Spain

33 articles

Amongst the Cider Apple Trees – Astigarra (San Sebastian)

August 13, 2018Lorraine Stokes2 min read

12-08-18 – 13-08-18 – Astigarra (San Sebastian), Basque Country We were really looking forward to hanging out on the beautiful beaches in San Sebastian, but when we got to the city’s arena where we knew we could park for free, we realised something must be going on. The arena was cordoned off and there were lots of Police around. Dan quickly did an internet search and found out that we’d only gone and arrived during the week of Semana Grande. This is a huge Spanish festival of music arts, dance and religion that goes on for a whole week, and it was obvious to us that whatever was going on at the arena was part of the festivities. Clearly we were not going to be able to park there, but it seems at other times of the year, it would be perfectly fine.  We had planed to ride the 20 minutes into the centre (GPS 43.297403, -1.970098) (approximately 2 miles), but with nowhere to park, we made another plan. Given all the other parking areas were closer to the centre...

Bitter and Sweet – Bilbao

August 12, 2018Dan6 min read

10/08/18 – 12/08/18 Bilbao, Basque Country We’d been shopping, we’d brought extra booze, we’d done our homework on where to stay IN ADVANCE (Unusual for us),now all we needed was our good  friend Rob to arrive. He was flying in late from Gatwick, so the plan was to pick him up bright and early on Saturday morning from the hotel. It had been nearly 5 months since we had last seen him, so on Friday night we were getting excited and had ourselves a couple of drinks to get in the mood. Then, the bomshell….his flight was cancelled due to bad weather and the next available flight was unsuitable ie on the following Monday……so we wouldn’t get to see him afterall. gutted. Feeling slightly shell shocked it put us in a bit of a strange mood for the weekend but there was nothing we could do, so here’s what we got up to. Parque Erandio We spent both nights here for free (GPS 43.3246846,-2.9400183) its about 6 miles outside of the town centre...

Lovely Lierganes and Luscious Oriñón

August 10, 2018Lorraine Stokes4 min read

9/08/18 – 10-08/18 – Lierganes and Oriñón, Cantabria We’d talked about visiting Santander (prior to Lierganes) for several weeks before going there, although neither of us knew much about it other that it is a relatively new city given a huge fire destroyed much of it some years ago, and that there are several nice beaches surrounding it. Arriving into the city we felt uninspired by the many unattractive high rises and to top it off it was such a gloomy day with lots of rain. We arrived at our parking location, situated a few miles out of the centre, which on a sunny day would have looked lovely. We had a coffee to motivate ourselves for the walk in the rain, but then both admitted we really didn’t want to go. Again, i’m sure there was lots to see including the beaches but we felt that we wouldn’t be able to appreciate them on a day like today. Tired from the drive, we checked nearby locations and read lots of good things about Lierganes, so after half an hour...

If the Moho’s a rockin’………..Comillas

August 9, 2018Dan3 min read

07/08/18 – 09/08/18 Comillas, Cantabria Comillas was  another place that we didnt really plan to visit. It was only because when we arrived at the original place we wanted to spend the night and it clearly stated no overnight stops we started to thing about finding somewhere else to stay. Rather than risk a fine, we visited the doggie beach for about half an hour or so and then made our way to Comillas, the next town along from where we currently were. Our first night was a small grass carpark on the road into the the town. We arrived quite late and bagged one of the last spots of suitable size. The site sloped in 2 directions and because we didn’t use the levelling chocks it wasn’t the most comfortable nights sleep we have ever had. (GPS 43.384226,-4.2990552) Feeling slightly refreshed the next morning we headed out to explore the town quite early (Before 10:00) as we didn’t know if we were going to be staying or moving on in the afternoon. Walking through the...

Lazy Days in Gijon

August 7, 2018Lorraine Stokes3 min read

5/08/18 – 7/08/18 – Gijon, Asturias Region Playa El Rinconin is another doggie beach about 2 miles from the city of Gijon, which was our next destination. Like A’Coruna, on arrival to the free car/camper area (photo below) it was rammed and we had to park on a residential street for several hours until we got a space. Sometimes this feels like a pain in the arse because you just want to get settled. Fortunately a space appeared once most of the locals went home around 8pm, and we quickly got settled in for a couple of nights stay.(GPS 43.546927,-5.6373862,453) We checked the beach out which was quite a small cove, but it wasn’t that pleasing to Marley’s taste due to him not being able to run on the pebbles. We couldn’t either, so we didn’t actually spend much time on it. We were actually more pleasantly surprised and drawn to the well maintained park called Parque De El Rinconin. The grass was so green and there were neat rows of very high...

Doggie Paradise – Playa de Lóngara

August 5, 2018Dan3 min read2 comments

03/08/18  – 05/08/18 – Praia de Lóngara, Barreiros, Galicia Well we certainly got what we wished for in heading to northern Spain in terms of a cooler climate. As we drove through the valleys of Galacia a mist descended on us out of nowhere, so thick that we had to put the fog-lights on in the Moho. It didn’t really clear up for the majority of our stay apart from a couple of hours when we took Marley to the beach on the first afternoon. You might be thinking it seem like a bit of a random place to visit and it is, but we had recently discovered this great website that states all the doggie friendly beaches in Spain –  so we decided to give it a try and head to the closest one. It was great knowing that you could legitimately be there throughout the whole day and not be worried about getting fined or moved on by the police. Access wasn’t for the faint hearted as it was down a relatively steep descent across some rocks but once you were down there it was...

Free Willy time in A Coruña

August 3, 2018Lorraine Stokes3 min read

02/08/18 – 03/08/18 –  A Coruña, Galicia Region We chose A Coruna as a place to visit predominantly because of its cooler temperature compared to other parts of Spain (as Marley was struggling with the heat). It was definitely quite a bit cooler, but we weren’t quite prepared for how busy it was. Maybe it was a silly idea as we’d decided to try and stay at the car park to the Torre de Hercules (Tower of Hercules) a popular tourist attraction. So not surprisingly, lots of other mohos had already stolen many of the spaces. Still, it was worth getting up close to the ancient lighthouse that sits on A Coruna’s peninsula. Built in the late 1st century by the Romans, it underwent significant reconstruction in the 18th century and is the only functioning Roman lighthouse in use today. Having circled the lighthouse’s carpark in our moho about 4-5 times and after searching for about 40 minutes closeby, we almost left A Coruna for dust, but then came across a...

Goodbye Spain :-( ……For Now

June 26, 2018Dan2 min read

25/06 – 26/06 Isla Cristina – Camping Playa Taray This was it, our last stop in Spain before venturing on to Portugal. We probably would have gone straight from Seville, but because I had messed around with the leisure batteries again, we needed to find somewhere we could plug-in and reset again. We found Camping Playa Taray on our app for 11 Euros/night, so off we headed. The site was fine, it felt slightly tired and a little uncared for, but it was cheap and good enough to spend the night. Cold showers though that you had to press the button every 3 seconds……annoying. This truly was a dog-friendly site though – no segregation this time and there was one of the biggest dogs either of us had seen! Over the road was our first taste of the Atlantic Ocean again – what a difference to the calm waters of the Mediterranean. Here the waves churned up a green layer of seaweed on the shoreline. There were loads of dogs on the beach, so Marley had a whale of...

‘Appy Pride! Seville Orgullo

June 25, 2018Lorraine Stokes5 min read2 comments

23/06/18 – 25/06/18 – Seville We’d heard that Seville was hot and had discussed staying in a hotel, but chose to test it out once there. Boy was it hot, reaching 43 degrees at its highest, so after taking turns to go and see the spectacular Plaza de España and surrounding gardens, we packed a bag, checked out of our Moho, and into a hostel. The pure reason for this was to benefit from the air con, so imagine how gutted we were when we were provided with a measley oscillating fan. Although it did work well enough to keep us cool, but more Importantly  Marley, who was struggling and at risk of getting heat stroke. The hostel was clean, quite quirky, and the lovely owner let us keep our bikes inside.  We’d planned to be in Seville for the Pride celebrations that evening, which are hosted each year for the whole of the Andalucia region. At the hostel we were a short walk away from the parade starting point, so after getting a bit of colour and glitter on, off we went to to...

My Watchtower is Bigger Than Yours – Cadiz

June 23, 2018Dan3 min read

22/06/18 – 23/06/18 Cadiz Do we, dont we was pretty much how the conversation went for a couple of days before we eventually said we do. (Visit Cadiz that is) and we are so glad we did. Having read about it, it was often compared as a smaller, more tame Seville or Granada, and having been to Granada recently and being en-route to Seville we very nearly gave it a miss. The drive into the old town was pretty uninspiring, and I remember saying to Lorraine, if this is anything to go by, then we wont be here for very long. We knew we could park in the port for a few euros, so we headed there half expecting to be back within the hour. The old town itself is relatively small and easy to navigate. Tall old buildings with narrow cobbled streets (just about wide enough to get a car down but certainly not big enough for a Moho) are arranged in grid patterns to the west end of the peninsula. It felt very different to other parts of Spain we had visited and you could certainly feel the...

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