Off to Valladolid - 17th May

I know that I’m on catch up but we have been doing so much that I haven’t had the time or energy to write my blog.  I can’t believe that less than two weeks ago we were in La Manga, it seems like a lifetime ago.

Anyway we were on the move again.  Our plan had always been to leave Toledo and go up to Zaragoza, then Pamplona and then move into France to the Biarritz area.  But I’m sure that you have noticed by now that these plans are not cast in stone and can change quite quickly.

Toledo to  Zaragoza Valladolid

We had been keeping an eye on the weather and also there was no ACSI site in Zaragoza and as we had had 5 nights at 30 Euros a night we thought we’d change direction and stay on an aire for a few nights.  Valladolid seemed a decent distance from Toledo, the old capital of Spain so we thought it might be interesting and also saves us some miles. Our plan then changed  to Toledo, to Valladolid, San Sebastian and then onto Biarritz.

So off to Valladolid – some 180 miles – but first – apart from the necessary full and empty we had to find LPG.  Was this going to be third time lucky?

I had programmed the SatNag to go to Valladolid, via the LPG station in Toledo.  I had looked at the map and it seemed quite straight forward to get there, using main roads – fantastic.  But then just as we were pulling away, I must have touched the screen while putting it on the stand and I saw the fateful message “Reprogramming” come up – OMG – not again. However when the reprogramming had finished it showed the correct number of miles (ish) so I thought it had just reprogrammed the route again.  

With Mr. Technophobe in the navigators seat I didn’t think it was worth asking him to check it so I just hoped for the best.  We continued on our way.  However the SatNag had reprogrammed the route to Valladolid, but had now forgotten the waypoint of the LPG station. It was only when we realised that we were about to get onto the main road to Madrid that I decided to turn right at the roundabout instead of left and pulled into a sports centre to check.  We were now about 5 miles out of our way from the LPG station.  

As I’ve said before LPG is only found in the major cities and towns so you can’t just go to the next one on route as this can be over 100 miles away.

Of course the sports centre took us up a hill and with horrible adverse cambers I had to turn the van around and get back on track. 

Reprogrammed, it was back into the city and out on another direction. Actually of the past three LPG stations we had to find this turned out to be the easiest.  Was this to be a good omen?

Back on the road again towards Madrid.

As usual we decided to take the paeage as the quickest route towards Madrid.  Now in Spain you can’t even guarantee that the paeage will have the best road surface.  It would appear over here that if there is a bad surface that instead of fixing the bad bumps or holes all they do is put some signs up, pain the road lines yellow instead of white and put a speed restriction on.  When you are pulling the load that we have this can still be very bumpy, even at slower speeds and of course it sounds as though everything is falling out of the cupboards.  That’s one good thing about a motorhome rather than a caravan, you have no idea what’s going on in a caravan until you get to your destination.  At least we can adjust driving to suit.  We found at least 4 stretches of  “bumpy road”.   

Further on the road surface deteriorated again.  The dual carriageway into Madrid was a concrete surface just like the M42 and it was a real shake rattle and roll all the way to Madrid.  I have never been so envious of the people on the other side of the road before as when I looked over to the other side of the road they had a lovely smooth tarmac.  Obviously Spain want people to leave Madrid rather than arrive.

Luckily the SatNag took us around the best road to avoid Madrid.  We had no intention of trying to drive through Madrid and my attitude was that we had survived the Peripherique around France so this should not be a problem.  No worries we were around Madrid and on our way to Vallidolid without any issues.

By now it was lunchtime and  I had noticed that the next service area was 23km away, so we stopped on the first picnic site off the ringroad.  It wasn’t a very pleasant site but at least it was proper parking.  Had we known,  just about 5 miles further on there was a lovely picnic area with lovely views.  Never mind that’s just sod’s law and it happens all the time.

Being a short drive for us today of only 180 miles we arrived at the aire in Valladolid at around 3.30pm.  We had decided on an aire because we’d had some expensive camping nights and though we’d bring down our average campsite costs.  At only 3.10 Euros a night this was a real bargain, and even better it was free on Saturday afternoon and all day Sunday – which just happened to be exactly when we were going to be there.  As long as we got off by 9am on Monday it was gratuit. The aire itself was in a car park, next to the telephone exchange  about half a mile from the city and I also managed to hook up with some open wifi.  There were about  10 other vans here so we felt quite safe.

So not knackered from the journey we decided to have a quick look in the city.  

Valladolid

As I’ve already mentioned, this used to be the capital city of Spain until it was moved to Madrid and Christopher Columbus died there so we thought it might be worth a look.

A pleasant walk into town with the dog and then we returned to the van for the evening.  The only problem with aires is that you cannot put out your tables and chairs as this denotes camping rather than parking, so when it’s a bit hot you are rather restricted with outside space.

The following day we went back into Valladolid to have a better look around and were pleasantly surprised with how pleasant the city was.  I would recommend this as a good stopover place for travellers.

Again, like Toledo the buildings were incredibly clean even though some of them were very old.  It would appear that Valladolid, once the capital had moved to Madrid in 1606 the city was abandoned for some 300 years until the railway made it accessible again.  It’s almost as if it missed all the industrial times which would possibly have meant that a lot of pollution would have darkened all the stone.

Here’s some pictures of the buildings I found interesting.

I wondered if I could get the same man three times in this shot

A rose garden in Spain

Pleasant riverside walks

Still along the river front

Christopher Columbus - back view - the sun was too bright to take it from the front

Just an interesting building

The Cathedral - notice only one tower - they must have run out of money

And here’s a couple just to show that I’ve been learning how to use digital zoom on my camera.  It shows just how close I can get with the detail on my pictures.

Look at the shield at the centre of the pic

I can't believe just how close I can get the detail.

Just one to finish our time in Valladolid, Connie has decided that after all these years she actually like yoghurt.  I love seeing her lick the pot and she can even get to the bottom with her tongue – I love my dog and she makes me smile, even if she drives me mad sometimes.

She's loving her time travelling

Granada

So here we were, three nights at the Camping Motel Sierra Nevada.  Now this was not an ACSI campsite so the cost was 30 Euros per night.  Was it worth it – well no not really.  The campsite was ok and of course being the only one anywhere near the centre of Granada they can really get away with whatever they choose to charge.  The swimming pool (which they charged to use) wasn’t open as it only opens in the summer – but it was 33 C today,  is that not warm enough to need a pool? 

Quite a nice bar/restaurant though with free WIFI point, but not good enough to download any TV so we were just going to have to do without. Anyway the first night we were pretty tired so ended up at Burger King for dinner which was the nearest thing we could find.  

Day 1 –  We wanted to see the Alhambra and we knew that we wouldn’t be able to go in with the dog so we thought we’d just go and look at it.  We don’t like to leave her for too long in the van when it’s hot as dogs in tin cans can be a disaster.  But hey, this campsite charges 4.50 Euros a night for electricity (in Albir it was 1 Euro) so we thought we’d make the most of it.  We have air conditioning in the motorhome so why not use it.  So we made sure that the princess would be ok on her own, two bowls of water, just in case she knocked one over and personal air conditioning set at a cool 22C. Of course by making this decision so late we had not organised any tickets in advance for the Alhambra so we didn’t think there was any point in trying to get in.

So off we go on the bikes, without the buggy or the dog.   

Now Granada being an old city hasn’t got any cycle routes so you just had to take your chances on the roads with the cars and buses.  The SatNag said it was only 1.8km to the Alhambra so we set off following the road signs.  Of course these were the road signs for cars, not walkers or cyclists so our first mistake was to turn right signposted to the Alhambra instead of left signposted to the city.  This route took us out of the city towards the ring road.  There was a low height tunnel  and Iain said that he wasn’t cycling down there and I totally agreed.  We’re not the most confident cyclists and I must admit that we don’t wear helmets but at this point I was really wishing that I did. We found a pedestrian route through the tunnel so all was ok.

Down the hill and hey, here’s the Repsol  garage that we would be looking for tomorrow – the one with LPG, at least we knew where that was and we knew there was a low bridge to avoid. So here we were, on the ring-road.  Turn left and fantastic, at least there was a cycle path and we didn’t need to go on the dual carriageway.  Then a right turn somewhere up ahead and we stopped on a railway bridge to re-assess the lost situation.  We actually could see the Alhambra from here in the distance but didn’t know at that time that that would be the best view we would get. I had a brainwave (well I know that it can be dangerous when I start thinking) but even if the Alhambra wasn’t marked on the SatNag, the map did show us the roads around it.  So I programmed in one of the nearby roads and hey, it’s now 3km away (it was only 1.8 to start with).  At least now we had some idea of where we were going.

We finally found the Avenue of Christopher Columbus and cycled along the middle (out of the traffic) and then found our way down the narrow old streets to the Alhambra.  Here’s the best view we got. 

So for those who were expecting some fantastic pictures of the Alhambra, here’s some from the official website to show us what we missed.

Alhambra of Granada

The area itself was interesting with old narrow streets and after a rest we decided to cycle back.

Now that was fun, we did the Gran Via de Colon (Avenue of Christopher Columbus) again and this time I stopped to take some photographs.  It was a really nice place with statues all along, some just sitting on a bench inviting you to sit with them.  One bronze was of a bench itself with cushions around. A lovely place for a stroll.

Off then towards the campsite we ended up cycling on a main road with buses all around us.  Now I’ve already said that we’re not that brave on the bikes but this was ridiculously scary.  At one point we pulled out to go around some parked buses and then before we could get back in the buses moved off.  So there we were on the outside lane with no way of getting back into the inside lane and buses screaming up on the inside of us.

As I said, no cycle lanes

It only took us about 20 minutes to get back, a lot quicker than it took us to get there.  I was indeed very glad that we didn’t have the dog with us in the buggy, I don’t think I would have been able to do it with her in tow.

We didn’t’ want to be out too long as it was the first time the princess had been left in the motorhome on a very hot day and when we got back we were very pleased to hear the whirring of the air-conditioning so we knew before opening the door that the dog would be ok.  So the princess had been home-alone with the air conditioning on and what did she do when we got back?  As soon as we opened the door she did her normal greeting of “Hello dad, is mum with you?” then ran out of the van an lay down in the sunshine.  Typical spoilt princess.  I thought I’d share with you a picture of her enjoying the sunshine, it was the first time that we had a grass pitch in over 4 months – well it was sort of grass, so she made the most of the opportunity for a good old back scratch.

We hadn’t been that enamoured with Granada, and as the campsite was 30 Euros a night we decided to leave a day earlier than planned and head off to Toledo.