Thursday 18 July 2019 Over 200 kilometres, and over many mountains, my road brought me to the fringe of the north coast of Spain. Rollercoasting the arms of mountains reaching to the sea, crossing deep valleys on sweeping viaducts, I left a chilly and misty Lugo for sunny beaches glimpsed tantalisingly to my left. I […]
Wednesday 17 July 2019 In contrast to the scorched centre of the Iberian Peninsula, Galicia is green and more temperate, influenced by Atlantic winds. I woke up feeling a bit chilly under my one tog duvet, and the day has continued cool and overcast. Not unpleasant for walking, but not great for exploring Lugo, which […]
Tuesday 16 July 2018 Yesterday, I left Chaves, Portugal and made a ‘direction of travel’ stop at Vigo on the west coast of Spain. A bit of a slow start, followed by a visit to Lidl, a long journey and a losing an hour meant it was about 15:30 before I wandered out to see […]
Sunday 14 July 2019 Chaves is a spa town. It makes much of its relationship with Verin in Spain, also a spa town, to the extent of regarding themselves as one destination. Just half an hour drive separates the towns, plus one hour time zone difference, Portugal being on UK time, Spain an hour ahead. […]
Saturday 13 July 2019 I signed off yesterday’s post saying I’d stay in Bragança and see what else it had to offer. The answer is, very little. I couldn’t understand how I’d missed the cathedral on the map, until I found it. It was barely started before it was abandoned, so why not put a […]
Wednesday 10 July 2019 Salamanca has been a player in Spain’s most significant historical events. The Vettones were a pre-Roman people who lived in the region, possibly of Celtic origin. They made animal statues, called verraco, like this bull found beside the river Tormes in Salamanca. There were a couple of verraco in Ávila but […]
Tuesday 9 July 2019 (Delayed blog post) As mentioned in a previous post, before my blog stopped working for a few days, I left Madrid for Ávila. This is Ávila in the evening sun. It’s a load of walls. Started in 1090, the 2.5 kilometre walls circle the town and you can walk atop half […]
Thursday 11 July 2019 (Delayed blog posting) As I walked from the aire into Zamora, a guy about my age in a camper with a Belgian plate was pulling in his wing mirrors to get down a narrow street. I asked if he was looking for the aire. We had a brief chat but he […]
Friday 12 July 2019 Leaving Zamora, I thought I’d entered Portugal without spotting a sign. I travelled through a neglected landscape of decaying buildings and forgotten fields, such a contrast to the Spain seen before, the one town on route (Alcanices, though I might be wrong) looking lost, like the landscape before it. Then a […]
Wednesday 10 July 2019 Monday in Madrid started with trying to complete some UK business – the downside of being away for months. Try as I might, I couldn’t. To use a European analogy, I had a three pin plug and a two pin socket, and nobody could provide either a different plug or a […]