Momentarily smug then endish

As we drove from the dull south into the sunnier north we were feeling somewhat self satisfied. We had read the meteological runes and dodged the rain in Spain. However, our smugness was short lived, we discovered all too soon that we were not alone in this, it soon became obvious we were just one of many motorhomers who had headed north and now were wandering about looking for somewhere to stay. 

The northern coast of Spain is not famed as a winter sun destination. It's the place that Spanish families head to to escape the blistering mid-summer heat. Consequently the Asturian and Cantabrian coast has scores of beachy campsites, however very few open before Easter. There are also areas autocaravanas. Some are open all year; we discovered they were surprisingly busy in early March.

Our plan was to stay overnight in a free parking place on the outskirts of Santillana del Mar. The road to it was blocked and diversion signs pointed in the opposite direction. We couldn't work out how to reach it. Undeterred, we headed an area autocaravanas nearby on the coast at Cobrés. It was full. Onwards towards Comillas. The sat-nav took us by the most direct route, down narrow country lanes. It was very pretty, but hair-raising. Cantabria - like Devon on steroids, I observed a while back on the blog.

Comillas is a world famous ancient village. The area autocaravanas is a couple of kilometres from the centre by the side of the main road. It too looked packed. We decided to cut our losses and head for the campsite at Zumaia in the Basque Country. It meant a 200km drive west along the motorway past Bilbao. However it's a comfortable, well appointed site and we like Zumaia's small port vibe and the spectacular Jurassic rock formations by the beach. We were certain the site would not be full, but given the experience of the last few hours Gill phoned ahead just to be sure.

Our winter trips have distinctive beginnings. Celebrations of arrival - Seville's southern light in January, its orange tree lined boulevards and street flamenco, or the buzz of Logrono's Pinchos bars or Valencia Mercat Central's urban cornucopia. All these things signal escape from the gloom of a Pennine winter. Return is more challenging, homecoming is always low key involving a minor slump - 'endishness' as Gill puts it.

Sunday - Zumaia , memorable for three things - at last, a sunny day when it was comfortable enough to sit outside in a cafe...

We decided that since we were in Euskadi we should celebrate the fact by having a Basque cheese cake with our coffee. We rarely do this on spec, before we sit down the chances are we've consulted reciews on Google and Tripadvisor - we are very picky. However, it turned out our chosen place was closed on a Sunday, so we found another cafe next to the steps that lead up to the town's famous flysch. We accidentally happened upon the worst cafe in town. We ordered two coffees and a Basque cheesecake to share. The coffees came but the waiter informed us that they had just sold the last slice of cheesecake, offering us apple pie instead. Being generally amenable we agreed. The coffees were cold, the apple pie sraight out the freezer and only partially thawed in a microwave. Outrageously we were charged €15 for for the pie. No more choosing on spec we agreed.

Still, you can't be grumpy about being in Zumaia on a sunny Sunday - the 'flysch' here and in nearby Deba has to be one Europe's greatest geological wonders.

Next day we decided to take the train to Donastia. The coastline is so hilly that much of the 35 minute journey is spent in a series of tunnels, a bit like the line along the Cinque Terre. Donastia has to be one of Europe's most appealing small cities. It's very walkable, has a world famous food culture and one of the most beautiful urban beaches on the planet. Unsurprisingly it gets flooded with tourists and increasingly the locals are pushing back on the invasion - like in Barcelona.

Like Bologna, Donastia seems to be a very politically active city. This time pensioners were out in force campaigning for improved benefits. British people generally aren't natural campaigners - we enjoy moaning but are more reluctant to take to the streets than some of our European neighbours. No wonder Australians dubbed us 'whinging poms'.

Following tragic pie Sunday we felt we were 'owed' gastronomically. Bar Gorreti supplied  tortilla pinxtos and a glass of Txacholi....

Sadly Bar Goiz Argi - our favorite spot for prawn fritters was closed. The owners had gone on holiday.

We found somewhere nearby called Danena Taberna that looked promising. The croquettes  were good, for some reason we decided to have another tortilla. Not as good as Bar Gorreti's, Gill decided.

Yesterday after our Basque cheesecake fail I'd googled 'best ones in Donostia' - it turned out there was a bakery chain entirely given over to them, called eponymously 'Bassk Cheesecakers'. We headed there.

It's possible to put two kilos by simply looking in the window.

The shop assistant inquired if we wanted a traditional or a chocolate one. We couldn't decide so she kindly sold us a half portion of each. The was a handy bench seat on the pavement outside, so we settled down there with two take-out espresso macchiata. Both cheesecakes were delicious, but the traditional one was the best.

Time to head back to the station - a sunny day, warm enough to sit outside, it's what was had driven 700kms for, briefly it paid off.

The outlook forecast predicted a return to stormy weather. We decided to start making our way back towards Santander. Though most campsites on the north coast of Spain remain closed until Easter, we found one near the western suburbs of Santander that seemed to be open all year. Reviews of Camping Virgen del Mar were mixed, so we had low expectations of the place. At least were weren't surprised, it was all a bit ramshackle and unloved, but serviceable just about.

As the name suggests the site was close to a small pilgrimage church dedicated to the Virgin of the Sea. The rain eventually eased off and we set off to have a look at the monument. The coast nearby is rocky and indented, the church was set on a small island connected to the mainland by a footbridge,

Rather than a statue, the Virgin Mary was commemorated by a kitch wire sculpture. Some religious buildings can feel sublime, even to non-believers, but here the shrine felt bleak, a tad melancholy and somewhat ludicrous.

The whole area felt a bit downbeat, so after two days of sitting in the van watching the rain come down we decided to move on. We needed diesel and a top-up of LPG, so we decided to find a garage then have free overnight stay in the parking area outside the entrance to Parque de la Naturaleza de Cabárceno, or as we call it - the elephant aire. Cabárceno's main attraction is a Safari Park situated high up in the hills in a disused quarry. Access to it is by cable car, the car park beside it is enormous and allows motorhomes the park there free overnight. It's an attractive spot next to a lake with views of the Cantabrian mountains beyond.

However, its not the location that makes this one of the most unique places you can stay overnight for free in a motorhome. About 100m up the track beyond the car park you reach a 3m high green metal fence. Beyond it is a big tract of open country housing Parque Cabárceno's herd of wild African elephants and water buffalo. It's brilliant.

One thing we hadn't factored in was the altitude. The weather on the coast ha become showery by the time we left. Up here it was positively stormy. Hailstones sound like it's raining boulders in a motorhome.

Our ferry crossing was now only two days away, departing from Santander mid- morning. We headed for the area autocaravanas situated in the marina. It's fairly basic with a service point but no other facilities but quite adequate for an overnight stop before an early sailing.

The marina is in an industrial area but beyond it we found an attractive walk along the shoreline through big umbrella pine trees with a view across the big bay towards the ferry port. 

Loading next day was a bit chaotic, somehow the people disembarking became entangled with the queue of motorhomes and caravans waiting to board. It all got sorted eventually with much waving of arms and pointing. What did I learn? Grey-haired British caravanners come in all shapes and sizes but a fair proportion of them seen very impatient and short-tempered. What's the rush, shit happens, it does gets sorted by and large.

On board, usual thing, dreary food, grim coffee, but clear and calm.

It was after dark when we arrived in Portsmouth - Searchforsites lists a free place to stay overnight on the outskirts of the city at Port Solent Way. Its best to phone ahead, which we did. Though a tad tricky to find it really is a boon if you disembark in the evening.

Home next day - of course it rained most of the way. We don't usually return this early in March but we have an eventful month in store. Sarah, our middle daughter is due to give birth in two weeks time - our first grandchild. We're dachshund minding for a few weeks to simplify things when the big day arrives. It's been a trip of memorable moments squeezed between wet ones. 

In fact it has been so wet in Spain that it became big news. At least the deluge has filled the peninsula's enormous reservoirs - the rain was not great for tourism and at times destructive and disruptive. However, the end of a four year drought has to be a good thing for Spain in in the long term.

Towards the sunny north

Once we had decided to make for the sliver of sunshine forecast to make a brief appearance on the Cantabrian coast we had to work out how to get there. Though it's a 700km drive there's an obvious route, Viseu, Salamanca, Palencia, Santander, motorway the whole way.

Over the years we'd covered most of the route at some time or another, but we were happy enough with familiarity since the forecast for the next five days across the whole of Iberia was wet, windy and cold. Not exactly sightseeing weather.

Luckily when we arrived at Viseu, our first stopover, there was a brief dry interval so we headed into the centre. This is what Lonely Planet has to say about the town:

One of Beiras' more appealing cities, Viseu rivals more-visited Coimbra for sheer charm and vitality. It's well preserved historical centre offers numerous enticements to pedestrians: cobbled streets, meandering alleys, leafy public gardens and a central square - Praça da Republic, aka the 'Rossio' - graced with bright flowers and fountains.

None of this is untrue, but it only applies to the compact hill-top settlement that forms Viseu's ancient centre. The motorhome aire is tucked away in the corner of a busy public car park on the edge of the city's more modern suburbs.

By the look of them they seemed to have been built in the latter part of the fascist era, mostly dating from the mid fifties to early seventies. Modern Viseu is quite ordinary, with a dour aspect typical of a hill town. We recognise the signs, we're experts having lived in Buxton for the best part of four decades.

However, I don't really ascribe to the assumption which sits behind most guidebooks, the National Trust and English Heritage that old things are intrinsically more interesting and significant than newer ones.

Yes, I paused to take a photo of the cathedral but I also was attracted to the big slab of the 1960s tower block which houses the offices of Portugal's equivalent of the DHSS. 

I liked both buildings, each one typifying a particular moment in time. Is one really more beautiful than the other? When it comes to their respective function which is preferable - centuries of imposed religious orthodoxy or the more recent development of the 'welfare state'?

As we walked back to the van the rain resumed, but we made it back before the drizzle became a downpour. It wasn't the most peaceful of nights with incessant rain thrumming on the bike covers a couple of feet from our bed. Then at 7.30am a mechanical street cleaner arrived. It trundled to and fro across the car park, an annoying rumble rising in volume to a jet engine roar as it swept past repeatedly.

We made an early start heading through the highest mountains in Portugal on our way back to Spain. In clear weather it must be a spectacular drive, today it rained relentlessly and visibility was poor.

As we approached the Spanish border the view changed from forest clad hills to an upland plain dotted with pale coloured granite boulders; they dotted the landscape like a flock of giant petrified sheep. It's a bit weird.

On either side of the border the authorities seemed to have given up on road maintenance. The motorway is cratered rather than potholed. In rainy weather it's impossible to know if you are heading for a puddle or a small pond; it makes for a nerve-wracking drive.

A little over halfway to Salamanca we passed the walled town of Cuidad Rodriguez. A decade ago we stayed overnight here, the only people in a ramshackle campsite by the Aguenda. I remembered how we liked the place and promised we would return one day. Not today! The bleak plains of Castile y Leon looked uninviting as wraith-like heavy downpours pulsed across the empty landscape. The area does feel remote and half forgotten. However, due to the town's strategic position between Portugal and Spain the place was besieged twice during the Peninsula wars, by the French in 1810 and retaken by Wellington two years later.

The weather had improved a little by the time we arrived in Salamanca, very gloomy rather than very wet. We considered staying a couple of days in Salamanca. It is a beautiful, stylish city, not just in terms of architecture and culture, the place has a Valor café, one of just a handful in Spain. As chocoholics, the chocolate and churros we had there remains a stand-out food memory - on Monday 20 November 2017, the blog told us, when I looked it up after settling into Camping Regio.

I do think we have become less intrepid over the years. Back then I do think we would have stayed a day or two in Salamanca whatever the weather. Instead we stayed one rnight then pressed on in search of the promised sunnier climes further north. We planned a lunch stop in Palencia. We've used the car park on the edge of town a few times, it has half a dozen bays dedicated to motorhomes and the city's big Mercadona supermarket is closed by. Perfecto!

Onwards, through thundery showers and spectacular cloudscapes. There are not many places to stay on the A67 between Palencia and the Cantabrian mountains to the north. We consulted 'Searchforsites' and headed the free area autocaravanas at Herrera de Pesuerga. The town itself is a workaday kind of place situated between two rivers, the eponymous Rio Pesuerga and its tributary the Rio Burjeso. The area autocaravanas is next to the latter near the entrance to a park. It took a bit of finding. During our impromptu diversion we discovered the town produced a famous delicacy - crayfish and the settlement had ancient roots going back to the Roman period.

However the weather was not conducive to exploration. Instead we sat in the van and worried about just how swollen the Rio Burjeso had become, it was less than 20 metres from us just across the road. Our news apps were reporting catastrophic flooding in eastern Andalusia and Murcia, we had no desire to become part of the story.

In the end though it rained steadily all night the river did not burst its banks and the only memorable thing about our stay turned out to be the area autocaravanas service point which was one of the most insanitary I've had to deal with. Maybe we should pack a Hazmat suit, I pondered, as I gingerly removed my Marigolds afterwards.

Next day as we drove north spectacular storm cells drifted across the bleak plain to the west of us. The towering thunderheads closed in, but they never quite reached us. As the motorway curved northeastward across the southern foothills of the Cantabrian massif I watched the spectacular cloud formations diminish in the wing mirrors. Soon, climbing still, we were back in cloud, and remained so until we began the long descent towards Torrelavega on the north side of the mountains. The forecast proved correct, after days of rainy weather across the breadth of Iberia the sun was shining on the Costa de Cantabria.

 

Weekend breaks

Gnarly northern retirees are not the only winter sun seekers in Iberia, increasingly there's also a lot of locals taking a short break, particularly around half term and Mardi Gras. However, beyond the obvious hot spots on the Costa Blanca, the Costa del Sol/Tropica and Algarve, during the week you can still turn up to sites on spec and usually to find a place. Not so on sunny winter weekends when sites and areas autocaravanas fill up; phoning ahead becomes a necessity.

Away from the coast many campsites close between October and Easter, which is unsurprising as inland sub zero temperatures are common in the winter months. The few that are open are like ghost towns mid-week but get busier on Friday and Saturday nights as families escape the city to spend the weekend in their static caravans. This is commonplace across Southern Europe. In Spain, Portugal and Italy owning a shared family static caravan is commonplace, which is understandable considering that many families live in apartment blocks without an outdoor space other than a balcony. Whereas northerners tend to regard the great outdoors as somewhere peaceful and beneficial in itself, the people of the Mediterranean take a more transactional view and treat it as a place to have a good time - an opportunity for their kids to play outside, for extended families to have a meal together and the grown-ups to party afterwards.

You get lots of the outraged reviews about noisy locals on campsites on Google and the Search for Sites for app. In truth in our experience it's never that intrusive - the kids may be noisy but they  rarely misbehave. So far as the partying goes then things almost always quieten down by 11pm  I think some people being outraged and social media has given them free range to fulminate.

Another favourite rant from our fellow winter escapees concerns the look of campsites in southern Europe. Regarding statics, forget British bungaloid  Willerbys with a big deck outside the lounge patio doors, replete with chintzy figurines and geranium festooned hanging baskets. The equivalent in Spain, Portugal and Italy is a clapped out immoveable tourer with DIY additions - a dull green canvas gazebo propped up on rusting metal poles, an outside kitchen haphazardly knocked together with patched up plywood, inside an ancient fridge freezer inherited from nonna next to a surprisingly sophisticated looking range cooker and stone BBQ.

This is something else that infuriates fellow campers from northern climes. They mutter darkly online about making places looking like refugee camps or shanty towns seemingly oblivious to the fact that their gleaming 10 metre A class pride and joy hardly enhances the view either. When we first started touring long term I was a member of a number of motorhome groups online - they were useful for newbies needing practical advice. Sadly they also were inhabited by obnoxious right wing nut jobs and blithering idiots. It became tiresome, so I gave up on social media. However, it's impossible to avoid idiots altogether as they do love to post outraged reviews on Google maps and Search for Sites.

Ignoring all the downsides of attempting to find a place to stay on the coast at the weekend we headed off to Foz do Arelho on a Saturday. North of Lisbon the weather is cooler and more variable, this is not somewhere which is going to be busy on the 1st of March, we agreed. Wrong!  When we arrived at the big municipal aire overlooking the calm expanse of Lagos de Obidos we were lucky to bag one of the few pitches left. The place's popularity partly rests on it's proximity to the walled town of Obidos, a place often listed as one of Portugal's 'must see' sites. This accounted for the mix of van's from northern Europe, but there were a lot of local here too, thirty somethings with tweenies in tow in the main.

Over the last couple of years we've noticed a lot more motorhomes with local plates. A decade ago there were hardly any, and the few we came across tended to be ancient Hymers held together with duck tape. Not so these days, most of the Portuguese families owned modern looking German vans, a reflection of the success in recent years of the Iberian economies. Both Spain and Portugal have growth rates well above the larger economies of their northern neighbours, a far cry from the days of bailout following the 2008 financial crash. Quite clearly there is an emergent well to do class of young professionals, doing well enough to own a high end motorhome. It's  Mardi Gras next Tuesday, and this year it coincides with the local school's mid-term break. No wonder it was unexpectedly busy at the seaside.

Foz do Arelho is an especially nice spot, a broad mere-like estuary with low cliffs to the north and taller ones to the south stretching away towards Peniche. At sunset paragliders circle above them like giant florescent gulls.

The calm, shallow waters of the bay are great for paddleboarding too. I ventured out twice but annoyingly still seem to be having a crisis of confidence about standing up. I did fall in a couple times, which counter intuitively signals progess as the first stage of being able to stand up is to conquer your fear of falling in and regain the knack of being able to scramble back onto the board afterwards.

Foz do Arehello is a popular spot for a Sunday stroll and has developed a clutch of seaside cafés to provide for them. They looked unexceptional so we catered for ourselves. 

We have visited the area before in 2021, staying in Peniche and Obidos. Though we got out and about in Peniche circumstances dictated we didn't see much of Obidos at all. Gill felt quite unwell on our second day in Peniche. The reason became clear the next day when she tested positive for COVID. I succumbed soon after. For the next 10 days we hopped from one area autocaravanas to another, doing our best to self isolate. I felt so poorly I couldn't drive the van for more than an hour or so. It was a horrible experience and puts into perspective the minor grumbles we have at the moment about the unsettled, uncharacteristically chilly weather.

We wondered about heading to Aveiro, the photos of it's multicoloured canalside houses looked lovely but the reviews of places to park a motorhome were negative. We headed to the municipal site Praia de Mira. The town looks as if it expanded in the 1970s as a purpose built resort built between the shore and a big freshwater lagoon behind the dunes.

More recently the place has been given a bit of an eco makeover with wooden walkways around the lagoon and over the big dunes that stretch  southwards. 

A network of cycleways snake through the forest connecting the beach town to Mira inland and the Lagoa de Aveiro to the north. 

It's a pleasant place to be and the campsite was busy, occupied mainly by Portuguese families here for Mardi Gras and the half term holidays.

The municipal campsite seemed to have missed out on Praia de Mira's recent upgrade. From the look of the quasi-brutalist sanitary blocks nothing seems to have changed much since it was built half a century ago.

The interior of the shower block was spectacularly unlovely, kitted out entirely in dull grey metal - it exuded a profound utilitarianism you might associate with a Soviet era Black Sea resort.

In the end the miserable facilities, mixed weather and cool temperatures began to get us down. Back to doom scrolling through the weather app!. Our conclusion - the most settled conditions looked to be on the Cantabrian and Basque Country coast. We decided to head back towards Santander sooner than planned. We even considered trying to bring our ferry crossing forward by a few days, however they earlier crossing was fully booked. Maybe we weren't the only Brits fed-up with UK style weather in Iberia.