Driving South For The Winter

After a lovely Christmas break with the family, before the mince pies had even run out, we jumped back in the camper and headed to Calais, determined to find some warmer and dryer weather.

When you head south it gets colder before it gets warmer as France has much harsher winters than southeast England. Our first night in France was down to -4c, so we didn’t hang about in the morning, getting the Beastlet going and the heater on as quickly as we could.

On the plus side there was no snow at this time on the west coast of France. We had our sights set on St Jean de Luz, a beautiful town near the Spanish border in the far southwest corner of France. Our weather app was showing us that this was a relatively warm 12c with clear skies.

However, we began to lose faith in the weather app when we were just 20kms away from St Jean de Luz and the thermometer was still reading 0c outside. To our surprise though, in the space of 20km the temperature gradually started to rise and as we drove into the town the thermometer hit 12c. The sun was shining and it felt like a different country!

Our plan was to drive across the North of Spain and down through Portugal, hugging the coastline to benefit from the milder climate, before getting a ferry across to Morocco for a couple of months.

We enjoyed a day walking around St Jean de Luz, a favourite town of ours that we have visited before, although this time it was much busier with the French out in force enjoying the holidays.

Shortly after leaving St. Jean de Luz, we crossed over into Spain and started driving along the North coast. We decided to avoid the big towns that dominate the Northeast of Spain and so our first stop was in the small town of Lekeito which has a free Aire within walking distance of the centre.

It didn’t take us long to find a bar for our first Pinxtos of the trip and a refreshing Spanish beer. This is one of our favourite things about travelling through Spain and so dry January was definitely not part of our agenda!

The town didn’t feel very touristy, at least not in early January, and in fact was pretty deserted until after 5pm when it seemed to come alive.

Our next stop was 200km down the coast in San Vincente de Barquera. This is a coastal town from which you can see the snow capped peaks of the Picos de Europa. We’d love to explore the Picos but at this time of year it is just too cold for us to go into the mountains in the camper.

We explored the old town which is at the top of a hill overlooking the harbour and then went down into the harbour area where we enjoyed a tapas lunch – the hero of this was definitely a platter of garlicky squid which was delicious.

Llanes was the next town we visited on our brief traverse across the north coast of Spain. This is a fairly nice town but it was mostly shut up for winter while we were there, although we did manage to visit the beach and have a walk around the harbour area.

Probably the highlight for us on the North coast of Spain was the village of Cudillero. This colourful little village is built up the cliff face around a small harbour and feels like it hasn’t changed in a 100 years. We walked through the town, climbed up through the steep streets to a traverse across the top of the town and back down the other side of the harbour. The main square must be wonderful in the summer with lots of bars and restaurants – not so much in the winter when everything was shut up.

Next up for us was Ribadeo, which we visited because of it proximity to Playa de las Catedrales, but actually it’s a nice town in its own right. We arrived in a storm and quickly abandoned our proposed parking place down by the seafront as it was much too exposed. We eventually found a supermarket car park inland of the town to bed down for the night.

In the morning the weather was much improved so we drove back into town and went for a wander, stopping for the almost obligatory hot chocolate – well they are when you are out with Sarah!

After the town we drove down the road to Playa de las Catedrales, a beautiful beach with a number of rock arches. We explored the beach and managed to reach the double arch despite the incoming tide, and get back out without getting wet.

This was our last stop on the North coast as we cut back inland to head to the regional capital of Santiago de Compostela. This is the pilgrimage town that is at the end of the Camino de Santiago. This famous walking route is actually a number of different routes that vary from 87km long to the mighty Northern route which is 820km.

The impressive cathedral, which is a mixture of Romanesque, Baroque and Gothic styles, was built between 1075 and 1211.

The cathedral is at the centre of the Unesco World Heritage old town where you can get lost in the beautiful back streets. It’s a gorgeous town and easily lives up to its reputation of one of Spain’s most beautiful cities.

After just six days in Spain we were closing in on our destination of Portugal, but we had one more stop we wanted to make on the way, which was the town of Pontevedra. In the 16^th century Pontevedra was the biggest city in Galicia but now it is a pleasant medium sized city of 80,000 people that houses a lot of the administrative services for the region, including a very good (and free) museum which is definitely worth a visit. Its old town stands out as particularly beautiful.