Where's Bertie? He's in a small municipal Aire in the town of Cariñena. Exact location: 41.33805, -1.23008.
Weather: Overnight rain finally abated at around 7am, after which the cloud gradually cleared giving us sunshine until we hit a few clouds again mid-afternoon.
Our day started with me dragging Mick out of bed at a slightly unreasonable hour for a Sunday morning. I could have run down to the river, along it for a short way, then back up to Bertie, but to do so would have required the negotiation of a lot of side roads and not much time spent alongside the water, so instead I opted for us to relocate to a more convenient car park such that my entire outing could be in the riverside park.
The route (3.5 miles each way) had the benefit of being off-road but, perhaps because of the time of year (i.e. bare trees), it wasn't as attractive as I had expected from the map.
The amount of plastic in the trees didn't help the attractiveness. Considering the level of the water today, it was mind-boggling that it had clearly been so high relatively recently as to inundate parts of the path to my height or more.
Back at Bertie and with breakfast eaten, I suggested that we take the middle ground between exploration and taking advantage of the roads being quiet on a Sunday, by taking a whistlestop tour of Pamplona before hitting the road. In the next hour and a half we covered over 3.5 miles as we walked along the river, ascended the funicular into the city and walked its streets passing a couple of main squares and the cathedral...
Yesterday on the edge of Bordeaux we passed a woman wearing a black beret, a knitted dress and patent red boots: an outfit that absolutely screamed 'French woman!'. Today the streets of Pamplona equally screamed 'You're in Spain!'.
The cathedral doesn't really sit at this angle, but nor could I fit it into frame without tilting it.
...before heading back towards Bertie via the Bull Ring and the Citadel.
Some of the women were baring more flesh than others.
A bit of the 'killing zone', between the inner star-shaped wall and the exterior wall, in the Citadel.
A quick lunch back at Bertie and it was gone 1pm when we finally made our way out of town.
Making fast progress along the AP15 (a 'Peaje', toll motorway), I pondered our onwards route. I trust Google Maps more than either of our SatNavs (both of which were in use today in the hope that at any one time one of them would be giving us sensible directions), and Google was advising taking a tiny white road followed by a little yellow road rather than following the two-sides-of-a-triangle formed by the motorways. They're not roads I would have chosen from looking at the road atlas, but with Google telling me the route was both shorter and quicker (and free!), and remembering previous experience on little yellow roads, I decided we should chance it. A good decision as it turned out, even if Mick did doubt that on the initial little white road stretch where going through villages involved some tight roads and, at one point, going under someone's living room, which spanned the very narrow road at a height of 3.3m. I'd have taken a photo of the latter if I hadn't been so busy wondering where the road went.
I'd noted three potential stopping points for the day, each the best of two hours apart, and whilst we could have made it to the second before dark, it wouldn't have left us with much evening to do important things like our daily crossword, writing this blog post, having an evening meal and doing some knitting, so we opted for the first, here in Cariñena.
Looking up the road towards the motorhome parking area. Those piles of white along the road are snow left over from the storm that hit Spain last week - an incongruous sight as it was 12 degrees and sunny when we arrived. We passed some very snowy hills (at 1500m; we're only at 500m) on our way here.
Weather: Overnight rain finally abated at around 7am, after which the cloud gradually cleared giving us sunshine until we hit a few clouds again mid-afternoon.
Our day started with me dragging Mick out of bed at a slightly unreasonable hour for a Sunday morning. I could have run down to the river, along it for a short way, then back up to Bertie, but to do so would have required the negotiation of a lot of side roads and not much time spent alongside the water, so instead I opted for us to relocate to a more convenient car park such that my entire outing could be in the riverside park.
The route (3.5 miles each way) had the benefit of being off-road but, perhaps because of the time of year (i.e. bare trees), it wasn't as attractive as I had expected from the map.
Back at Bertie and with breakfast eaten, I suggested that we take the middle ground between exploration and taking advantage of the roads being quiet on a Sunday, by taking a whistlestop tour of Pamplona before hitting the road. In the next hour and a half we covered over 3.5 miles as we walked along the river, ascended the funicular into the city and walked its streets passing a couple of main squares and the cathedral...
...before heading back towards Bertie via the Bull Ring and the Citadel.
On the way we paused to watch a bit of a race-walking event that lay in our path. It's always struck me as an odd sport. I'm sure that breaking into a run would be much easier and more efficient!
A quick lunch back at Bertie and it was gone 1pm when we finally made our way out of town.
Making fast progress along the AP15 (a 'Peaje', toll motorway), I pondered our onwards route. I trust Google Maps more than either of our SatNavs (both of which were in use today in the hope that at any one time one of them would be giving us sensible directions), and Google was advising taking a tiny white road followed by a little yellow road rather than following the two-sides-of-a-triangle formed by the motorways. They're not roads I would have chosen from looking at the road atlas, but with Google telling me the route was both shorter and quicker (and free!), and remembering previous experience on little yellow roads, I decided we should chance it. A good decision as it turned out, even if Mick did doubt that on the initial little white road stretch where going through villages involved some tight roads and, at one point, going under someone's living room, which spanned the very narrow road at a height of 3.3m. I'd have taken a photo of the latter if I hadn't been so busy wondering where the road went.
I'd noted three potential stopping points for the day, each the best of two hours apart, and whilst we could have made it to the second before dark, it wouldn't have left us with much evening to do important things like our daily crossword, writing this blog post, having an evening meal and doing some knitting, so we opted for the first, here in Cariñena.
If you're in the humour for something bizarre (and who isn't, que no?), then Google the phrase Ghost Airport Spain
ReplyDeleteI did exactly that and had a vague recollection of having read about some of the scandal around it years ago. We may well pass the airport (which I understand now hosts a handful of commercial flights) when we're on our way back north in a few weeks' time.
DeleteAlso on the subject of curious airports: on our drive yesterday Mick's interest was piqued by the large number of planes parked not far away from the motorway. My explanation (based on the map) of "It's Teruel airport", didn't satisfy him (too many planes parked, he said). A bit more Googling revealed that we'd just driven past the largest plane storage site (/graveyard) in Europe.