Tag - #spain

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...

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...

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