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.
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!
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