This was also a jetlag reunion. There’s a 5-hour time difference (normally) between the east coast of the States and the UK. I say “normally” because we had cleverly arranged to arrive in Washington DC on the night that the UK changed its clocks back to GMT from BST. The States, however, changes its clocks next weekend. Thus, we hit the sack five hours adrift and woke up (after eventually getting to sleep) four hours adrift. Great stuff.

Understanding nothing of clock changes (in common with yours truly) our body clocks, of course, were working on five hours adrift. As expected, we awoke early. I had originally thought of returning to the airport for our rental car at 10:00 but there seemed little point hanging around twiddling our thumbs so we went down for an unscintillating breakfast before boarding the 09:00 shuttle bus to the airport.

a couple of things:

1. When it’s operating, the shuttle bus runs to the airport every hour on the hour. Though the arriving guest instructions are to phone for a ride, I do not believe the bus departs any time in between the hours, which would explain why we had trouble getting a ride last night.
2. A poster in the hotel elevator spoke of “our carefully curated breakfast”. What on earth is a curated breakfast – it sounds like something out of a museum? (I really must look that word up.) Since the protein content consisted of slices of turkey sausage and indifferent scrambled eggs, I think a museum might be appropriate. (The eggs were improved by the addition of some Tabasco sauce.)

The shuttle bus returned from its 08:00 airport run. We sat waiting nearby for the 09:00 run, along with our new friendly passenger in distress from last night.

We got to the airport, disembarked the hotel shuttle and embarked on the Hertz car rental shuttle. All was well with our reservation. Since I detest renting vehicle, I’m now in the habit of taking the full insurances. I did so again. After Darwin knows how many additional charges were also added to the bill, having previously “paid for” the car using Francine’s airmiles, we still ended up with a thumping $1200+ charge for the 2-week rental. ”Welcome to America|”, said the lady. Indeed.

I was curious about toll charges. On my previous visits I’d been used to tossing coins into a basket at a toll booth. Happily now the car has an electronic tag, similar to those we now use in France and Spain, so it should be automated, though our lady thought we wouldn’t incur any charges. We’ll see. That gets sorted when we return.

We went and found our Ford Explorer, an upgrade from what we thought we’d ordered. Clambering in to an unfamiliar car and staring at its controls is always exciting though, this being a Ford, I had some clues from good ol’ Frodo.

Francine had invested in an Holafly e-sim so that we’d be able to navigate using good ol’ Google Maps. That fired up well, too – we were on a roll. Francine connected it to the Explorer’s USB socket and lo, our route appeared on the car’s screen. Brilliant stuff. We had no idea which route Google had chosen – it had three options when I tried at home before departing – but we were off.

Most routes involve heading south on the I95 from some point and that’s where we finally ended up. After 70 miles or so, turn onto the I295 across the top of Richmond and we’re getting close. A sign to a Starbucks grabbed my attention and, close to our destination, we paused to relax with a coffee before descending on our friend.

I had driven one of the routes between Washington Dulles and Richmond many years ago before the days of GPS and navigation systems. Once you get to the I95 it’s a doddle but getting from the airport to the I95 is more complex. I honestly cannot remember how I did it without a passenger to read a map.

Our final destination was a retirement community with a security guard on a barrier. She logged us in and presented us with a visitor pass so we could come and go for the duration. It’s an enormous retirement community; finding our way in, having parked in a “visitor” slot as instructed, proved problematic. A nice lady with a barky dog helped us. In return or some fuss, her dog stopped barking,

Approaching the apartment, we were met by an open door. Reunions ensued which did of course, require hugs, beer and wine.

Just for fun, I plotted our stops on a Google map. I tried putting the actual route in as well but silly ol’ Google Maps then overwrote my nice little motor home icons with letters for the stages. So, in simple terms, we started at the top in Bilbao and went anti-clockwise round this circuit, finishing again in Bilbao.

When estimating annual mileage to pick appropriate insurance, I foolishly assumed that we’d be doing at least what we’d have done in our car plus caravan. That’s completely wrong; we’re doing less mileage in the motor home because once you get somewhere you mostly stay put instead of adding day trips. Duh!

This trip was just 1800 miles/2900 kms and that included the legs to and from Portsmouth. Enjoying more or less constant sun helped us get more comfortable from our initial lack of familiarity with camping in Spain. Sun makes everything better (except Luton, of course). 😀

We’ve come to the end of our inaugural Spanish camping trip and it’s been both a good one and an educational one.

Hearing stories of Spanish campsites being rammed over winter and fearing that we might have difficulty finding availability, we managed to make reservations, in some cases before we left home, or as we went along.

We’ve also been fortunate with the weather. We had a couple of drizzly days at Alcuéscar but have otherwise enjoyed five weeks of sunshine.

We managed to catch up with several friends at Jalón and even managed to meet one Jalón absentee at Haro because he happened to be sailing into Bilbao a couple of days before we sailed out of Bilbao. The weather gods continued to smile so that we could spend an enjoyable day in Haro together.

I think that my biggest lesson was that, with one notable exception (Alcalalí), Spanish campsites did not seem to be places that I just enjoyed sitting on, camping for the sake of camping. For the most part in France, I find the camping itself is often a pleasurable activity. Spanish campsites, on the other hand, seemed to be largely places to sleep in between bouts of being a tourist.

The weather gods stopped smiling on our last day in Haro as we waited out most of the day to head to our 19:00 ferry from Bilbao. At his point they chose to throw some real rain at us. Other than the vague light relief of lunching at the campsite “restaurant” (more of a café), we sat twiddling our thumbs.

Finally boarding the ferry, we were greeted by a level 1 (the lowest of three levels) weather alert which nonetheless made our trip up the Bay of Biscay a little less than completely comfortable, though we could still face dinner in the more formal on-board restaurant. After that we chose to retire early and just lie down, as opposed to staggering about the lurching ship. Aided by Stugeron, we did, at least, manage to sleep.

The following day, once the ferry rounded the corner into the English Channel, the sea was much calmer. We just had what seemed like an interminable wait until docking in Portsmouth at 21:00 after some 26 hours on board.

Breathing a sigh of relief as we cleared immigration, the van (well, all vans) being checked for stowaways, we headed up the A3 towards the jaM25 only to find that our entry onto the jaM25 at junction 10 was blocked for roadworks, requiring us to follow a tortuous 25-minute diversion to eventually join the motorway a junction further up.

We finally arrived home at 00:15 on Saturday morning in desperate need of a drink, helped down with a few nibbles.

On the plus side, taking a long ferry ride into and out of Bilbao or Santander does save valuable Schengen days that would be spent if you chose to drive through France. The down side, for me at least, is that it is monumentally tedious. How folks survive on cruises, I just don’t know. At least when I’m driving, I’ve got something to do. Not so my passenger, however, other than keeping the satnav honest.

We had rain overnight [shock, horror] and it didn’t show signs of stopping in the morning. Morning is late in Spain at his latitude with sunrise not being until about 08:30 at this time of year. Bonkers!

Our pal had spent a comfortable night in his glamping pod and, after being inspected for the return of his security deposit, he bad us fond farewells and embarked upon his journey home to Jalón. [Lucky, lucky bastard.] From Scotland, he had been keeping an eye on the internal temperature of his house and it had not dropped below 24°C.

We sat, feeling a little alone, in the continuing rain waiting for it to brighten up, as el tiempo the Spanish weather forecast, was suggesting. It did not look promising.

Sure enough, a little before midday, a small, lonely blue patch made an appearance. Eventually, after midday, the blue patch was joined by a few reinforcements. We were getting hungry by now so we selected “prepare for anything” clothing and began sauntering back to the central main square of Haro.

Haro is adorned by murals of folk having imbibed a little too much of the local produce. Like Burgos, Haro is also decorated by bronze statues relating to the wine trade, or its consumption. I get the opinion around here that folk don’t worry too much about a nanny state 14 units a week limit. Far from it; here, wine is a vital part of enjoying life. More power to them.

I had been recommended a tapas bar but up until today it had been closed. Now it was open so we went in and settled down to lunch with a couple of glasses each of Rioja. The array of tapas was relatively easy to select from; there were mushrooms, which had been described as “epic” to me, and navajas [razor clams] which we find irresistible and these were undoubtedly the best I’ve ever tasted. We nibbled some banderillas [skewered hot green peppers and olives] while we waited for the clams and mushrooms to be cooked.

We were still keen on yesterday’s visit to Beethoven I, though, and decided to pop back, just down the street, for a spot more Rioja. There was an interesting looking pincho, a tapa on bread, so I asked for two. “Muy picante” [very spicy], said the barman. “OK, uno”, I replied. He gave me one picante, which would be fine for me, and one “no picante”, which Francine would prefer. Naturally these required a further couple of glasses of Rioja.

With such a wide variety of excellent red wines around here, I just don’t know how the locals manage the choice. I have not been keen on red wines of late, and certainly not of Rioja, but I’ve clearly been drinking the wrong stuff. The examples we’ve had here have been delicious, even those that don’t cost an arm and a leg. €2.30 a glass gets you a very decent crianza that far outstrips the classic Campo Viejo reserva in our home supermarkets, which is frankly disappointing. Nothing here has been disappointing.

For our first time, we have been camping around various parts of Spain for the last five weeks. We are now nearing the end of our travels and are at Haro, the main town of the Rioja wine region, where we are waiting out our last three nights until our return ferry from Bilbao on Thursday evening.

In one respect, the timing of our trip could not have been worse. In addition to seeing more of Spain, one of our goals was to catch up with old friends in Jalón, where we once had a house. However, we had cunningly arranged for our trip dates to overlap almost exactly with one of those friend’s dates for his trip back to Scotland to visit his family.“Bother”, said Pooh, crossly.

There was, though, a chance to salvage the situation. With us having arrived in Haro on 14th, our friend’s return ferry to Spain docked in Bilbao at 08:00 on 15th. Rather than be ships that pass in the night, our pal had booked into a glamping pod on our campsite and we were able to spend an enjoyable day together, before he continued on his homeward journey to Jalón.

The day brightened nicely and, as lunch time approached, we took a casual stroll up the hill into the centre of Haro. I had received a recommendation for a tapas bar in Haro but that, sadly, proved to be closed on Tuesday. Fortunately there was another welcoming looking establishment, Beethoven I, in the same street. (Yes, there is a Beethoven II opposite.) We grabbed a table and I ordered three copas of Rioja to accompany a selection of three tapas: caracoles [snails], garlicky prawns and mushrooms, all in various sauces. These, of course, came with the usual bread and needed second glasses of Rioja to wash them down. At least here, we were experiencing some real Spanish food. Our waitress suggested a plate of cheese to round things off. Good idea.

As usual in Spain, evening restaurant times were relatively late, establishments not opening until 20:30. After eating, we thought that would make us a bit late walking back from town in the dark so decided to buy food to prepare chez Frodo. We called in to a Mercadona supermarket and picked up supplies for yet another Paella since I thought I could manage that for three given our slightly restricted cooking facilities.

Our friend’s glamping pod would not be available until 16:00 so we still had time to call into a bodega. This was another recommendation but happily this one, the bodega of La Rioja Alta, was open. “If we liked Rioja”, I had been recommended to lash out on glasses of Gran Reserva 904. Fortunately, we also had money left so the €15 a glass wasn’t quite as painful as it otherwise might have been. We sat in a beautiful environment of the bodega’s wine bar sipping the 9-year old nectar. Wonderful but, perhaps, not something we should let ourselves get hooked on, which would have been terribly easy.

I’m afraid I have no idea how the Spanish pronounce this place but here we are. We spent a reasonably comfortable and quiet night off-grid on an aire de autocaravanas at Belchite. We had actually been off-grid once before on our summer trip this year when we stopped at a very pleasant brewery in Belgium. On that occasion, though, we didn’t stress the capabilities, just making morning tea. Here, our night was quiet – quiet, that is, except for the bin men who came to collect the basuras shortly after 02:00. Such is Spain.

From the Spanish civil war and the scourge of Franco, Belchite is now an historic collection of bombed building remains and rubble, which is retained as a memorial to the war. I have likened it to the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane, wiped out by an SS attack on 10th June 1944. There are differences, though. Whereas Oradour-sur-Glane is meticulously maintained by teams of workers as a memorial to the martyrs who were murdered in the village by the Nazis, Belchite just seems to be left as it was after the bombing.

You can book a 90-minute guided tour inside the perimeter fence of the Belchite ruins but, for those wishing to be in control of their time more, it is possible just to wander around some of the fence and stare at the remains. We didn’t think we could cope with a 90-minute guided tour, most likely just in Spanish, so we chose the walk around the perimeter option.

I’m not sure why but Belchite had nothing like the same emotional impact on me that Oradour-sur-Glane did. Perhaps it’s because of the impersonal nature of air attacks versus the very deliberate cold-blooded murder of civilians being rounded up and executed. It could also be that I relate more to WWII because my parents were involved, than I do to a more distant Spanish civil war. At Oradour my eyes were almost constantly welling up. Here I didn’t have the same reaction but it must be said that I was outside the fence and inside there may have been similar heart-wrenching images hidden from view. When all said and done, many civilians still died.

There appeared to be two separate churches at Belchite which seemed to me to provide the most striking images, surrounded, as they are, by walls and rubble of peoples’ former homes. Of course, all war is rough but it is said that civil war is usually the worst.

Both the historic episodes described above targeted civilians in a way that my generation may find hard to imagine, being fortunate enough not to have lived through anything similar. We have more recently been getting an unpleasant flavour of such insanity with the situations in the Ukraine, Gaza and the Lebanon – and we think of ourselves as civilized?

With Belchite ticked off our list, our onward journey took us beyond Zaragoza to Haro at the heart of Rioja. Here we would wait out our final three nights prior to boarding our ferry home from Bilbao.

After nine nights, we have managed to leave Alclalí. This was not quite as easy as you might at first think. Finding someone available to take payment was the trickiest thing. I asked on Friday if I could pay mañana but all farming hands were busy on Friday and on Saturday nobody turned up. Finally this morning [Sunday], in an act of desperation, I went and knocked on a window waggling my wallet and managed to throw €190 at Señor Octavio senior. Success, we could leave with a clean conscience.

The question was where to leave to? We are booked in to Camping de Haro from Monday within striking distance of Bilbao and our return ferry to the crappy British climate. That’s a big step of almost 650kms, so we wanted a midway stopping point.

On our many journeys between Bilbao and Jalon, in the halcyon days of owning Casa Libélule, at about half way, we passed signs to a place of some notoriety, called Belchite. In beginning to think about writing this entry, I was going to say that Belchite was Franco’s answer to the SS atrocities in France at Oradour-sur-Glane.

Oradour-sur-Glane is a must on the French tourist route. Four days after D-Day [10th June 1944], a Waffen-SS Panzer Division stormed into Oradour-sur-Glane and murdered 643 inhabitants, including 247 children, Six of the village inhabitants survived.

Most famously, the local doctor’s car stands rusting on its axles in the street where it was parked when the Nazis entered the village. Numerous other cars stand rusting elsewhere in the village.. Most poignant, is the church, where a twisted, rusting pushchair remains, the women and girls having been imprisoned in there while the church, surrounded by machine gunners to cut down any escapees, was set on fire. I defy anybody with any emotion at all not to develop floods of tears. Francine was so overwhelmed that she was unable to use her camera, when we visited. It is really quite unbelievable.

In Spain, Belchite was wiped out by being bombed into oblivion by Franco’s forces, apparently a part of the battle for Zaragosa. Checking my history (which is very sketchy) I realized that the Spanish civil war was going on in 1937, seven years before the SS stormed into Oradour-sur-Glane. I seem to remember that some of the Luftwaffe pilots used the Spanish civil war as something of a training exercise for WWII. Thus, Belchite was more of a fore-runner to Oradour-sur-Glane.

Having driven past Belchite several times over the years, we thought we’d finally call in and see it.

Our route to Belchite took us through about 150kms off any motorway. As soon as we dived off onto the (excellent) side road, we were in the familiar ol’ Spanish quarry. After passing a few mining towns which looked as though they’d seen better days – mind you, a lot of internal Spain looks that way – we entered the Campo de Belchite, where the “quarry” seemed to transform into more of a lunar landscape.

Staying at Belchite would continue our Spanish camping education. Belchite has an aire for motor homes which is conveniently close to the ruins. The catch for us is that, being a true Spanish aire, it was off-grid, meaning no facilities. We’d be cut loose from our familiar umbilical chords. Frodo is quite well suited to such a brief stay, we’ve just never done it before. Frodo has two leisure batteries, a 100-litre fresh water tank, which was full and an 80-litre grey water tank, which was empty. The fridge runs on gas (or should) and the water heater also runs on gas (ditto) so we could use the on-board shower without discharging (see below). The theory was fine, it just seemed a bit of a leap of faith ‘cos we hadn’t done it before.

The Spanish have rules about camping, or rather not camping, on free aires – this is best summarized as “you can park but you cannot be seen to be camping”. Francine has a neat graphic explaining. For someone such as myself who is anal about getting the van level, the worst part of this is that I’m not allowed to use any levelling devices on the aire. Oddly, you can chock the wheels but not drive up a ramp; mind you, if the ground sloped such that you needed to chock the wheels, I’m not sure how you’d get any sleep. Anyway, you take what the ground throws at you.

Fortunately we found a pitch – I think there were 10 – that was not too far off level in both directions. Once we got Frodo settled and through the heart-in-mouth waits getting the gas systems fired up – it takes a while ‘cos the gas lines empty when not in use – we spent a very quiet and comfortable night.

In our earlier years at Jalón there was no supermarket. Instead, there were some local butchers, greengrocers and a breadshop. For a supermarket, we had to go to Benissa with its Mercadona and Consum.

Then a Masymas supermarket opened up changing the face of food shopping in Jalón . Whilst it may have been more convenient, it was not necessarily all good news. Whether it was as a direct result or not, I don’t know, but the old, very traditional pork butcher disappeared. There are still butchers and grocers, though.

Now Jalón has a bright new second supermarket called MyMercat which, of course, gets referred to affectionately as My Meercat. Some friends here said it was like a Spanish equivalent to Waitrose – high praise indeed. When Francine told me about it and before seeing the text, I imagined “MiMercat”, the “Mi” seemingly more Spanish than an anglicized “My”. The “My” made me wonder about the provenance but it does, indeed, seem to be solidly Spanish, there being not one but two branches in Calpe down on the coast and declaring itself to be associated with the Sol y Mar Group. We have been in and it’s a very pleasant shop.

Along what our friends used to call the golden mile, that is the drag alongside the river, there is a new, very fancy looking restaurant called Can Caus. This is a complete new building on what was, until relatively recently, waste ground. It is a very neat, new, purpose built construction with very neatly arranged tables and chairs, all laid out with wine glasses. On Saturday, which is rastro [flea market] day and a day to be avoided in Jalon, in our view, because it’s heaving, the tables were well utilized and the place was clearly doing good business. On every other lunchtime that we’ve seen it, it looked pretty much empty. By local standards, it is an expensive menu which gets even more expensive when you note that all the accompaniments are charged as extras. Frankly, I can’t see its business model doing well for very long in the valley. There is a sister business 2kms away in Alcalalí called Ses Feixes. The word is that the owners are used to Ibiza and are trying to apply Ibiza prices in Jalón.

Happily, some things remain refreshingly familiar, though. The Aleluya bar is still there and doing a good trade. It still sells an excellent array of tapas including the most delicious pulpo a la brasa [grilled octopus] and calamares, which are freshly prepared in-house and most definitely not any frozen supermarket offering. You cannot buy better anywhere. This is our regular lunch spot.

After our brush with a mega-campsite, we have moved back to our more normal habitat. We are at Alcalalí, a village just 2 kms from Jalón beneath our former house, Casa Libélule, which we can see up the hillside behind us..

Francine found a relatively new camping venture at the Heredad de Elias Ferrer, which translates as the Country Estate of Elias Ferrer. The property is a former bull and horse farm concerned with the controversial Spanish pastime of bull fighting. Since it is small site, in terms of number of pitches, I managed to make a reservation via email and we were expected. When we arrived in the narrow lane with 90° bends, Francine disembarked to see where to go. She was greeted warmly with hugs from the lady of the property, Susana, who pointed our way.

Elias Ferrer was the original proprietor but this is now run by Octavio and Susana Ferrer, along with a younger (teenage) Octavio. It is no longer associated with bull fighting but has been turned into a 15-pitch campsite. It is a delightfully rural setting and much more “us”. There were about 7 units here when we arrived. We are camped beneath the very mountains we used to gaze at from our former balcony. Whilst there are no longer bulls on site, there are still horses, though we haven’t seen them put to any use, yet.

Octavio senior, or should that be Señor Octavio senior, perhaps because of having been raised on this property, had once been involved in the bull fighting scene; he used to be a toreador. I get a bit confused about the various –dors involved in bull fighting but Octavio used to be on horseback. His old horsebox is parked next to our pitch, which is the last in the line. Since he has been retired from that game for a long time, we will forgive him.

Without doubt, the most intriguing feature of this property is that it comes complete with its very own bullring. No kidding, it has its own bullring standing as a monument to its past. The bullring, apparently, is where Octavio used to train as a toreador. I know such things are contentious but this is just a fabulous slice of history. Let’s be honest, we have our own chequered history with packs of hounds tearing foxes limb from limb, though bull fighting is still prevalent.

Octavio came and said hello in the evening. With his limited English and our limited Spanish, we had an entertaining conversation. He asked where in the UK we were from. We said in the middle of the country. “Birmingham?” “Ah, no, Milton Keynes”, we replied. “Ah ha, John Lewis”, he said with a beaming smile. It seems that one of his more recent ventures was using his truck to make deliveries to the UK, with Susana sharing the driving. His delivery destinations included JL in MK, also places at Birmingham (no idea if the Bullring was involved but that would be poetic), Manchester and Leeds. He thought the English were helpful and polite if his truck had a problem – not so the French or Belgians, he said.

Young Octavio has decent English and helped our chat along from the side lines, chuckling as Octavio snr. mimed his sylph-like youth as a toreador. They seem like a perfectly delightful family.

It’s a good job we’d made Octavio jnr’s acquaintance since we needed his help in the evening – I popped the 6amp electrics which needed resetting.