Burgos is about 890m/2900ft above sea level. Overnight was cold. We were OK in bed but getting out of bed in the morning was a bit of a thermal shock. Francine got up to make tea and thinking, “bugger this, I’m cold”, flipped on the heating. Like some of the older French campsites (happily fewer as time progresses) this Spanish campsite supply is just 6 amps. Unfortunately, the electric kettle was also on; it’s low power but draws about 3 amps. The addition of the heating flipped the circuit breaker. Frodo was instantly dead.
Fortunately, there was one connection remaining on our supply post – no way for customers to reset it – which I managed to plug into. However, blow that and we would be stuffed.
So, here’s what I consider to be a design weakness in our modern, touch control van. There are three different power settings, both on the heating and on the hot water: one blob, two blobs or three blobs. As near as I can figure, a blob is equivalent to about 750W or 3amps. In theory this gives you some adjustment according to your power supply limit. The weakness is that the setting is maintained from the last time it was used. When Francine swithed it on, the heating started using the old two blobs setting (probably from the Lake District at Christmas) instantly flipping the trip switch. Given the kettle, even one blob may have tripped it but it still feels a bit weak. You really need to be able to set the power level before you turn it on but setting the power requires it to BE on. Pop! What you CAN do is turn down the thermostat adjusting the temperature at which the heating is activated to stop it firing up when you power it on. You need your wits about you. To borrow a quote from Apollo 13, “it’s all in the sequencing”. Tricky stuff.
I reported the tripped contact breaker to reception, with humble apologies, as we set off once again to enjoy the delights of Burgos.
Along with its grown-together tree canopies, there is another endearing feature in Burgos; it has many lifelike statues in various realistic poses. By the café where we enjoyed our cortado two days earlier, is a young lady staring over a balustrade at one of the green spaces. We repeated our cortado experience while snapping her picture.
After juice, croissant and coffee, we wandered through town to get to the castillo where there is a mirador looking out over the roofs of Burgos. On the way we passed another of the interesting statues, this one of a man leaning against a column, reading a newspaper – another column, I suppose.
Naturally, getting to a mirador looking out over Burgos required gaining height. We trudged up a few inclined streets and then up several flights of stone steps before finally arriving at the vantage point. Any interest is the cathedral which, sadly, has the ubiquitous scaffolding covering one tower on the right hand side. Add to this the modern, grey slab of a monstrosity overlapping the left hand side and frankly the climb isn’t worth it.
We worked our way back down which was considerably less hard on the lungs; remember that the climb up is at 900m. Making our way to tapas central, we returned to the same bar we had called into on our first lunch visit. Since we had no need to drag around all 10 tapas bars, we were a little earlier and it was quiet; at 12:30 we were the first customers. We changed our order a little but sat at the same table. It may have been the music, which today was a Spanish selection, but it didn’t feel quite as interesting. Still enjoyable, though.
Once again, we walked off lunch on the 3-mile return to the campsite where, of course, another beer was necessary for refreshment before returning to Frodo.
The campsite is getting quite busy for the weekend. Naturally, nothing had been done about the popped circuit breaker.
Recent Comments