Probably final blog from Spain before a brief return to UK before flying (14/11) out to New Zealand via Hong Kong. We are using the internet in a public library in Aguilar de Campoo in Northern Spain. The sun is shining and we have cycled about 36kilometers to get here from a tiny place called La Rad where we rented a charming studio flat for a week from....Jesus. Here are some bullet points of our latest experiences....
Wine tasting with Sandra and Noel was a no nonsense, rustic and authentic experience. Sandra and Noel buy from a reputable vineyard in a place called St Nicholas de Bourgueil near Chinon, near the Loire. The vineyard owner was a great advert for the stuff he makes and sells - full of life and good humour. He did not have a massive range of products which suited us as we were able to taste everything he made... there were no biscuits to soak samples up so we left his premises with a great impression and feeling a tad squiffy.
Sandra and Noel kindly gave us a lift to the nearest TGV station at Chatelerraut for the next leg of our journey. It was here that we encountered the only really unhelpful person we have met on our travels. We needed a bit of help with our bags and wanted to avoid lugging them up and down lots of stairs but the station guard would not let us use the short cut ramp for no good reason that we could see. Still we got on the train and again as we had to sit in the cycles section we had a carriage pretty much to ourselves to Bordeaux. We stayed one night in Bordeaux at a cheap hotel near the station; it did the job but it was definitely a low spot as it was so grotty ( eg shared loos with no doors on them!).
Our cunning plan was to sneak into Spàin avoiding the Pyrennees by going to the southwest france/northern spain coast via Biarritz. This worked quite well and was necessary because you cannot take bikes on the fast Spanish trains so we had to use Medio Distancia trains (thanks for the research Debalho) - still very good but they require lots of changes which with bikes and bags and fast change overs is a real fag after a while.
From a place called Hendaye on the Border we got a Euskotren to San Sebastien -Donostia. We were in the heart of Basque country here so the language was a bit of a challenge but again people were very helpful. San Sebastien was a revelation - very lovely old town with a fab beach and harbour. Famed for its culinary prowess we had a go at sampling the tapas (called pincho´s there) in the old town after we had found a great pension nearby. The weather was warm and sunny so we felt vindicated for trying to get south, but after the first day it became overcast and cool. As we headed south to Burgos the weather turned cold, wet and windy and only yesterday did it begin to improve. The terrain around San Sebastien was too difficult for us to do much cycling fully loaded so by heading for Burgos we hoped to get to a flatter warmer area. Burgos is a beautiful walled ancient city. As the weather was pretty bad we bunkered down and rethought our plan. We worked out that taking medio distancia trains to southern spain and back again would have taken at least 4 days continous train travel and would have been really expensive, and requiring a trek across madrid with the bikes.
So helped by the lovely Paloma in the Burgos tourism office we found Jesus and his Casa Rural in La Rad a mere 50 kilometres from Burgos. The journey involved tackling the biggest hill of our trip so far - a real monster but its some measure of our progess that we were able to get up and over it. We had one small problem....we had no room on the bikes to carry food and there was no shop within 20 kilometres of La Rad. No sooner had we arrived in La Rad Mark used his best Spanish to explain to Jesus that he had a really big problem with his ´'dining room"; a cloud of doubt clearly passed across Jesus´ mind until after 5 minutes of pointing at the phrase book to indicate words for food it dawned on him that he was about to take on two tenants who unless he was able to help would have been found starved to death in his casa rural after a week. Jesus was great and immediately offered to drive us to the nearest supermarket 35 kilometres away. He also stopped at the nearest train station to check on trains for us to Santander- Mark was so overcome by the whole experience he dissapeared only to be found throwing his guts up on a railway siding. Undeterrred Jesus took us for a coffee and then proceeded to show us the local sights which involved driving up long steep winding roads to observation points where you could look over very steep drops into impressive canyons.......
We had a week at La Rad where we could re-charge and dictate our own pace. Caroline used the time to befriend and fatten the local pack of Perro´s who much to their owners consternation are plumper and less obedient than when she found them. We also continued to do some cycling in the area '- really good to tackle rides without the bags.
Our final challenge in Spain will be to cycle the 140k to Santander for our return boat on the 27th October (only one we could get on to that took us to Portsmouth in time for all the things we need to do in UK).
Thanks again for all your support and interest. We will definitely write up our visit to Hong Kong so check in again in 3 weeks time for some more news. Until then love to all. Caroline and Markxxxx
Wednesday 20 October 2010
Tuesday 5 October 2010
Sandra and Noel to the Rescue!
Hi Everyone, thanks for the comments on the blog and also related texts and e-mails they are searched for and viewed with pleasure and affection and really appreciated. We are aware of lack of photos but we have worked out that we do not have the technology to put them on yet - sorry about that. Will sort this before we head off to New Zealand. We composed our last posting from a pretty good campsite in Ancenis - we stayed two nights here - where we were befriended by a friendly scouser on a voyage of discovery after being made redundant. He was clearly capably of moving more swiftly than us so we hid in our tent the next morning as he packed up and left. The weather at nights particularly is cooling off and for the past few days it has been overcast and a bit wet so this has dimmed our waning enthusiasm for camping further and also boosted our interest in moving south to warmer climes (more of this later). So quickly in bullet points here are the latest highlights.
Big cycle after Ancennis. More brilliant paths. We stopped off at a little snack shack in the middle of nowhere and were served by a really charming and friendly couple; Caroline being the fruit bat that she is spotted a couple of punnets of peaches and pointed enthusiastically at them; the guys face momentarily fell as he explained that they were his own shopping...but let us buy some anyway. The shack had only one other customer who had locked his moped to a bench and sat next to it...did he know something that we didn't?!
After this we found charming Chambre D'Hote in Montjean run by Irina and Serge called the Cedres; fantastic place - we had our own lounge, and kitchen. There were even two muts for Caroline to feed crisps to. We stayed two nights coz it was so good...but had to leave before Mark did anymore damage to their furnishings!
Unexpectedly after this we had our biggest ride yet. We reckon it was over 60km which fully loaded was quite hard even on the flat. We had intended to go shorter but having so easily found and got into the Cedres we were lulled into believing that Chambre D'Hotes would be ten a penny and not very busy - we were wrong. We tried several with no luck before we got to the Ste-Gemmes area just south of Angers. It was 8.00ish and getting dark. We found a deserted campsite which Caroline thought was charming because of the smell of woodsmoke.....except that woodsmoke does not usually come from cigar like objects. We decided to try our luck at the train station which we hoped would take us into Saumur. After 30 mins of waiting a train approached..Mark jumped up with a heart full of hope only for it tear through the station tooting as it went nearly taking Marks wig with it. We then decided that we might have to night cycle to Saumur. By this time it was dark and wet but we were so pleased that we had decided not to camp that our spirits were high (or was it the woodsmoke?) and we sped off into the night avoiding the deer that periodically lept across our paths. We got to a place called Thoreiul where in the distance we spotted a premises that was beautifully lit and looked like a hotel - it was infact a restaurant which was so quiet that all the staff were having a drink on the terrace. Using our best french we tried to ask about anywhere where we could stay. John Claude was summoned and sprang into action - he phoned the local Chambre D'Hote and then leapt into his little red van and told us to follow him (at least that's what we thought he said!). His staff were most amused and advised him to get on his bike and give us the car (jean claude was quite portly). Anyway he took off like a bat out of hell with Mark in hot pursuit shouting pidgeon french and obscenties between desparate gulps of air; Caroline was left in the distance in a fit of giggles. To be fair John Claude did eventually slow down on quite a steep hill and rather than taking us to the local police station he had actually taken us to a brilliant Chambre d hote owned by a charming couple. She ran the local twinning committee (Thoreiul twinned with Wincanton) and was pleased for the chance to practice her english (which was better than ours!). They fed us and gave us wine and beer - fab. We cycled on through Saumur- looking at the trog dwellings in the cliffs - and had a relatively uneventful two night stay at the Blue Balcony in Tuquant. The highlight here was finding 101 ways of spending 5 euros on food (turned out to be spuds and eggs) because we could not face cycling 18km to the nearest bank. Next stop was Chinon birth place of Rabelais.
From there we cycled to Tour St Gelin where Sandra, Caroline's God mother and husband Noel live. This bit of cycling showed how spoiled we have been on the Loire path. We cycled into a strong headwind and the roads are much more rolling - we were reminded of the need to tackle harder terrain in preparation for NZ. Its been fab staying here - they could not have been more welcoming or kind - we have been regenerated by the stay and will look for a chance to return the kindness. We are about to tackle a wine tasting mission (someone has to do it) and tomorrow we are going to try and get the train to the south of France/spanish border, but its harder than you might think to book a ticket with bikes.
Next time we post we will hope to be basking in the sunshine somewhere in southern spain - don't worry Marks Spanish is excellent (not!) until then Buenos Dias much love to all our readers. xxx C&M
Big cycle after Ancennis. More brilliant paths. We stopped off at a little snack shack in the middle of nowhere and were served by a really charming and friendly couple; Caroline being the fruit bat that she is spotted a couple of punnets of peaches and pointed enthusiastically at them; the guys face momentarily fell as he explained that they were his own shopping...but let us buy some anyway. The shack had only one other customer who had locked his moped to a bench and sat next to it...did he know something that we didn't?!
After this we found charming Chambre D'Hote in Montjean run by Irina and Serge called the Cedres; fantastic place - we had our own lounge, and kitchen. There were even two muts for Caroline to feed crisps to. We stayed two nights coz it was so good...but had to leave before Mark did anymore damage to their furnishings!
Unexpectedly after this we had our biggest ride yet. We reckon it was over 60km which fully loaded was quite hard even on the flat. We had intended to go shorter but having so easily found and got into the Cedres we were lulled into believing that Chambre D'Hotes would be ten a penny and not very busy - we were wrong. We tried several with no luck before we got to the Ste-Gemmes area just south of Angers. It was 8.00ish and getting dark. We found a deserted campsite which Caroline thought was charming because of the smell of woodsmoke.....except that woodsmoke does not usually come from cigar like objects. We decided to try our luck at the train station which we hoped would take us into Saumur. After 30 mins of waiting a train approached..Mark jumped up with a heart full of hope only for it tear through the station tooting as it went nearly taking Marks wig with it. We then decided that we might have to night cycle to Saumur. By this time it was dark and wet but we were so pleased that we had decided not to camp that our spirits were high (or was it the woodsmoke?) and we sped off into the night avoiding the deer that periodically lept across our paths. We got to a place called Thoreiul where in the distance we spotted a premises that was beautifully lit and looked like a hotel - it was infact a restaurant which was so quiet that all the staff were having a drink on the terrace. Using our best french we tried to ask about anywhere where we could stay. John Claude was summoned and sprang into action - he phoned the local Chambre D'Hote and then leapt into his little red van and told us to follow him (at least that's what we thought he said!). His staff were most amused and advised him to get on his bike and give us the car (jean claude was quite portly). Anyway he took off like a bat out of hell with Mark in hot pursuit shouting pidgeon french and obscenties between desparate gulps of air; Caroline was left in the distance in a fit of giggles. To be fair John Claude did eventually slow down on quite a steep hill and rather than taking us to the local police station he had actually taken us to a brilliant Chambre d hote owned by a charming couple. She ran the local twinning committee (Thoreiul twinned with Wincanton) and was pleased for the chance to practice her english (which was better than ours!). They fed us and gave us wine and beer - fab. We cycled on through Saumur- looking at the trog dwellings in the cliffs - and had a relatively uneventful two night stay at the Blue Balcony in Tuquant. The highlight here was finding 101 ways of spending 5 euros on food (turned out to be spuds and eggs) because we could not face cycling 18km to the nearest bank. Next stop was Chinon birth place of Rabelais.
From there we cycled to Tour St Gelin where Sandra, Caroline's God mother and husband Noel live. This bit of cycling showed how spoiled we have been on the Loire path. We cycled into a strong headwind and the roads are much more rolling - we were reminded of the need to tackle harder terrain in preparation for NZ. Its been fab staying here - they could not have been more welcoming or kind - we have been regenerated by the stay and will look for a chance to return the kindness. We are about to tackle a wine tasting mission (someone has to do it) and tomorrow we are going to try and get the train to the south of France/spanish border, but its harder than you might think to book a ticket with bikes.
Next time we post we will hope to be basking in the sunshine somewhere in southern spain - don't worry Marks Spanish is excellent (not!) until then Buenos Dias much love to all our readers. xxx C&M
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