It's been a bit of a whirlwind tour of Portugal as we've had to keep pushing north to get back to Bilbao for our return ferry home at the end of November. Site seeing fatigue has started to set in and we're both a bit blasé about medieval towns, cathedrals and plazas. So here is a quick summary: Evora: another medieval town. Lisbon: a bit run down but to its credit some nice plazas and decent architecture. Not too sure about allowing homeless people to run t...

We have just completed two sun soaked weeks in Andalucía, meeting up with various waifs and strays along the way and indulging in lots of good food and cheap wine! We began with a few healthy(ish) days in the wild and windy Sierra Nevada. We managed to get one decent walk in on the icy and windswept mountains when the weather permitted and sampled plenty of the local "vino de terreno" when it didn't! We then headed to the Costa del Sol picking my D...

It was with a real sense of excitement that we met up with Sarah, Brian and family near Murcia, not just because we were looking forward to seeing our friends but because we would have a proper bed to sleep in for the first time in nearly 2 months! The villa was fantastic and as well as all the usual mod cons it had an excellent swimming pool which despite the slightly chilly water got regular use during our stay. As usual we got the big drinking night out of th...

A lot of ground covered since the last blog, we have been gradually working our way south and east through the heart of Spain. Our first stop after the Picos de Europas was Segovia on the high plains, which is famed for its suckling pig. We arrived during some festivities where strange costumed performers pranced around throwing chocolate money at the crowds, unfortunately none came our way so we gorged ourselves on half a suckling pig at a local restaurant in...

We drove into the Spanish Pyrenees from France and found our first overnight stopover in the small medieval hill top town of Ainsa. A couple of friendly Brits gave us a sea shell signifying that we are pilgrims on the path of St. James. Pilgrims we are not, but having the shell in the front of the van would apparently make the authorities more tolerant of our misdemeanours. The shell seemed to pay off the very next day when we were given the once over in Sos de...