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.
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