Spanish Surprise

After we left Ian and Yael we were heading North to make the big journey of approx. 1000km to get through Spain to the French border on the west side. We were heading for Biarritz; we’ve been there before about 10 years ago and wanted to visit again.

Our plan was to stop at a few Spanish cities and towns, we’ve  been so impressed with  all the old Spanish towns so far we wanted to see some more along the way. When I am planning our route I usually research what cities are on the way and its history. I will look into the city for parking and how far will we have to walk to get to the old city and if there is a good Aire for us to stay in overnight.

Our first stop was Cordoba – an ancient town that still has remains of buildings from the Alcazar (Spanish fortress from Moorish origin). A German chap who I got chatting to at the Aire in Seville gave me a very good tip of where to park for the night for free and it turned out spot on.

It was less than a mile from our park-up along an orange tree lined road to get to the old Roman stone bridge which dates back to 1^st Century BC. It was built to link Rome with Cadiz and for over 2000 years was the only bridge into the city across the river. It has been restored many times over but it’s a beautiful bridge and spans 200m, when you walk across, it affords fabulous views of the old city especially if you climb up the Torre de Calahorra – a fortified gateway into Cordoba from the south. This is also a museum that details the history of the town in Moorish times and shows how the Christians, Muslims and Jews lived peacefully side by side during the 10^th Century. When you enter the old city it was like stepping back in time…a market place bustling with people, busy cafes, tourist shops selling Moorish mosaic goods, brightly coloured silk scarfs and opaque gold jewellery. There were squares with ancient gardens filled with an abundance of evergreens, fountains and statues and remains of ancient churches hidden behind wrought iron gates in side streets. There is even the remains of Roman Temple which seem to stick out oddly amongst more modern buildings carefully built around it. Of course as with most of the cities we visit, we are only touching on what there is to see and do but we do get a nice taste of the city spending a few hours strolling through the streets and visiting some of the ancient buildings. We both really enjoy doing this and are fascinated by the architecture and the beasts of buildings that they built such a long time ago without the modern tools of today.

The following morning on my walk G and I walked back to the bridge and along the river and had a fabulous view of the bridge and old city as the sun was rising for the day.

We drove about 350km the next day from Cordoba to a small Aire outside Cesar de Caceres with a stop at Zafra along the way. The first part of the journey took us through mountainous twisty roads and climbs but after a while it turned into flat agricultural land with either sheep, some cattle or large solar farms with huge panels the size I’ve not seen before. Long stretches of road lay ahead and made the journey seem to go on forever. We didn’t see many motor homers like we usually do and there were no laybys to stop at unless it was a service station off the route. Spain is so vast in places, there are just miles and miles of motorways ploughing through the plains and you can usually see far into the distance in all directions.

The sun is still shining which makes the days lovely and warm but by night the temperature has dropped often to -3 and we have had some very cold nights. We don’t always have electric hook up and are relying on our diesel heater, so we tend to use it sparingly and don’t keep it on over night. All I can say is that thank goodness I took my hot water bottle and we have plenty of blankets for extra layers at night! Getting up in the morning is a challenge but the heater does warm up the van nicely.

 So our final Spanish city was Salamanca – another place that I had been recommended to stop at if we had time by Frank whom we had met a few times on our travels in Portugal. I liked the name, it rolled off the tongue so we had detoured a bit to get here and I was hoping it was going to be worth it. When we first drove into the city it looked very modern, the urban areas had new roads, cycling lanes, new parks and even brand new allotments for the apartments with no gardens. It was tough to find somewhere to park and we ended up a bit further out than we had wanted to be but we parked up and Bobs knee was up for the walk into the old city.

Once again it was across an old Roman Bridge not quite the beauty of Cordoba but what a shock we got when we climbed up the cobblestone road into the old the town. Salamanca is also known as the Golden City as it has beautiful sandstone buildings. It is quite different to other cities in Spain as the streets are wider and all the buildings are made from the same sandstone and are features of the university. The university here is the 3^rd oldest in the world so the streets were full of young students which gives it a great young vibe. Every corner you turn has another university faculty or college, some of the main streets are lined with shops aimed at tourists selling salted meat products (big in this part of Spain), wines of the region or clothing with Salamanca University stamped all over them, but many of them are just huge buildings that form part of the university and have no windows to the street.  

Salamanca has one of the largest and some say most impressive plaza’s in Spain. Plaza Mayor really reminded me of the Piazza San Marco in Venice. It is a huge square lined with high sandstone buildings, each side of the square has an arched entrance in the middle and each façade is lined with galleries, cafes, restaurants and shops for visitors to sit and people watch.

We didn’t get to see much more of the city as we were limited with time but we passed the impressive Salamanca cathedral that wasn’t open to visit and saw that there is also a Palacio do Monterrey. Salamanca felt quite different to the other cities and I’m glad that we made the stop.

We left the city and headed on for an hour or so to our last night in Spain, another little Aire in the small village of Torquemada. I chose here as it was close to the motorway but away from any road noise. Bob took a walk into the town to find a shop to stock up and told me that it was a dump!!

The following morning, I discovered quite a different village to him! Torquemeda has one of the longest bridges in the province with 25 arches  and dates to 10^th Century. It was quite stunning, it also had 2 very old and beautiful churches. One of which baptised Catalina of Austria future Queen of Portugal who was born here and the other which was right next to where we parked up for the night was the burial place of Archbishop of Riga who died whilst in the region.  The town is in part of the Rioja wine region and has a long history of producing high quality wines in its bodegas and still has a mollina to visit. Two hugely different views!

That was our last night in Spain as the following day we had a 3.5 hours’ drive though the mountains to get to Biarritz.