As we saw our first “Camino de Santiago” sign along by the road and launched into a rendition of “Is this the way to Santiago?” (to the tune of “Is this the way to Amarillo?”) we began to ponder on the theme of pilgrimages. The Cathedral at Santiago de Compostela is the endpoint for many pilgrimages; people travel along different routes, for different reasons to reach this destination. Because there are many different routes, all leading to one point, the scallop shell is the symbol for the pilgrimage (as its lines lead to one point).

As it happened, our time in Santiago de Compostela was very brief due to some rather inclement weather, which didn’t make it the ideal time for wandering. However we did visit the cathedral and saw several pilgrims arriving; some looking a little worse for wear from their journey… we could only wonder what their stories were.

As we reflected, we realised that our trip is a kind of pilgrimage.
The Oxford English dictionary defines a pilgrimage as:

a journey to a place of particular interest or significance

It’s about the journey. Now we’re not sure that we’ve got any one place that we would count as the endpoint of our pilgrimage. In fact it could be argued that even though our journey is physical, our destination isn’t; it’s more that we’ve grown on this journey. But anyway, back to the story!

Having had our wander, we had a choice as to whether to pay an extra 12 Euros to stay in the car park overnight, or drive to the coast where we could stay for free at an aire there. Easy decision. As we left the city and headed towards Fisterra (an optional extra to the traditional pilgrimage), the rain cleared and we had a beautiful sunset drive along the coast.

The following day we drove around to Fisterra, only to find that it wasn’t that motorhome friendly… so we turned back to the last beach before it, parked up, had some lunch, then went in search of some scallop shells. It’s traditional to wear a scallop shell in some form as you do the pilgrimage and as it’s possible that we might walk a route one day, so we thought it would be appropriate to find one from near Fisterra. We like collecting shells!

Now the eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed from our timeline that around the time of our trip to Santiago we’ve had a couple of blown fuses (well, Bertha has), leading to all of the lights going off. That’s partly the fault of a dodgy laptop charger and partly my fault for choosing to have our 12v charging points on the same circuit as the lights. When we removed the old spotlights above the bench seat, that left a couple of wires dangling… which I then attached to a 12v charger. Bad call.

After two blown fuses (we replaced the first one, only to have the replacement go too), I decided to move the charging points to different circuits; one to the solar panel controller load output, and one to a brand new circuit with its own fuse. So far, so good… but then it’s only been a few days, and we haven’t tried the dodgy laptop charger again. One job we definitely need to do in March is move the fuse box so it’s more accessible; at the moment it’s inside the control unit (again, my fault when we were doing a bit of re-wiring) and at the same time we might add an inverter… but that’s stuff to think about when we’re back in the UK.

After that, it was only a short few days of driving (compared to what we’ve done so far!) along the coast to Santander where we end our first loop. As with our journey through most of Spain, we hugged the coast, spending evenings in little villages near some stunning waves. Have we ever mentioned that we like the sea? I think the pictures speak for themselves:

So we’re nearly home from the first loop! Hasn’t Bertha done well!

Forget Marty McFly and his Delorean; we’re Steve + Kiri and we’ve got our Talbot Express Autotrail Chinook. Yes, we’re time travellers. Well, kind of. For the first few days of Portugal we were an hour ahead of everything. You’ve guessed it; we hadn’t realised it was in a different time zone to Spain! Sadly that was the end to the time-travelling, although we did see a dinosaur…

Portugal’s been a funny place for us. Unlike all of the other countries we have visited so far (with maybe the exception of Liechtenstein, Croatia and Macedonia), there weren’t any particular stops planned before we set off. We had no real desire to visit another city (they tend to be quite taxing on both energy levels and the wallet!), despite hearing lovely things about Porto, so we’ve just had a week or so of “pootling” through the country… meandering and seeing where the roads would take us.

Our main discovery upon arriving from southern Spain is that all motorways are toll. Our 2013 Philips Europe road map, which we’ve been using for most of our planning shows several of the motorways as toll-free… but these are apparently electronic toll roads, as opposed to standard cash / card toll roads. At least with the standard toll roads, if you get on them by mistake, you can pay the toll at a gate; with the electronic ones, as there are no toll gates, you have to pay a fine (10 times the toll). Our satnav also didn’t recognise these as toll roads, so journey planning and navigation became a little more involved… trying to get around Porto without ending up on one of the blue toll roads was fun!

So, we’ve established that we avoided the toll roads; the alternatives are some really lovely scenic routes; we got a flavour of real life in rural Portugal, with great natural colours and stunning scenery. It also looked as if the weather system that’s been wreaking havoc in the UK has struck here too. On the way to one of our stops near Lisbon (a little village called Valada), the road was shut due to flooding and we had to find another way around. Just south of Porto, the waves we’d seen previously in the Algarve paled into insignificance as we saw heavy seas and evidence of damaged sea defences.

There is a down-side to taking scenic routes though, and that is that Bertha gets put through her paces a bit more. Some of the road surfaces in Portugal are an interesting choice (cobbles on a main road?), others are in need of a bit of patching up and others have been patched up… but it just seems to have made them worse! Then there are the confusing speed limits. In lots of cases, the only time you know the speed limit is when you see a sign saying that it’s the end of that speed limit. In other cases, you’re repeatedly told (every 50 metres) that it’s a 50 limit. We may have inadvertently sped at times… but we don’t know. We almost certainly inadvertently drove too slowly at other times… but it didn’t seem to annoy the drivers behind as they overtook us; we even got a shaka sign from one!

So, that’s been Portugal for us really, accompanied by some port (who knew that it originates from Portugal!), with lashings of Piri Piri sauce on top

The last place we wanted to visit in southern Spain was Cadiz… as in it being our final stop rather than not imagining anywhere worse! We’d realised that we would be too early for the annual carnival, but we still fancied wandering around the old town, so we found a campsite in nearby El Puerto de Santa Maria where we could leave Bertha whilst we explored Cadiz. In hindsight we probably could have wild-camped just around the corner, but instead we joined what appeared to be a mobile retirement village in the campsite. Having only met other motorhomers on aires, or wild-camping, this opened our eyes to yet another way of motorhoming; some of the vans there were the size of coaches! We were the youngest guests by far and obviously quite a novelty, as lots of the dressing-gown-clad occupants were keen to give us advice about all things to do with El Puerto. However, we were more interested in Cadiz, so were excited to get the catamaran across the bay.

Now with Cadiz we were expecting a beautiful city with narrows streets and exciting little shops. Which we found. What we weren’t expecting was an awesome heavy sea out by the castle. Which we also found. There have to be some advantages of high winds and persistent rain and this is an obvious one. We happily soaked in the power and beauty of the huge waves (as well as a little bit of sea water too… not as happily!) before we had to return to the campsite.

Little did we know that the heavy seas would become a feature of the next few days for us. There’s something about the coast that draws both of us, so once we were in Portugal, it was no surprise that we ended up staying on the cliffs at Sagres. Once again there was a heavy sea, with huge waves crashing against the headland; this time though there were surfers making the most of it. Guess what Kiri wants to learn how to do now?!

Further up the coast (near Sines) we had planned to stop by the sea once again for the night, but this time were foiled by “no motorhome” signs in one spot and high seas in another (with waves that Kiri reckons were the size of a house!), so we ventured inland to get a bit of shelter; staying at an official aire. There, we completed our bingo hand of types of motorhomer when we saw a mobility scooter on a bike rack on the back of a motorhome. It’s interesting how the motorhoming community is so united, yet so diverse. We all have something in common, but you have all types of people on the road. In Sagres we saw a couple with a young baby in a monster-truck of a motorhome. The following morning I had a lovely chat with a Norwegian guy who spends 6 months of every year away from Norway to get away from the cold weather. 10 minutes earlier I’d been chatting with a British guy who was complaining that he could no longer get satellite TV in his van as the signals have apparently been tightened down to broadcast to a smaller area. It seems that we motorhomers celebrate the commonality rather than focussing on our differences… a good life lesson.

And then there are just the surreal moments at motorhome service points:

Yes, that is a 1 horse power vehicle… but I guess they need to empty waste and top up with water too!

Go to Gibraltar. It rocks. Or does it? It’s a place that I really wanted to go to, just to see what it’s like. Would we find a little corner of Britain in the med? Well… I think we found that already in the Costa del Sol! Would we find a throw-back to 80s Britain? Would we find a Spanish city that was British by name only? Would it be a place where cheap cigarettes and monkeys are the main attractions? By that I don’t mean that monkeys are cheap… from what we saw of a local walking past them with food, I think they’re the equivalent of pigeons in Trafalgar Square… only the tourists like them.

Well, in all honesty, even though we’ve been there, I don’t think we’ve got a definitive answer to any of those questions. It’s a bit of an enigma as a place. On the one hand, you’ve got a high street with some recognisable British brands (Marks + Spencer, Early Learning Centre, WHSmith, BHS). On the other hand, you’ve got a patch of land which is Spain within a stone’s throw and North Africa within a short ferry ride. On the other hand (hmmm… too many hands… maybe they’re monkey hands?) you’ve got a place full of off-licences and people going back into Spain clutching handfuls of cheap cigarettes and cheap spirits. I guess the best description would be that it’s pastiche Britain (mmm, pasty of Britain… what I wouldn’t give for a Cornish pasty now!). It doesn’t make the views any less beautiful though.

So whilst we were trying to fathom the conundrum that is The Rock (not to be confused with The Rock or The Rock), what did we get up to there? Well we actually visited it twice from Bertha’s parking spot a couple of hundred metres away in Spain. The first time we ventured there, we had a little wander around the main shopping streets before working up an appetite by climbing upwards as far as the entrance to the nature reserve. What better way to satisfy an empty stomach than with fish and chips (or sausages and chips) from “Roy’s Cod Plaice” (which ironically didn’t have plaice on the menu… or rock!). You’d think that we’d been away from Britain for more than 3 months if you’d seen us devour that meal on the bench. A welcome meal indeed, washed down with a proper pint shortly afterwards!

The following morning we once again left Bertha in Spain (nope, we didn’t take her over to Gibraltar, even though petrol was so much cheaper there… even though it was her 24th Birthday) and this time we had to wait to get into Gibraltar, as the Easyjet plane was coming in to land on the runway which separates Gibraltar from Spain. It’s the strangest level crossing that we’ve ever walked over!

Even after a mug of builder’s tea each, we couldn’t get our heads around Gibraltar… and the more we thought about it and discussed it, the deeper we got into the philosophy of “ownership” of land… which yielded many more questions, but no answers.

So there you have it. Gibraltar. Go see it for yourself and please let us know if it makes sense to you.

Where in Spain can you play Settlers of Catan, watch some great 90s videos (yes, videos, not DVDs!) such as Cool Runnings and Home Alone, eat great food and share stories with fellow travellers? Well, for the last week or so, we’ve been at the final planned stop of our first European loop; Villa Isabel near Malaga. It would probably best be described as both a Christian community and a way-point for travellers, so it was a perfect place for us to stop off and see where we could help out.

Well, as soon as we mentioned that I know a little about computers and Kiri likes to do outdoor work, we were asked (with no expectations) to look at their computer network and garden (not at the same time!). Kiri set to work in the sunshine (incidentally, since mentioning the surprising levels of Spanish wind in a previous blog post, we’ve learned that the Costa del Sol (coast of the sun) used to be called Costa del Viento (coast of the wind), but the name was changed to make it more attractive to tourists! The wind is nothing compared to the extreme weather there has been back in the UK though… I should probably finish this brief aside and continue the sentence), tackling a huge rose bush, strimming knee-high weeds in places and saving a tree from being swallowed by brambles.

Now I haven’t really done much networking since my first job out of uni (telephone technical support for a bespoke business network gateway device… sounds grander than it is!), but I dusted off the relevant grey cells and got to work on the spaghetti junction of cables. The first job was to remove all of the wires that weren’t plugged into anything at all(!), then work out the topography (and document it), before neatening up the remaining cables to make future management easier. Oh, and I flashed a wireless access point that wasn’t working, bricked it (it wasn’t even responding to a ping), then shorted the electronics to bring it back to life. All in a day’s work!

Onto a different type of networking now; we’ve met some really great people whilst we’ve been here. Jacob + Bev are basically the Mum + Dad of the place and they’ve made us feel so at home, as have all of the other staff. Sharing food with new people is always a really special experience and it’s even better when you can share stories of adventure and travel. Some people we met were just at the start of their travels; others were near the end, but all had inspiring stories that encouraged us and that we can learn from. And as we’re quite close to Africa, some North African influences can be found in the food, so we’ve eaten some great stuff. I know several people have said in response to previous blog posts that we should take Bertha over to Morocco… having had a taste of their food we really wish we could!

But sadly our time on this loop is limited and it looks like the next food we’ll be tasting is British fish and chips. Here we come Gibraltar!

Who would have guessed that the highest altitude of our trip so far would not be Switzerland or Austria, but Spain?! Yup, the mountain range to the east of Granada took us to an altitude of 1372 metres according to our GPS tracker (or 1429 metres according to our paper map). It would be lying to say that Bertha sailed up the slopes, because it was engine power that pulled her to the top, but it didn’t seem to be too much of a struggle. We experienced quite a contrast in weather though; two days previously we’d been basking in temperatures in the mid twenties, but in the mountain pass we drove through sleet and spied snow ploughs at the ready on the slip roads.

So were we in Granada to visit the famous palace? Nope (although given the number of people that have recommended that we go there, we probably should at some point in the future!). Were we there to go to a luxury spa built over one of the hot springs? Nope (budget constraints… plus we’re not really spa people!). Our quest was to find the hot springs near Santa Fe that haven’t been commercialised yet. Unlike the hot springs we visited near Lamia, Greece, these are not sign-posted; in fact it took a little bit of research to find the GPS co-ordinates of them. The latitude and longitude were accompanied by a warning about mud, but we hadn’t seen that much rain, so thought that we would be fine in Bertha.

Now Kiri has quite a bit of experience in driving off-road vehicles (tractors, landrovers, quad bikes, etc) in mud. I have none… but then again Bertha isn’t really an off-road vehicle… well, she hadn’t been up until this point, but I reckon you can teach an old dog new tricks! As we headed down a muddy track through the middle of an olive grove, Kiri started to warn me that we should probably go back. I wouldn’t say that I ignored her, but… ok, I ignored her. We reached an impassable puddle (ooh, that would make a good band name!) and I conceded defeat… for this route. We reversed and I plotted another route on the satnav. This route had even softer mud, but with the promise of hot springs at the end, I was keen to persevere… especially as at this point we’d been washing out of a bucket for the previous 2.5 weeks. I’m not willing to give up on something until I’ve exhausted every avenue… but after finding a lake blocking this route and performing a 17 point turn in soft mud I reluctantly agreed that all routes would probably be the same. Having almost doubled Bertha’s weight with additional mud, we returned to terra firma, re-planned our route and headed for the coast instead.

What followed was a lovely couple of days beside the beach along the Costa del Sol. We’re not talking about the touristy areas with pristine beaches; we’re talking about places where learner drivers practise their manoeuvres; where all of the local joggers go. Going to sleep with the sound of the sea is something that has been a real privilege on this trip. People pay good money to have a sea view on their holidays; this is the sea right on your doorstep.

Mountains, mud, sea; we love Spain!