our usual first stop on the way south, lies at 800m. To put that into context, Buxton - our home town - is at 300m, sharing the dubious honour of being Britain's highest market town with Alston. So inland Spain is more than twice the height of the UK's upland settlements. Expect sub zero temperatures!

From Logroño it's too long a drive to reach the Mediterranean coast at Valencia without an overnight stop somewhere. We decided to head for Teruel, about 340kms south. I toyed with the idea of taking the more direct route through Soria, but the mountain roads south of the town reach 1300m. Yesterday when we drove through the Cantabrian mountains the highest peaks were dusted with snow. Best to take the motorway today we agreed even if it involves a bit of a detour via Zaragoza.

It was a long but uneventful drive, the roads almost empty apart from a brief interlude of maniacal urban motorway around Zaragoza. Inland Spain must be one of the least populated areas of western Europe. Much of the country south of Zaragoza looks somewhat god forsaken - a neverending plateau of rock strewn badlands punctuated by the odd scrawny looking cultivated patch.

The Autovia Mudéjar undulates across the high plains avoiding the highest Sierras, there are no really steep climbs so I only become aware of the height we had gained when I passed a blue sign that read 1220m. An other giveaway of this imperceptible slow climb registered on the dashboard - the average fuel consumption gague ticked ever downwards - 32.4mpg at Zaragoza, 29.3mpg after we passed the blue altitude sign a few kilometres short of our destination.

We've stayed at Teruel previously - in late November 2016 our blog informs me; it also straightened out a misapprehension - I was convinced we had stopped overnight here in a car park near next to a Mercadona and the local social security offices. I was right about all of that apart from the overnight thing. We just stopped to do some shopping apparently. What is certainly the case is the municipally run free area autocaravanas on the edge of town is a more recent development. It's very good, apart from the fact it's next to an HGV parking area and drivers fire up their engines at 5.45am for a 6am start with much revving, slamming of cab doors and high decibel banter.

Despite our Lonely Planet guide's enthusiast copy about Teruel's architectural highlights and online reviews praising the town's tapas bars we didn't venture into the centre back in 2016, and decided against it today too. With daytime temperatures a degree or two above zero and nighttime ones somewhat lower, sightseeing was not an attractive proposition. The best we could muster was a desultory stroll around the empty carpark of the Alcampo hypermarket next door.

Next day we headed towards the Valencia Camper stop near Betera. Gill had pre-booked us a place on-line. It's less than a two hour drive from Teruel so we arrived by early afternoon and found there was plenty of room. 

A decade ago, when we first started travelling long term in the winter, we rarely booked ahead, most places away from costas' high-rise resorts were uncrowded. Not so now, you can't be certain of finding a place anywhere on Spain's Mediterranean coast from Benacassim to Marbella. One of the joys of winter motorhoming in Spain used to be simply wandering about. You still can, but not on the Mediterranean coast where it's milder and sunnier and packed with northern European retirees.

We've been to Valencia many times so we don't tend to sightsee, it's more of a 'tum-see' trip. Jump on the metro near the camper stop, head for Central Market, eat something delicious at the place's central bar run by the Michelin starred chef Richard Camarena.

There's always a few 'specials' chalked up, so we chose a mixture of these with some classics. 

The patatas bravas were good, but not quite as delicious as those dished up two days ago by Bar Jubera in Logroño.

I tried a dish off the board - broad beans with eggs. Spanish cooking uses eggs a lot, pairing them with ingredients we would never dream of using back home.

 It worked, it was enjoyable - tasty rather than delicious.

Chocolate cake was the dessert of the day, we shared a portion. Very yummy, a deep brown chocolatey wedge, firm at one end becoming soft and sludgy towards its apex. We took a moment to appreciate the pastry chef's skill, then devoured it in a trice.

Back at the van we discussed what next. Every weather app we consulted said the same, the further south and west you travelled the wetter and windier it became. Here in Valencia we were in the sunniest spot in Spain. There are a couple of Acsi sites on the coast a few kilometres beyond Valencia docks, still close to the city but within cycling distance of the Parc Natural l'Albufera, the extensive tract of protected wetland to the south of the urban sprawl. Let's stay put until the weather improves in Andalucia we agreed.

 

Not what we planned

We had a plan (we always do). It didn't work out (it rarely does). It should have been simple, in the second week of January drive the moho to the main Burstner dealer in Lincoln to get a few bits and pieces fixed then take the ferry to Santander the following week. We had a clear idea of our route south - down the A67 to Salamanca. Then depending on the weather either west towards Lisbon or straight south towards the Sherry Triangle.

We did manage to catch the ferry, but it was touch and go until the last minute. Nothing else went to plan. The day before we were due to go to Lincoln the Midlands was dusted with snow and temperatures plummeted. Whereas most of the region had centimeter or two, Buxton was snow bombed, over 20cms fell and the main roads through the Peak District were impassable for the best part of a week. 

Miraculously the day before our crossing there was a sudden thaw. The rough farm track to the storage place was slushy but doable. Spain beckoned.

I reckoned this was the sixth time we had used the Brittany Ferries route to northern Spain. Since we took it for the first time in 2016 the ships have increased in size and are designed to reflect the company's attempt to rebrand the tedious 30 hour crossing as a 'mini-cruise'. This is basically a marketing ploy. In truth in some respect the experience is worse than it was eight years ago. I can live with the fact that the crossing time is six hours longer than it used to be as this reflects a general trend in world shipping aimed at reducing emissions, a speed reduction of just a few knots saves millions of tons of carbon emissions annually. 

Less acceptable is the way Brittany Ferries on-board catering has become steadily worse over the years. This time the chicken curry we were served was one of the worst dishes we ever have had, the meat unpleasantly chewy and the sauce bland and curiously under spiced . There is no competition, the company has a monopoly on the Spanish route, every time we have used it the ship has been more or less full, so I guess there is no real pressure on Brittany Ferries to deliver a customer experience that lives up to their cruise ship marketing guff.

You get 90 minutes of free WiFi on the boat, again a miserly ration given we had paid over £1000 for our return tickets. Still, it was enough to ascertain that the tail end of storm Eowyn heading towards the UK from Iceland was destined to make the western half of the Iberian peninsula unseasonably cold and wet. Seville or Lisbon? Those were our original options, now both of them looked equally uninviting.

Or so it seem to be according to our latest go-to meteorological app - Met Eireann's animated Atlantic pressure system map. Fun for 'met-heads' like us. We ditched our carefully crafted plans and decided instead to head towards sunnier Valencia.

By 8am. we were on the road. We needed a supermarket, it should have been straightforward but our sat-nav attempted to direct us off the motorway via a footbridge then corrected herself by routing us through the grim mid-rise barios of Santander's less salubrious outskirts. Eventually we ended up in a Lupo car park within sight of the Mercadona we had been heading for in the first place. Good enough, we concluded. The store was just opening so no problems parking. The woman on the checkout welcomed us with a big smile, chatting about how great it must travel by moho and generally achieved a level of bonhomie that would come across as quite disturbing in our local Morrisons. Spain's great we concluded as we packed away the groceries.

 Morning dawned brilliantly sunny but chilly. We wondered if it might be nice to take it easy and stay overnight locally in the area autocaravanas at Somo. The website claimed it had reopened three days previously. It hadn't, the gates were locked and decorated with a cockeyed sign scrawled on a bit of cardboard - 'cerrado'. It's happened to us here before, in fact I think we've found it closed more often than open - which is a pity because it's well designed with a view of the Cantabrian mountains yet only a 20 minute drive from Santander docks.

We decided to head for Lognoño, a drive of about 140 miles. Rioja's regional capital is one of Spain's under appreciated gems. Situated on the banks of the Ebro it's an attractive small city whose compact historical centre boasts a pleasing mix of Baroque and Modernista buildings. However it's the food scene not the architecture that draws us back. As the sunset over the Ebro we headed for Calle Laurel and the alleyways around it. It's packed with great bars specializing in 'small plates'.

To the north the Basque cities of Donostia. Bilbao and Vittoria Gastiez are renowned for their pinxos bars, each trying to outdo its neighbour by magicking inventive, delicious morsels to munch with a drink or two. At the best places you get Michelin star quality dishes in miniature for a few euros - what's not to like!

Logroño has a similar food scene, though here the delicious snacks are called pinchos, Euskadi's signature 'x' replaced by a Castilian 'ch'. The differences go deeper than phonetics, there are subtle gastronomic changes too. Typically Basque pinxos is finger food, a proletarian take on canapés meant to be enjoyed with a chilled glass of petillante txakoli. Most are artfully arranged on a bobbin sized slice of baguette. 

Some of the pinchos on offer in Logroño are similar to these. For example, the only dish Bar Soriana offers is grilled mushrooms drenched in garlicy olive oil topped with a small prawn, skewered on a cocktail stick atop a slice of baguette. 

It's something you might easily find in a bar in the Basque country. The difference here is it's not txakoli on offer but delicious Rioja's, red or white.

 Other places offer pinchos sized plates of Spanish classics. Bar Jubera boasts it's been serving up delicious patatas bravas 'desde 1982'. 

Nearby, Bar Sebas has a mouthwatering choice of dishes on offer, but its speciality is tortilla with  chilli sauce as advertised above the door.

So the food scene in Logroño reflects Rioja's geographical position close to the borders of the Basque Country, Navarre, Aragon and Castille e Leon. Though the menus are more eclectic than you find on the coast to the north the proposition is the same, Michelin star deliciousness at fast food joint prices. The whole enterprise depends on mass participation. On Saturday evening the alleyways around Called Laurel are jam packed.

 Inside the most popular bars i becomes bit of a scrum, you have to jostle your way to the bar to order your food, then claim a couple of square feet by a counter to eat it. If by the time the dish is ready other people have muscled in, it's not uncommon to find your delicious snack winging its way towards you, passed onto you by fellow diners. It's very sociable and a lot of fun.

It struck me that pinchos bars are the antithesis of 'fine dining'. They are inclusive rather than exclusive, their survival dependent upon selling a lot of small plates at affordable prices. A glass of Rioja in one bar cost €1.70, the most expensive dish - the patatas bravas at Bar Jubera - €4.00. It tasted sensational, if it had occurred in a review by Grace Dent or Jayray there would have been florid chat about how it was simplicity 'elevated' and they would find the right words to describe how the taste was 'layered'. All I managed was, "Oh yes! very Oh yum!

So in our ever more commodified and corporate world what might the future hold for these mini-oases of deliciousness? In Logroño at least the future looks secure, locals love them, the places are packed at the weekend, young people, couples with and without babes in arms, their parents and grandparents and great grandparents, it's a mass participation event, afood fiesta every weekend.

The threat may not be popularity but longevity. Many of the bars are run by people who in an admin job would have retired years ago. The owner of Bar Sebas looked about our age, well past state retirement.  Snapshots of his younger self hung behind his bar, - a younger, trimmer looking man holding an enormous fish,  middle aged in front of a bodega. There was something touching about the singular dedication and passage of time implied here. Who from later generations -  millennials or gen Zs is going to be willing to dedicate themselves to the daily grind, exacting standards and long hours to keep place like this going?

Maybe the threat to the pinxos bars of Donostia and Bilbao is even more fundamental. In Logroño the food scene remains largely a local affair with a few tourists mixed in here and there. To the north, in Donostia especially, the pinxos places in the old town are packed with visitors, some on guided food tours, others part of an influx of cruise boat victims bused in from Bilbao. The city is popular with budget airline long weekenders too, easily reached from either Bilbao or Biarritz. Consequently the last time we were there there were lots of anti-tourism graffiti, and we had a chat to a local who explained that Airbnb properties were pricing locals out of the rental market and sky high property taxes were making life difficult for middle class home owners. 

When you are a part of this tourist pollution yourself it's difficult to get on your high horse about it. Nevertheless it's impossible not to be aware of the problem. Places become instagrammable parodies of themselves. In the case of Donostia the malign effect on the historic centre's pinxos bars is that tourists often outnumber locals. It's just not how it used to be sadly.

However here in Logroño, squeezed in amongst the locals, visitors are still welcomed like honoured guests, you feel Spain's traditional hospitable embrace. Add in inexpensive but delicious food, places where a glass of Rioja is half the price of a Pepsi, no wonder we always seem to end up here whether we planned it or not.

As we walked back to the van across Puente de Hierro we reflected on this welcoming culture, it's an odd mix. In the much maligned realm of wokery inclusivity and diversity are often lumped together, but they are different things. Spain does feel inclusive, it welcomes strangers, but it does not feel particularly diverse, it's not overtly multi-cultural in the way you find in London or Manchester. 

A good example of this occured  when we walked into the city centre earlier.  Approaching the old centre from Calle Segasta at the weekend you usually hear a pleasing hubbub drifting from the bars around Calle Laurel well before you reach them. Earlier this evening, however, a different sound greeted us from Plaza Mercdo on the opposite side of the street. Arabic pop blasted from a sound system, we took a short detour to investigate.

 A gaggle of people had gathered in front of the Cathedral, a mix locals and people from immigrant communities. An enormous Palestinian flag had been draped across the paving stones and a party was in full sway to celebrate the ceasefire in Gaza.

There was something startling about the sight of the enormous flag on the ground below the towering cathedral, especially given Spain's troubled history in relation to Iberia's Arabic kingdoms. 

That people of different heritages could come together to celebrate peace was deeply pleasing. It seemed to be spontaneous, there was no police presence on hand to 'keep an eye on things'. Would this have been allowed to happen outside Notre Dame, Milan's Duomo or Westminster Abbey? Somehow I doubt it. Very Spanish! It's wonderful to be back, it's difficult to believe that we only arrived in Santander this morning!