We’ve moved on from a decent campsite, rather like a CL, with no proper town to speak of to a  touristy town with no proper campsite – the Chaves Guest House. It is like an aire but with facilities. The facilities are quite basic but perfectly adequate in that the water is hot (even in the sinks for shaving, which is a bit of a novelty) and they are clean, just a bit rustic. I had mistakenly thought that we were heading for a bona fide campsite but no. However, I soon got used to it.

Getting used to it requires getting used to the “camping on top of each other” syndrome that is typical of aires. When we arrived the chap in charge was absent – it was lunchtime, after all – so we found ourselves a spare spot round the back where our door faced nobody else which is about as good as you can get in such situations. It wasn’t exactly salubrious but we had room for table and chairs.

With Chaves’s reputation, we had originally considered staying for three nights but given the camping environment decided that two would be sufficient. The whole site seems to operate largely on trust – if nobody is present, drop your money in somewhere – but later in the afternoon our man turned up and I managed to pay him €17.00 a night including electricity.

I found a slice of heaven. Heaven was nothing to do with the campsite or with Chaves but came in the form of a large Leclerc supermarket within walking distance through the neighbouring park. Here was real food. I snagged a round of Rustique Camembert cheese, a pot of Rilletes du Mans and found some seemingly decent beer in the form of Coruja IPA at 6.0% abv. [Coruja means owl, as you may have guessed from the artwork.] My hopes were realized; it tasted good, even if it was brewed by Super Bock.

On our full day at Chaves, we walked across a Roman bridge into the older part of town thinking we might find an eatery for lunch. Many of the streets in old town Chaves had very inventive, decorative shading strung across them. We wandered around quite a few in search of eateries that were open but this was Sunday and many were closed. I thought that was a curious decision. We finally found one that looked appealing and that was open but their first sitting was full and we’d have to wait until 14:30. We tried a second smaller place that was less appealing being much too twee; same story, full until later.

The street across from the Roman Bridge was being blasted with disco-style music of the Tina Turned ilk by a DJ set up in an entrance way. There was a bar nearby which would have been an interesting place for a drink but not with the inescapable music.

We gave up and began returning to Frodo when Francine spotted tables and chairs up a street in the more modern part of town. We crossed a newer bridge and discovered a place called Cavalo Cansado [Tired Horse] which, the waiter explained, had a tasting menu for sharing. This sounded perfect and we enjoyed a very relaxed lunch to the accompaniment of less intrusive music and a bottle of local white wine.

Back into Spain next.

Francine had found what sounded like an idiosyncratic campsite for just ten units at Perelhal. There was no reception, as such; we were to ring a number on arrival and the owner would turn up to let us in through the keypad-controlled gate.

Idiosyncratic was right. the site was run by a Portuguese who had lived a lot of his life in German-speaking Switzerland. We later learned that our host had been born in Angola, a former Portuguese colony. His parents had moved to Switzerland just before Angola’s independence. He said he disliked Switzerland for its money-grabbing, materialistic culture so had moved to his current home in Portugal. He has six children, three of each. Yikes!

The field was grassy but quite sloping. I couldn’t get anywhere near level on our first attempted pitch but moved to another, backing on to the surrounding woodland, with more success. It felt like a sort of CL [Certificated Location] but with the capacity for twice as many units [CL’s are limited to five]. In common with many CLs, here the grey water and black water went down a ground-level drain cover.

Being in a country location, I did have some insect entertainment in the grass around Frodo. We were particularly interested in a yellow and black beastie dipping its abdomen in the soil. It was very fast but more by luck than judgement, I managed to snag a reasonable shot as it lifted into the air again. It’s a so-called Tiger Cranefly (Nephrotoma scalaris).

There were also some small, blue butterflies flitting about the grass. It took me a while to track one down on pixels but I managed to identify it as Lang’s Short-tailed Blue (Leptotes pirithous). We’ve seen them before but it’s always a welcome sight.

Enjoying the afternoon in our country location I was feeling very relaxed and began preparing dinner. It was all going swimmingly until, at 19:30, some buggers turned up in a Portuguese-registered motorhome and shoe-horned themselves in next door to us. Being a foreign-sided van, our doors were facing each other not that many feet apart. Rather than sit outside eating as originally planned, potentially under the watchful gaze of our new neighbours, we retired inside to eat. Grump!

We thought we’d investigate the local village of Perelhal but frankly, it was quite bland. It had a supermarket which we used to supplement our supplies, and a café, where we sat outside with a coffee, but that was pretty much it. A German couple from our campsite, who were now moving along, also happened by the café and we compared notes with them; the man luckily had reasonable broken English. They hailed from an area very close to our hosts former home Small world.

On a later afternoon walk we went in search of a nearby river. En route we happened across a smaller vegetated stream which gave me my first opportunity on this trip to watch some dragonfly action. Keeled Skimmers (Orhtetrum coerulescens) were there buzzing about, accompanied by Small Red Damselflies (Ceriagrion tenellum). Not being present in my local patch, I was glad to see them but was particularly pleased to see one female which happened to be the black form melanogastrum.

We continued in search of the main river but somehow Google managed to lose us and we didn’t get there. The walk had not been a complete waste of time, though.

We found Caminha perhaps less than exciting, though the square was a pleasant enough place to sit and watch some of the world go by. One bar in particular appealed enough to merit two visits.

We are still on the Portuguese camino and there is an almost constant stream of pilgrims walking around the bay. Just outside the campsite entrance are water taxis which will ferry people across the Minho river estuary to Spain or into Caminha itself to avoid the 30-minute walk around the harbour. A longer 20km or so ride into Valença [I had to keep stopping myself calling it Valencia] is also available though I don’t know how the return might work. We walked into town and back for the leg stretch.

Woodland surrounds the campsite and a short walk through this leads to sandy beach. Francine investigates on the day we arrived and found an interesting offshore fort. We both went for a leg stretch afterwards to see it in morning light.

Portuguese shopping was a new experience for us. It is complicated by not knowing the Portuguese words [frango is chicken – where does that come from?] or the brands or the shop names. One shop did sound comfortingly familiar, Spar, but it proved almost a complete waste of space. Francine was looking for fresh milk, as she frequently is, and thought that the waste-of-space Spar did not have any, so we left.

Happily our erstwhile guide Andy, who had also stopped in Caminha in one of his favoured car parks, pointed us at another supermarket called, intriguingly, Pingo Doce [means “Sweet Drop”, apparently] which proved considerably more successful. Here Francine figured out that one carton, looking completely unlike milk since it featured Toy Story graphics, was, in fact, fresh milk. Maybe this was to go with the kids’ cereal? We’d maligned the poor old Spar just a little – it did have Toy Story milk (though little else). We just didn’t recognize it for what it was. We shopped in Pingo Doce twice.

I’m building up a few things that you do not come to Portugal to buy. Andy had warned us not to fill up with fuel here ‘cos it’s about 30¢ a litre more expensive than in Spain. I’m also having trouble with cheese and beer. Here are a couple of examples. The most prevalent beer [so probably not likely to be the best example], is Super Bock, there being absolutely nothing super about this bock, trust me. Here also is a cheese that looked as if it might be vaguely interesting being coated in some red pimienton-like stuff. I can best describe it as a large lump of Dairylea but just a little firmer, though just as plastic and tasteless.

Thinking we might eat out for lunch, we did, on our second visit into Caminha, seek out a seafood restaurant which Francine had seen advertised. The menu, however, looked both a little less than scintillating and quite expensive so we gave that a miss in favour of buying some prawns with bread and mayonnaise to eat chez Frodo. We’ve had tastier prawns, to be honest, but they were OK.

Having booked into our campsite at Caminha initially for three nights, since we were benefitting from brilliant weather and had a pleasant pitch, we extended our stay to four nights. Pleasant pitches in the Iberian peninsular are not to be surrendered lightly.

Following Andy’s escorted tour, we have ended up at Baiona, just above Portugal’s northern border. We have a further two weeks footloose and fancy-free.

One idea that Francine had was to head a bit further north into Galicia to a place called O Grove which has a reputation for seafood. However, it is currently hosting a seafood festival so we’re sure it will be rammed.

As an alternative, since we are so close to the Portuguese border, it seemed like a golden opportunity to set foot in a new country for the first time. Since Andy, who is very free with his knowledge, had recommended a campsite at Caminha, that’s where we headed. It seemed that Andy himself would also head that way but he’d be staying on free aires rather than on the campsite. We set sail at about 11:00, leaving the campsite at Baiona to shut down for the winter.

Taking the coast road (mostly) prior to crossing the border we drove beside an almost constant stream of pilgrims heading towards Santiago de Compostela on the Portuguese route.

Shortly afterwards, having been driving for a little over an hour, we paused in Vila Nova, where Andy had suggested another free motorhome area in which we might park for a short break. We joined many other motorhomes but there was plenty of free space. The facilities in mainland Europe are geared most impressively up to cater for motorhomes. Britain, by comparison, pales into insignificance.

Having parked, disembarking Frodo Francine stared at her phone quizzically.

“11:15?”, she muttered.

“Ah, yes, Portugal is on UK time; we’ve gone back an hour crossing the border”, I replied. Francine adjusted her analogue wristwatch accordingly.

We sat at a café in the Vila Nova square for a coffee and our first real Portuguese pastel de nata [posh custard tart – pretty much the national dish] before re-joining Frodo to continue on to Caminha.

Finding the campsite, we checked in where we were pleased to find that the lady on recepcão had perfect English. We checked in initially for three nights. With a completely detail-free site map, we managed to find a very suitable pitch on a corner such that we would not be staring at any other units. We got Frodo levelled and, with glorious sunshine, deployed his awning and front sun screen.

A little later Francine was again staring at her phone and scratching her head.

“18:00?”, she asked.

“No, 17:00”, I said staring at my phone.

Clearly, we were suffering from time zone inconsistencies. I can attempt to explain. Our campsite is on the south bank of the Minho river, which forms the northern Portuguese border. The hill just across the water on the north side is Spain. On our camping pitch we had both Apple time (Spanish, on the right) and Android time (Portuguese, on the left). If Francine wandered about 10m towards the campsite gate, her phone flipped into Portuguese time. Poor Francine was temporally disoriented.

Having switched time zones physically and occasionally logically, we did find ourselves thinking it was time for bed at 20:00 – Portuguese 20:00, that is. Nothing that a glass or three of wine together with a showing of Casablanca wouldn’t fix.

Since we were enjoying Baiona and the campsite, we wanted to stay on a little longer. It really was “a little” because sadly the site’s last day was Saturday as it was closing for the season. Nonetheless, we extended our stay from two nights to three.

This morning we bade a fond farewell to three of our travelling companions, who were beginning their return journeys home. Two of us, plus tour leader Andy himself, were staying on for the last day at Camping Bayona Playa.

Keen on finding another seafood lunch, we got the bikes out and this time cycled into the town for midday-ish. There was bad weather on the way in the form of hurricane Gabrielle and we timed our ride poorly getting a tad wet in the advanced guard of some of Gabrielle’s rain. Given the weather and the fact that it was a Saturday, I suspected that the interiors of the restaurants would be busy and did not want to be late.

The rain abated and we studied some of the other restaurant menus but in the end felt that a repeat visit to Ladrón del Mar, our choice yesterday, could not be bettered. This time our original wine choice was cool enough so we had a bottle of that to wash down yet more pulpo con tetilla [octopus with tetilla cheese] together with mejillones en escabeche for a change, which sounded interesting [lightly pickled mussels]. The waiter was his usual charming self. He soon did have to turn away people because the restaurant was full. We’d been right not to dally.

Baiona has a mixed history with connections both to Columbus and to Sir Francis Drake. In the harbour is a replica of the Pinta, supposedly the fastest of Columbus’s three ships comprising his 1492 expedition, which looks impossibly small for crossing the Atlantic. The Pinta arrived back at Baiona in 1493 bringing news of the discovery of the New World. [The native Americans, of course, had known of its existence for thousands of years and would come to regret the arrival of Columbus. And that was even before they knew about Trump.]

Drake raided Baiona’s castle in 1585 or, at least, attempted to but his raid was successfully repelled by the inhabitants. Take that, you privateer!

In a repeat of poor timing, our ride back to camp after lunch coincided with the arrival of some more of Gabrielle’s rain, though it was nothing compared to what would hit us later.

Gabrielle was forecast to affect a vast swathe of the Iberian peninsular. At one point Valencia, which has had more than its fair share of bad weather recently, was under a red warning for rain.

Before the force of Gabrielle made itself felt at Baiona, there was something of a sunset which produced a rather weird effect across our lagoon. Look at the reflections in this picture; many windows are reflecting the sun but there are no equivalent bright windows on the buildings above the shore line. I can only assume that the rays of the westering sun were hitting the glass of the buildings but not bouncing off directly towards our eyes, rather the rays were bouncing down to the water, thence to our eyes. It makes it look a bit fake but I assure you it’s not,

As the evening progressed a strong wind began blowing across the lagoon directly into the rear of Frodo. Along with it came lashing rain which increased in ferocity. Happily, since the wind was not hitting us side on, Frodo remained stable, though the bike cover did make a bit of noise flapping. One of our companions decided to move to a more sheltered pitch for some respite from the elements.

The wind and rain continued into the small hours of the morning but eventually abated. Tomorrow was forecast to be relatively pleasant.

Andy’s last stop of his escorted tour was Baiona, just above the northern border of Portugal, and it turned out to be the best of the lot, in our opinion. Saving the best for last, eh?

Camping Bayona Playa is an excellent campsite and, whether by design or fortune, we lucked out by getting pitches which overlooked a tidal lagoon favoured by several species of seabirds: gulls and waders. The pitches were not huge by our expectations but were, by Spanish standards, quite generous. I’d say they were about 8m x 8m so 64 m². As the tide fell, the birds began foraging on the exposed grasses and sandbanks. I could happily have sat and watched the activity all day. [I think this one is a Yellow-legged Gull.]

The campsite seems to be suffering from the inexorable creep of cabin fever, so how long it will remain in its current state for touring campers may be debateable. Some of the current camping pitches may be lost.

On our first full day we walked into the town of Baiona, guided by Andy. His walking tour began in the backstreets of the town where a religious procession was taking place, carrying effigies of saints. The procession was accompanied by my favourite of instruments [NOT!], bagpipes. These bagpipes, though, differed from the Scottish cousins in that they sported only one drone, whereas the Scottish version has three. I’m not sure if that makes the Spanish version only one third as irritating.

Escaping the bagpipes, our walking tour continued around a long circuit of the castle. Near to the beginning of the path, nestled in some uncomfortable looking rocks, I could not help but notice a sunbathing shapely lady with nary a stitch on. She was intent on smearing sun cream over the whole of her body. I’d have helped but time did not permit. [Smack – enough! Yes dear.]

Completing the castle circuit, refreshment was required at an accommodating bar to recharge the legs. Then it was time to go in search of a seafood lunch along a street that seemed to be restaurant alley. Knowing nothing about any of them, we popped into Ladr´n del Mar [Thief of the Sea], drawn by its menu which included pulpo con tetilla [octopus with tetilla cheese]. We added some grilled scallops, not for the first time. The waiter was very friendly and the food was terrific. We were going to opt for one of the more expensive albariños to wash it all down but the waiter pointed us to another, saying he’d only just received our choice and it wasn’t yet cool enough. Impressive.

Our tidal lagoon was entertaining at night, too, with lights on the opposite shore reflecting in the water at high tide.

Friday evening was our last official day of Andy’s escorted tour. By way of bidding fond farewell, Andy organized one of his group barbecues. We’d had only a few smackerels of seafood for lunch so had room for a burger with accompaniments. I was doing very well until someone started playing “Country Roads”. To add insult to injury it wasn’t even the John Denver original but an even worse cover version.

I retired to Frodo to watch the lights across the lagoon in peace.

We were en route to the last stop of Andy’s escorted tour and on the way we called in to Combarro, a picturesque coastal village with it’s tourist trap shops scattered along a couple of streets clinging to a hillside frontage.

Combarro provides an amazingly good, free área de autocaravanas, a motorhome park, in a superb location overlooking the harbour, made more attractive by the addition of a few palm trees. You can stay for 24hrs. The approach is a little tortuous round a sharp 90° turn around the corner of a large building [with a mirror to assist, which I failed to notice] thence through a car park. The motorhome area looked wonderful. We were curious to see some of the car folks unloading rakes and trolleys from the boots of their cars as we passed through. There was also a motorhome service point at one end of the car park.

Once parked up, the purpose of the rakes and trolleys became clear, there were huge amounts of very industrious cockle-pickers [my assumption] raking about in the sand of the harbour uncovered by low tide. There were well in excess of a hundred of them dividing their efforts over a couple of different sections of beach.

With the convoy gathered, we went to investigate the town itself, eventually threading our way through the gauntlet of tourist-tat shops. Liberally sprinkled among the tat were shops selling bottles of local wine, the default white grape in these parts being albariño. Our guides suggested the wine was quite reasonable and reasonably priced so we invested in a €14.50 3-bottle case. We’ll see.

Arriving at the main square, we gathered around some tables at one of the cafés only to discover that we had picked one with no coffee. Brilliant! I can only imagine that there was a problem with their coffee machine. It did, however, offer a few raciones including padrón peppers and pescaditos [small fish, sort of in between whitebait and sardines] which made a good lunch.

On our return to the motorhome park to continue our journey, one of our number noticed a pair of the industrious rakers rinsing cockles under a tap so my assumption about the harvest had been correct.

We resumed heading for Andy’s final stop of the tour, Baiona.

After Frodo’s scary adventure working his way through impossible cobbled streets in Mondoñedo, we eventually arrived at our campsite at Santiago de Compostela. This was a terraced campsite with each avenue of pitches being terraced above those below. The pitches were short – 9m max. – and very tight with little room between units. This is somewhere you come to sleep as a tourist, not somewhere you came for the joy of camping.

The following morning we all set off into Santiago de Compostela itself. We walked down our relative mountainside, passed my bit of sanity that was a Carrefour supermarket, and joined a footpath marked with brass scallop shells, one of the pilgrim caminos heading towards revered the cathedral of Santiago. Marked, that is, except for the various gaps in the paving slabs where various miscreant pilgrims had nicked the brass scallop shells. The scallop shell motive apparently stems from the early days predating a certificate when pilgrims went to Cape Finisterre to collect a scallop shell showing that they had completed the pilgrimage.

Today the pathway was filled with many pilgrims on their last leg, standing out from regular tourists because of their twin trekking poles. A local jogged past us bitching about the amount of the path we were taking up. On the paths in Santiago, the shells point towards the Santiago cathedral.

Leader Andy had organized a 2-hour guided walk around the sights of Santiago. We were wired for sound with earplugs, the better to hear our guide. We met her in the cathedral square. She was very good. Having talked us through a lot of the architecture of various faces of the cathedral, we headed off to see more of the town. To be frank, I found the architecture austere and dull but you know me with piles of old stones. OK, it isn’t my natural habitat but it was a couple of hours of entertainment.

The city tour following the cathedral led us down the Rua do Franco and Travesa do Franco, with which I had a natural affinity, especially as the rua was one of the main restaurant streets. Having nothing to do with me, the franco reference is to do with being the route to the cathedral from France. There are very many caminos to Santiago but these are the main ones. Once cut loose from our tour, we returned to Rua do Franco for some lunch concentrating on seafood.

Francine and a couple of travelling companions wanted to go into the cathedral. While they did, I happily remained outside guarding the small collection of rucksacks. Upon exit, Francine said that most of the cathedral interior was relatively plain but that the altar did possess lots of “bling”. This image shows the enormous incense burner to counteract unpleasant smells of the great unwashed, which weighs in, allegedly, at 100kgs. Don’t get hit on the head.

We walked back uphill via a handy-dandy bar for some refreshment. We managed to clock up 19000 steps today,  a mere spit compared to the steps required to follow one of the many pilgrim trails.

On our way to Santiago de Compostela, our group planned to make an interim stop at Mondoñedo. Everything was going very smoothly, including finding a fuel stop, until we arrived somewhere near a motorhome parking area on the outskirts of town. You will notice the use of the phrase “somewhere near”.

To expand on that, we have Frodo’s built in satnav which, as a satnav is pretty good; it’s designed for motorhome use and you can set vehicle size to avoid inappropriate roads. Added to this, its directions are clear. Where it falls hopelessly flat on its face is that the GPS receiver is buried beneath lots of other apparently confusing electronic gubbins and frequently loses you, having not a clue where you are.

For more reliable positioning we have more frequently resorted to the use of Google maps navigation. This, however, has its own shortcomings – you can’t set vehicle size, you are just a car. Another issue seems to be that on Apple Carplay you can’t change the map resolution in flight.

We were approaching our intermediate stop on Google expecting a left turn. In front of us was a motor vehicle service point sign pointing left. We took it. In about 20m was a T-junction. Up and to our right I could see a square with motor vans. There was a no-entry sign in front of them. Google was telling us to turn left. Thinking it would send us around a block to approach from the other side, I duly turned left.

“Turn right”, instructed Google; OK.

“Turn right”, said Google again. Ah, no entry.

I did a 3-point turn intent on going back down the road I had just come up.

“Bollocks”, said Pooh, profanely. There was a no-entry sign there, too. The road we had come up was a one-way street. I went down the only road open to me.

The roads were cobbled and seemed to be getting narrower. Google wittily asked me to turn left up a one-way street going in the opposite direction. Google suggested a few more illegal moves as I was shepherded inexorably down a maze of ever-narrower cobbled streets until we eventually were brought to a complete halt by a workmen’s truck parked beside scaffolding as they worked on a building front. [The picture is taken looking back up the road we were trying to come down.]

One of the chaps up on the scaffolding gesticulated at me to reverse. Yeah, right, you have to be kidding. Apart from being unable to make that manoeuvre there was not other way out that I could then take that I could remember. That’s why I’m where I am. I shrugged at him helplessly. The van was clearly there for the duration.

Shortly, a young man with his wits about him wandered past us and chatted up the truck driver. The driver first drove forward, then reversed up the street to the left unblocking our path and allowing me to approach the T-junction immediately in front. I praised him profusely through the windscreen. He must have thought these tourists are bloody mad. (He would’ve been quite right). Once again, I had but one way that I could go or, at least, might be able to go.

After a minor touch of the high-level no-entry sign mounted on the corner of the building up out of my sight – I was intently watching the steps directly in front of me – with both wing mirrors retracted, I managed to shuffle turn right around the corner, avoiding the steps in front of me, the truck to my left, the scaffolding to my rear and the building corner to my right.

This new street was slightly wider. It must have been wider ‘cos two cars were parked ahead of me and to the right with, perhaps, just enough space to their left . I edged Frodo left, breathed in and began inching past the cars parked in front of a shop. Unhelpfully, the shop had two potted plants mounted in holders on its frontage reducing the space available. Watching the cars on my right, I grazed one pot plant and dismounted it. Francine, who was outside watching doing all she could to assist, retrieved the poor plant. She muttered “losiento” [sorry] to a nonplussed  man in the shop doorway as she handed back the plant, happily undamaged. We were racking up a goodly collection of disbelieving looks from various locals. [Again, this shot is taken looking back up the way we came down.]

Shortly we approached another cobbled T-junction downhill, overlooking railings and the cathedral square below. Parked to the left of said T-junction was a Policia Locale car. Great! Now what? Mercifully, rather than being annoyed, the policeman proved very helpful, though he probably justifiably thought us utterly barking. In a rather pointless attempt to explain, I muttered “satnav”. He pointed us left around the junction (and his police car), then right around a 180° turn down into the cathedral square, across the front of the cathedral before exiting the square on a slightly wider road. We could then turn izquierda [left] onto something resembling a proper road, i.e wider and tarmac rather than cobbled.

We were finally out of the maze. If I hadn’t had to drive, I’d have been trembling with relief.

My phone rang. We were overdue and leader Andy wondered what was happening. What indeed? You’re never going to believe this. “We’ll be with you in a couple of minutes” (barring further disasters).

We arrived at the intended parking area, found the correct entry point and surveyed poor ol’ Frodo. The plant did no damage, mercifully, and the street sign made but a small, relatively superficial mark on the high off-side moulding.

Next time I’ll drop a U-turn, even if it means going back the wrong-way down a deserted one-way street. It’d be the lesser of two evils.

Now I was free to tremble.

I’ll keep this one fairly brief.

Our campsite, FozCamp, was very pleasant with a slope that required judicious use of levelling ramps. It was essentially on the coast though there was a road in between the site and the sea. The couple running the site were delightful.

We actually had grass, for once, which we couldn’t make use of it because what was not pleasant was the weather; we had two days with frequent rain and wind.

In one of the breaks in the rain we took the coastal footpath into Foz itself, a meandering walk of about 30 minutes watching breakers on the coastal rocks. Foz itself I would probably describe as utilitarian, the buildings being not particularly attractive.

There is a more direct return route to the campsite on foot, cutting out the twists and turns of the coastal path, which takes about 15 minutes.

Leader Andy recommended one restaurant which, sadly, was one of those closed on a Monday. Francine and I wandered back in on Monday to look at other options intent on finding some seafood. We eventually settled on Casa Damian and chose a Parillada de Pescada, a fish platter. When it arrived, the platter was huge – too huge, truth be told.

The platter was mainly composed of several large sections of large fish, though it did include some token seafood – clams, which I thought were excellent though Francine found them too rich with butter and garlic, and scallops. A lot of this was always going to go back.

The restaurant was very busy with Spanish; we seemed to be the only foreigners there. The menú del día was very popular but with three courses these are usually too much food for us at lunch (said the man with a massive platter of fish). The idea of tinned peaches for dessert didn’t grab, either.

Once we could move again, we tried to walk off our excess of food.