My dear old, very skilful dad, a joiner by trade, imprinted on me a couple of phrases which I have always thought very notable:

1. The man who never made a mistake never made anything;
2. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.

I’m a strong believer in both and normally firmly follow the second. However …

Today we repeated our 7kms cycle trip into Salamanca. Since we already knew the way there were fewer wrong turnings. We set out after some domestic chores so were a little later and the bike park we had used was full but we found another. As it happened, our new bike park was just beneath the Museo Art Nouveau Art Deco Casa Lis. Quite a mouthful. Francine wanted to go in so that was our first port of call. Sadly, photos are not permitted inside so this is a photo of a poster showing the magnificent ceiling.

Whereas yesterday had been quite civilized, today was quite the opposite; large tour groups were wandering about and nearly every street had a road drill rattling away on it, which must have ruined some of the trade for the many restaurants with street tables. “Nice quiet lunch, dear?” I think not. Almost inevitably we gravitated back to the bar we had visited yesterday and enjoyed it once again, mercifully without the clatter of road drills.

And [lose 100 points] so to the interesting stuff but you’ll have to stick with me.

“My tyres seem a little soft”, proclaimed Francine, “though they do feel quite comfortable”. Hmmm. Once we had returned to Frodo, like an idiot I thought I might try to do something about it.

Here’s the irritating complication. The vast majority of bicycles like ours have Schrader valves on their tyres; these are the valves used on car tyres which could, if necessary, be inflated at a garage. Not Francine’s bike. Oh no! Francine’s bike, a Raleigh, has been fitted with Presta valves, racing bicycle type high-pressure jobs which cannot be inflated at a garage. Darwin knows why Raleigh made that decision on a leisure bicycle since the tyres have absolutely no need to run at high pressures (we’re talking 100psi or so).

Before I started meddling, however, Francine had spotted a delightful Irish couple with proper road bikes AND the all important large, manual high pressure pump. Mr. Irish sauntered along and added some pressure to Francine’s tyres. Happy camper, profuse thanks, tyres no longer “a bit soft”.

Presta valves cannot be inflated by my Michelin battery operated pump, lurking in Frodo’s “garage”. At least, not without an adapter, they can’t. I have an adapter but it is sadly back chez nous on my foot pump. How useful is that? Duh!

What I do have is a small emergency roadside fix pump which is a bugger to use but which fits both valve types. Nonetheless, Francine’s tyred now satisfactorily inflated, I thought I’d try it but on my bike, since, if it failed, I could resort to the Michelin battery job which does fit my bike’s tyre valves.

With me so far?

I tried to attach the small pump to my bike’s front wheel. No luck – air escaped. I tried again. More air escaped. How is this effing thing supposed to attach? Eventually my tyre was doing pancake impressions, completely flat.

I grabbed the Michelin electric pump; attachment no problem. I started the pump and the pressure began to climb. We’re looking for something like 50psi. While I was looking, at about 28psi there was an explosion like a rifle shot, waking up all grandads on their afternoon siesta, as the inner tube exploded and blew a section of my tyre off the wheel rim. The split in the inner tube was a good 7-8cms and ragged; this is not something a puncture repair kit could be used for.

Assuming that I had tyre levers and a repair kit, that is. I couldn’t find them, until Francine remembered an extra pocket in my pannier rucksack which I’d inconveniently forgotten. Senile, or what? OK tools located but repair still impossible. I needed a new inner tube.

A search revealed a bike shop about 5kms away. Francine gamely hopped on her steed, now complete with correctly inflated tyres, armed with my blown-up old inner tube in search of a replacement. I drank a beer. Hell, why not?

Francine returned about 30 minutes later with a new inner tube of, reportedly, the correct size. There’s a BUT; they only had one with an accursed Presta valve but we were assured it would work – the Schrader valve is thicker so the hole in the rim is a little larger. This wouldn’t work the other was around. Francine also returned with the required adapter to go from a Schrader pump to a Presta valve. That, at least, was a result, as they say.

I removed my front wheel and started fitting the tube. The tyre seemed a bit loose but all had been well originally so it must fit correctly somehow. I began inflating it. This should have been easy. It wasn’t, of course. At a mere 10psi or so, nowhere near running pressure, the tube was pushing the tyre bead off the tyre rim. I stopped, deflated and re-seated things to try again – same result, different section of unseated tyre bead. Further repeated attempts failed, I just could not make it work and began to suspect that the tube might be too fat. I’ve fixed many punctures and never had such a problem. I was bemused.

In desperation I tried riding on the low pressure before the bead parted company with the rim. I wondered if the pressure on the tyre produced by riding might seat the bead better. I added a little mor pressure and repeated my trip. I did the same thing again. Heck, this may be working, I was approaching operating pressure and was prepared to leave it at that.

Enter stage left: Mr Irish with his trusty pump.

He insisted on blowing my tyre up properly. Miracle of miracles, it worked. My trick of riding on the tyre appeared to have had the desired effect.

I now have a bike with a Schrader valve on the back wheel and a Presta valve on the front wheel but at least I have two inflated wheels.

All this had made afternoon disappear down a black hole. It was now gone 18:30 and I not only needed a shower but also had to make dinner. Dinner was to be an Arroz Negro with Calamares [Black Rice with Squid]. This is really a Squid Paella, the rice being blackened with Squid Ink. I managed to clean up enough to get it underway, then leave it simmering while I rushed off for a douche.

OK, black food may not be the most appealing visually but sod that, it tastes great.

What a day!

Salamanca sits at about 780m above sea level, some 200m lower than Burgos. Our overnight temperature dropped to about 10°C so, early in the morning our heating kicked in. This place more sensibly has a 10amp supply, though, so no dramas, happily.

There’s a 7km cycle track from our campsite to the Roman viaduct, the puente Romano, constructed in the 1st century AD. Once the morning had warmed sufficiently to contemplate a bike ride, off we set.

The track was quite nicely done in places. Eventually we arrived at the bridge and found a bike park, to which we locked our steeds. Received wisdom is that you should walk across the bridge, with no backward glances, to the far side. I presume you are now supposed to turn around and go, “ooh, ahh”. We did. Well, on a Spanish level, this is probably, “ooh, ahh”. It certainly beats Lerma. Here’s a couple of shots, one showing the arches and one showing the roadway with the cathedral looking a little larger. You pick.

Having played tourist as instructed, we walked back across the ancient bridge. Salamanca turned out to be pleasantly compact, for a main town/city. We walked up and around the cathedral to follow the main shopping street up to Plaza Mayor. The square was surrounded with thousands of chairs set out ready for the lunch crowd, who would be paying a premium for the pleasure of sitting in this admittedly magnificent square.

Next port of call was the covered mercado. This was a disappointment. It was moderately small and half the trading units seemed to be closed. Given our familiarity with the majestic and enormous covered mercado in Valencia, I suppose it was always bound to be.

All of the eateries that we looked at seemed to be concentrating on main meals rather than a light tapas-type bite to eat. We did a swift search and found a couple of more suitable options, the first of which was closed. Number two, however, looked reasonable, away form Plaza Mayor avoiding the mark-up, and we made our way there. It looked fine, we sat down and picked our way through a salad washed down with a couple of glasses of vino tinto.

We needed another food shop so made a rather tortuous way to a Mercadona which was (sort of) on the way back to our campsite. We snagged a couple of days worth, together with the required accompanying alcohol, and stashed our booty in our bikes’ panniers.

The trip back to the campsite was into a stiff headwind – it seems to be blowing east to west – so we were glad of the electric assistance.

We’ve finished our five nights at Camping Fuentes Blancas in Burgos and it’s time to move on. We opted for five nights just to be able to relax after the journey to Spain but, in truth, four would probably have been sufficient.

Slightly unusually for early-ish morning, the motor vehicle service point was free so I availed myself of its facilities. One of the problems with the modern prevalence of motor homes can be the single threading of multiple “customers” through a single service point. Frodo, in particular, can take some time to dump the waste water, the outlet being a little restricted.

Francine had spotted a potentially interesting town, Lerma, on one possible route to Salamanca, our next main stop. Our Burgos map refers to Lerma as “uno de los pueblos más bonitos de España”. Since we’re here and may well not be again, we thought we should have a squint. Sally Satnav was set accordingly.

‘T was only about 30 minutes distant. We parked in a hotel car park which was apparently used by motor homes, had a coffee to assuage any guilt (no little treats with this one) then tramped up to Lerma. I think it’s fair to say that we were both underwhelmed. If this is one of the más bonitos de España then I’m high-tailing it back to la belle France. This is the main square.

We left a slightly disappointing Lerma and tacked cross-country to the autovia down to Salamanca. A swift word on Spanish motorways: autovias are free whereas autopistas are toll roads. After an interesting cross-country route, we cruised along a reasonably boring autovia and eventually arrived at Camping Don Quijote which Francine had booked ahead. They were clearly very busy so booking was a good move. We checked in and were directed to a pitch.

A Dutch camper van (this is a bloody ACSI site) was in the process of setting up in the pitch we’d been directed to. Francine had a quick discussion with the Dutch and returned to the bureau. Crossed wires! We were redirected to an alternative pitch which required very careful manoeuvring to get into, the pitch being small and guarded by tree trunks at both corners with the approach lane being narrow and made more narrow by impeding electric boxes. I shuffled Frodo in mercifully unharmed.

These have to be the smallest camping pitches I’ve ever been on. It was not unexpected – the blurb says they are 70m² but the reality is still a bit of a shock. Frodo is 6.8m long but there’s a 2-bicycle bike rack on the back which I reckon makes his overall length about 7.5m. I reversed him so that his bike rack was just touching the rear hedge (the pitches are, at least, hedged) and his nose just reached to the front of the pitch. I paced it out and the width is about the same; we’re talking 8m x 8m max. – 64m² on a good day. 70m² seems a little optimistic. Nonetheless, the sun is out and we’re here.

Francine had again chosen a campsite beside a river, there having been one at Burgos. Though we had seen a few dragonflies zooming about at Burgos, the river looked devoid of dragonfly life, as did a wetland that we tried to investigate. Once settled and refreshed in the time-honoured fashion, we went to check out this river, the Tormes. Same story: warm, bags of sun, reeds but no dragonflies. It is a big river, mind.

I’ll stop lugging my camera about.

Evening was much more interesting. We’d bought a pack of rabbit, ready cut up, from Mercadona in Burgos. Now that we had weather conducive to cooking al fresco, we got the induction hob set up under Frodo’s sun canopy and cooked Conejo Paella con Alcachofas, to the envy of some of our Dutch neighbours.

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.

Just by the by, I’ll muse briefly about the Spanish time zone. Spain being on the same time zone as Germany is bonkers, as far west as it is. Being on summertime anyway, the UK is already an hour ahead of the sun putting central European time two hours ahead of the sun. Spain’s positioning makes matters worse. When it’s 09:00 it still feels like 07:00, both from a point of view of sun height and of temperature. Our height at Burgos [900m] makes the overnight decidedly cool – we’ve been down to about 5°C – until the sun, if it chooses to shine, warms matters up.

This morning we were bound for the local supermercado, Mercadona on our e-bikes. It’s an easy 2kms distant with bike tracks all the way. Unlike some of our stupid planners who mix cyclists in with pedestrians, the Spanish appear to try to keep them separate; very sensible.

Francine had found and bought a very cleverly designed set of rear panniers from Decathlon. The two sides of the panniers are asymmetric and, when removed from the bike, zip together to form a handy-dandy rucksack. So, we got a set for my bike, too. It gives us a combined capacity to cope with a couple of days worth of food shopping with ease, even including vino.

We set off mid-morning. I’d put my long-sleeved shirt on over a T-shirt but I must say, zipping through the chill morning air, still attempting to catch up with the sun, I was not really warm enough. Man-up, Franco!

In the Mercadona car park we found a few bike stands, three to be precise, and locked our bikes to them. In fact, Francine locked our bikes to them ‘cos I had cleverly left my bike lock key in Frodo. I really must sort my key rings out.

The temperature felt considerably better when we exited the shop an hour later with our small trolley and loaded up the panniers. I’ve always tended to regard a bicycle as a leisure device in the past I’d never have dreamt of putting panniers on one – but now I’m beginning to think of it as a work horse.

In the afternoon Francine had a hankering to see a nearby monastery, the Cartuja de Miraflores. Cartuja is Spanish for a Charterhouse, apparently, a Carthusian monastery [it says here]. I wandered along to keep her company. Sitting outside waiting for opening time I got bored and wandered back, stopping keeping her company. I mean, it’s just a pile of old stones, and religious old stones, at that. Here they are, before opening time. Francine was more patient and went in to grab a decent shot of the altar and pleasantly ornate ceiling.

This is not our first visit to Burgos. We called in here before on one of our earlier return trips from Casa Libélula in Jalón. That was just a stop of a couple of hours; now we are here for a few days.

The campsite is a couple of miles outside of the centre of the town. It’s a pretty straight walk along the side of a river so, after getting straight from our overnight rest, off we set. I’d got my camera with me but the river proved less than interesting to any local odonata so I was essentially carrying a few kilos of boat anchor in my rucksack.

As we approached the town proper an appealing café presented itself. Being late morning, we couldn’t resist trying it out. I popped in to order “dos cortados, por favor”. I was a little taken aback when the coffees (a cortado is effectively an espresso – solo in Spanish – “cut” [cortado means cut] with an equal measure of hot milk.) were delivered with a shot of orange juice and a small croissant. All this for €1.50 each.

On our first visit, one of the most striking features of Burgos that we noticed was the lengthy avenue of shade trees on the promenade beside the river. The main town of Burgos lies on the north side of the river Arlanzón, with a good sized open green space to the south of the river. The striking and unusual thing about the shade trees is that the branches of neighbouring trees have been grafted together, somehow, so the entire “arboretum” is an interconnected whole. We were keen to see it again. Following our coffee, we found it.

‘T was approaching lunchtime and we had our hearts set on some tapas. The tourist map carefully plots “the 10 best tapas bars” in Burgos. The cynical amongst you might suspect that these are actually the 10 bars prepared to pay for their establishment being promoted to the tourists. Nonetheless, we plodded around all 10 the offerings. Actually, we plodded around twice and became thoroughly confused with menus getting mixed up and shuffled in our addled brains.

In the end we just opted for one that looked appealing. We sat on a side table and shared three tapas, only one of which I could identify (morcilla on a crouton), which we washed down with three glasses of red wine each. So, six glasses of red wine and three tapas – €20. I can hardly buy one lunch in the UK for that.

Apart from El Cid, Burgos is renowned for its morcilla, the Spanish equivalent of black pudding. What sets morcilla de Burgos apart is that it contains rice. On our first visit years ago, we chickened out of the bewildering variety and didn’t buy any. This time I was determined to correct that oversight and this is the tiny little hole in the wall establishment that we picked for our purchase: Il Primi. When I’ve cooked it with some habas [broad beans], I‘ll let you know what it was like.

We walked the three miles back to the campsite to let our tapas settle.

Salamanca got us into Bilbao’s harbour at the appointed time of 08:00. Motor homes are loaded down on deck 3 along with trucks so we were amongst the first to be called to disembark. Mercifully that got us out and into the immigration queues before the swarm of motorbikes that were also on the ferry.

I should explain. On our first trip to and from the Netherlands in 2022, in a solo car, we had disembarked behind a swarm of motorcycles.  Here’s the problem: bikes take forever to get through passport control. First they have to remove gloves and dig out their passport. Then they have to remove their helmet so the image likeness can be checked. Now you have to reverse the process, replace helmet, stow passport, replace gloves, before moving off to allow the next motorcycle rider to go through the same laborious process. 20 of them burns up quite a lot of time.

One of the motor homes disembarking with us looked like a bit of poser. Some motor homers are in the habit of towing a car on a trailer behind their £100K motor home; this so they can go shopping and play tourist once on site. This guy was towing a Porsche behind his motor home. Strewth!

We were impressed by the efficiency of the Spanish at passport control. The whole business now being longer courtesy of the stupidity known as Brexshit, all passports having to be stamped, one guy was wandering down the line of those waiting, collecting their passports, opening at the relevant page and standing them in front of the guy in the kiosk doing the checking. It worked, we were soon on the roads working our way out of Bilbao.

Prior to departure, we had checked for suitable supermarkets en route to fill our woefully empty fridge. We’d spotted two almost side by side at Miranda de Ebro. One of these was a Spanish Mercadona but that looked like a restricted car park. The other though, was a French Leclerc with more accessible looking parking. It would also give a Francophile pining for his beloved France a bit of a boost. We spent an hour stocking up on food and booze before continuing our journey to Burgos.

Our new Spanish electronic tag for the toll roads worked like a dream. The Spanish system seems considerably more sensitive than the French system, which we also have. There is almost always considerable delay involved in the French system before it registers, beeps, and raises the barrier, causing the occasional heart failure. The Spanish system sees you coming before you get there, beeps and raises the barrier in plenty of time.

Francine programmed the satnav with our chosen campsite from those logged in the satnav’s memory bank, Bliss, it worked and we arrived to get our first experience of checking in to a Spanish campsite.

I have serviceable camping French; not so camping Spanish so I was a little nervous. I needn’t have been ‘cos the folks on reception spoke great English … and German, and probably Dutch. Having booked, we paid the balance for 5 nights and were directed to a large area of electric pitches. We could just pick one; reception didn’t need to know which one. We chose one and lucked out with Frodo being level without the need to work at it and hooked up. Power was on.

We’re here. The pitches are not generous by French standards. 100m² is typical in France but here in Spain, 80m² is often touted as normal. Some of the campers seems to have difficulty figuring out where the edges of the pitches are – are the pitch numbers on the edges or in the middle –  so parking can get a bit free-form.

Two of our purchases at the Leclerc supermarket stop were bibs of wine, one white and one red.

Another was a 400g pack of prawns, which we thought would make an excellent lunch. Since our bib of white would not cool down in time, Francine bought a bottle of white from the handy-dandy campsite shop (and very good it is, too).

Later in the afternoon with lunch and white over, we thought we’d switch to red. We opened the bib of red which should’ve been fine at room temperature. Gag! This so-called wine would not have been any good at any temperature; it was a dirty brown, cloudy colour with awful amounts of sediment swimming in it. It was quite simply disgusting and entirely undrinkable. The only thing to do with this was to use it as drain cleaner, which is pretty much what it tasted like.

Francine went to our pleasant on site shop to buy a bottle of something decent.

This being a 34-hour crossing, we have two nights on board. Having left Portsmouth at 21:45 on Sunday, we are due to arrive in Bilbao at 08:00 on Tuesday. Relaxing a full day on board may be but it’s pretty boring. No wonder people on cruise ships eat and drink themselves stupid; if you don’t like Sunday Night at the London Palladium style entertainment, and I definitely don’t, there’s nothing else much to do. How people put up with a floating petri dish germ factory for two weeks, I just don’t know.

At check-in, we were given two room keys; they are card affairs with a barcode imprint. Just so we didn’t have to remain joined at the hip, Francine gave me one of the keys which I stuck in my cargo pocket, along with my phone.

If there’s a highlight to this lengthy ferry crossing, it’s threading your way through the chain of islands lying off the west coast of the Brest peninsular. The largest of these is Ouessant. Navigating these channels must be regarded as a highlight because the ship posted 11:00 as the time we’d be passing through. With little else to do and with the weather set fair, we went up on deck to watch.

In truth, you’re never close enough to any coast for it to make an worthwhile picture. Just for fun, though, I thought I’d snap the back of the ferry and its wake. As I pulled my phone out of my cargo pocket, the edge of my phone pulled my recently acquired room key out of my cargo pocket which was immediately snatched by the stiff breeze and promptly fluttered off, at alarming speed, into the westernmost English Channel as we left it. “Bother”, said Pooh, crossly. It’s a good job Francine is more careful with her key. We were joined at the hip again.

That was the highlight of our day on board Salamanca. The lowlight was probably Brittany Ferries attempt at a paella which we had for dinner. I should’ve gone for the pigs’ cheeks instead.

This year’s late summer/early autumn  trip is a complete experiment. We are somewhat used to Spain, having owned a house there in Jalón for four years, but we are completely unfamiliar with camping in Spain. The main reason we sold our house in Spain was to be less tied to one location and to be more able to see other areas of Spain. So, now we are taking Frodo to tour round a bit.

Part one of the journey is the 21:45 ferry from Portsmouth to Bilbao, with which we are very familiar. We used this route a lot travelling to our house. Now we’re doing it with a motor home.

We arrived at the port three hours ahead of the departure time and were a bit surprised to see the embarkation lines already well populated. Check-in must have opened earlier than we are used to. We checked-in and joined the lines ourselves before repairing to the bar for some light refreshment.

As we sat with a drink or two staring out over the lines, two humongous motor homes checked-in and joined the queues. One of them, a Hurricane, was enormous – something like a Winnebago. It must have been 9m or more and with a motorcycle mounted on the back. I wondered if it had been named after the bow wave of air created as it drove along. Since Spanish campsite pitches are typically smaller than French campsite pitches, I also wondered how the hell you managed to park the behemoth. Supermarket car park? I think not. I’d be embarrassed to drive the thing. The twin-axle Frankia that pulled up behind it was no smaller, just a little less American in design (I use the term “design” loosely).

Eventually the first lines began to move forward to pass security. When our turn came we bypassed the security checks and joined the second queue prior to actual boarding. This second wait was quite short and we were soon driving onto the ferry, the Salamanca, one of Brittany Ferries’ “greener” boats.

We found our cabin and settled in before taking an orientation wander around a deck or two. We were one of the earlier vehicles to board so the boat was not yet busy and we grabbed the opportunity for some dinner at the on-board restaurant.

The only downside was that the duty free area wasn’t open so I couldn’t get a voddie nightcap. Apparently though, they would deliver it to your cabin later since you are not supposed to drink it on board. Nothing really lost, then. Besides, it’s bound to be cheaper in Spain.