Crossing Borders

The  drive from France to Spain was quick and simple. The motorways are a pleasure to drive and often the views are stunning and with the roads being so empty you can sit back, relax and enjoy the drive.

I still spend quite a bit of time researching Aires and campsites, I have discovered that there are few camp sites open in Northern Spain at this time of the year. There are though, plenty of Aires -mostly free to stay with a variety of services and locations that vary from a car park in the middle of a small town to a lovely spot in a forest amongst nature. More on those in the next blog.

We decided our first stop in Spain would be a campsite that an English couple had recommended to us in Zarautz (pronounced Zara -oots) which lies in the Basque country in between San Sebastian and Bilbao. The Basque Country is an autonomous community in Spain with its own government like what Scotland has to Great Britain. They are an immensely proud nation and have their own language which confused me totally with my very basic knowledge of Spanish! We got chatting to a bar tender who was very keen to explain this to us and in his broken English tried to explain some of the history of the Basque Country.

Whilst we were there it was 6 December, which is a Spanish holiday celebrating Constitution Day. This was when there was a referendum in 1979 voting for and setting up democracy after the death of the dictator Franco. The centre of the Zarautz was transformed into a bustling market with handmade flags donning the streets, old fashioned games for children to play, street entertainment and colourful market stalls selling locally produced products and handcraft. I bought some delicious thick honey with Bee pollen mixed in, and when you buy good honey you can really taste the difference- I treat myself daily with a spoonful. It was a total surprise to Bob and me as we walked into the town and lovely to experience the celebrations.

To get to the town from our campsite we had to walk down 430 steps to the surfing beach and then a mile along the beach to the old town. This was no problem, but we also had to walk back up the same way. A fantastic way to build up your stamina mastering those steps – we completed that feat twice as well as the walk a third way down to the disused mine station that used to transport iron ore from the mountains down to the sea via a tram system.

That was my daily morning walk with George   – down all the steps to the viewing platform and back up, although I didn’t count those steps it was a good start to the day and got my heart pumping!

As we crossed the Spanish border and drove through the Pyrenees Atlantique the temperature had started to climb, so we relaxed from the driving and spent 3 nights at the camp site which was high up and overlooking the pretty town on Zarautz. It was an exceptionally clean site with very friendly staff, a restaurant selling some nice Spanish food and cheap Spanish wine. I don’t think I paid more that 2 Euros for a glass of vino Blanco! The waiter took a real shine to George and kept feeding him with biscuits much to his delight!

Staying still for a few nights gave us time to clean the van, with all that driving it was starting to look very dirty – I had bought some waterless cleaner and wanted to try it out. I was impressed with the result and how easy it was to use. But I think I nearly used the whole bottle in one wash.

We also had nice long showers which hasn’t happened for quite a few nights……then once again the weather took a turn -rain. So we headed off in search of the sun along the Northern Spanish coast.