Where's Bertie? He's at a Municipal Aire just above Ribadesella (exact location: 43.46025, -5.05421).
Weather: Overcast all day, becoming showery after 4.30pm.
After three days of activity, it was a lazy start to today, which is to say that I nominated Mick to get up and make tea and breakfast, whilst I lounged around in bed for an unreasonably long time.
Having already had three one-night stays (bearing in mind that one of the aims of this trip was to stay longer in each place, where legal and sensible to do so), we might have been lazy all day and sat out the dull and damp weather in Cangas. However, the car park hadn't been the quietest place at 7 this morning, and I doubted it would be so on a Friday night either, so 'onwards' was my vote.
Our departure wasn't immediate, with a walk first being taken back into town to a supermarket, and with the walk back being broken at a cafe for coffee and croissant.
With groceries stowed and Bertie drained and watered, we were about set to leave when I realised that I'd selected our next location based on a faulty mental map of Spain. Checking the real map confirmed I was accidentally taking us east, and east was not our intention today. Five minutes later, the result of a rethink was that we were going to Colunga (home of some dinosaur tracks, so I've read).
That intention persisted for a few kilometres when I redirected us to Ribadesella instead. I'd read good things about the Aire here, and it was less of a journey, so I thought we may as well come here and put a bit of thought into the rest of the trip. With just 2 weeks to go (during which time we need to leave Spain and drive back up through France), making things up as we go along needs to be replaced with a vague plan, taking into account the places we want to visit/revisit on our way back east. (Spoiler alert: the result of that planning is that this is as far west as we are getting on this trip.)
Our arrival at this Aire was accompanied by disappointment. The photos on Park4Night make it look a lot nicer than it is, and also incorrectly suggest that it has a view of the town and the estuary. The reality is that it's on a slope, sandwiched in between two roads.
Even my photo makes it look much nicer than it is. This snap was taken during a brief busy period. There was one other van when we arrived and we are now alone.
Having made the effort to drive here, we weren't going to go away without a look around, so off we went into town.
The beaches are on the other side of the estuary, but they're not too far away via the nearby bridge.
The town itself is nothing special, but not bad, and it's not the time of year to see the harbour at its best as most of the restaurants in that area were closed. The walk out along the promenade, to the mouth of the estuary, was pleasant, and if we had any Spanish language skills we would have been edified by all of the information in that area, including audio-information points, panels of text, and these rather good ceramic illustrations of the town's history:
Completing our tour with a walk up to the top of the headland to see the church (or half church, as it now is) up there...
...a narrow old-town street deposited us back into the main town, whereupon all we had to do was climb back up and over the hill to the Aire.
Lunch and planning took up enough time that we thought we may as well stay here the night. Who knows, if tomorrow is as wet as forecast and if the roads prove to be quiet overnight, we may even stay two nights. We'll see...
Kev - here are another few properties for you, including a couple at the higher end of the market:
Weather: Overcast all day, becoming showery after 4.30pm.
After three days of activity, it was a lazy start to today, which is to say that I nominated Mick to get up and make tea and breakfast, whilst I lounged around in bed for an unreasonably long time.
Having already had three one-night stays (bearing in mind that one of the aims of this trip was to stay longer in each place, where legal and sensible to do so), we might have been lazy all day and sat out the dull and damp weather in Cangas. However, the car park hadn't been the quietest place at 7 this morning, and I doubted it would be so on a Friday night either, so 'onwards' was my vote.
Our departure wasn't immediate, with a walk first being taken back into town to a supermarket, and with the walk back being broken at a cafe for coffee and croissant.
With groceries stowed and Bertie drained and watered, we were about set to leave when I realised that I'd selected our next location based on a faulty mental map of Spain. Checking the real map confirmed I was accidentally taking us east, and east was not our intention today. Five minutes later, the result of a rethink was that we were going to Colunga (home of some dinosaur tracks, so I've read).
That intention persisted for a few kilometres when I redirected us to Ribadesella instead. I'd read good things about the Aire here, and it was less of a journey, so I thought we may as well come here and put a bit of thought into the rest of the trip. With just 2 weeks to go (during which time we need to leave Spain and drive back up through France), making things up as we go along needs to be replaced with a vague plan, taking into account the places we want to visit/revisit on our way back east. (Spoiler alert: the result of that planning is that this is as far west as we are getting on this trip.)
Our arrival at this Aire was accompanied by disappointment. The photos on Park4Night make it look a lot nicer than it is, and also incorrectly suggest that it has a view of the town and the estuary. The reality is that it's on a slope, sandwiched in between two roads.
Even my photo makes it look much nicer than it is. This snap was taken during a brief busy period. There was one other van when we arrived and we are now alone.
Having made the effort to drive here, we weren't going to go away without a look around, so off we went into town.
The beaches are on the other side of the estuary, but they're not too far away via the nearby bridge.
The town itself is nothing special, but not bad, and it's not the time of year to see the harbour at its best as most of the restaurants in that area were closed. The walk out along the promenade, to the mouth of the estuary, was pleasant, and if we had any Spanish language skills we would have been edified by all of the information in that area, including audio-information points, panels of text, and these rather good ceramic illustrations of the town's history:
Completing our tour with a walk up to the top of the headland to see the church (or half church, as it now is) up there...
...a narrow old-town street deposited us back into the main town, whereupon all we had to do was climb back up and over the hill to the Aire.
Lunch and planning took up enough time that we thought we may as well stay here the night. Who knows, if tomorrow is as wet as forecast and if the roads prove to be quiet overnight, we may even stay two nights. We'll see...
Kev - here are another few properties for you, including a couple at the higher end of the market:
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