More moments into memory…..
We floated smoothly across the Bay of Biscay for exactly 20-hours and 30-minutes; the Pont Aven ferry left on time and berthed not a minute late. We watched a movie, read the paper and slept very well in our little tiny cabin, no 6134, at the very front of the ship. Then at 11:45am we changed our clocks and watches forward to 12:45pm and rolled Eileen down the ramp at Santander.
No last-minute changes of route this year, we headed straight to Burgos to stay at the campsite we started at in 2014. Eileen cruised down the freeway via Aguilar de Campoo and we found a nice grassy spot amongst all the Danish, English, French, Swiss and Dutch campervans at Fuentes Blancas. We put the awning out and thoroughly enjoyed the 22°C heat, the blue sky and the sunshine.
Rodney cycled in to the town centre to successfully top up our Spanish sim card with some gigabytes, while I sorted out the van, got one load of much-needed washing done and whipped up a roast beef with lots of veggies for dinner. All in all, a very good first day in Spain.
On Tuesday we slept heavily until 9am, brilliant, and our first tree glimpsed through the sky light this year was bare; no leaves, no fruit, just naked branches. After a morning of catch-up stuff, we both cycled along the river into town for a late Tapas style lunch. The ride back didn’t manage to burn off all the prawns and mushrooms and sausage, and, and, and, so our bellies were full for the rest of the day and we passed on dinner that evening.
It was a rather different start to my day on Wednesday. I was just getting dressed after my shower and heard a lady struggling in the cubicle next to me, followed by a little whimper of “Hilfe”; she couldn’t open her door. I called out “ja”, put my shoes on and while she pulled from the inside, I put my shoulder against the outside and we managed to get her out. I’m still trying to work out how she originally shut the door?
Just after 10am we left the Burgos campsite, while spots of rain sprawled across the windscreen. We felt a little glum because the weather forecast was looking on the wet side, so we crossed our fingers and hoped it would be drier further south. The road to Peñafiel passes masses of vineyards full of pruned, stumpy vines looking very dormant and asleep at this time of year. But suddenly we were smiling at the first impressive site of the Castillo Peñafiel; it looked huge.
The man at Camping Riberduero was very happy to see us; perhaps because we turned out to be his only customers that day, not one other person seemed to be staying at the very nice campsite. This is the first time we have ever had a campsite all to ourselves!!! After settling Eileen in, we quickly grabbed our bikes and set off into town. When we started puffing and panting on the road up to the castle, we locked up the bikes and continued on foot. Sadly we were still puffing and panting when we arrived at the ticket office…….
To tour the castle, one has to go with a guide and it turned out that we were the only customers for the last tour of the morning. So we had our very own personal tour, which was rather nice, but also a little tricky, as our lovely guide spoke no English and our Spanish is still basically zilch. With a lot of sign language and struggles with badly pronounced words on both sides, we still enjoyed our 45-minute wander around the walls and up the 66 steps of the tower. We even met the current ‘Queen of the Castle’ a beautiful bronze coloured squirrel, who is apparently pregnant at the moment and will “give bebe’ soon.
By the time we got back to our bikes the town was in full siesta mode, so we headed back to the campsite and spent the afternoon bike cleaning, rack mending, photo sorting, route researching and all that stuff that accompanies all our trips.
