Adios Amigos... until next time!

A quick review of our route!

We leave the Picos de Europa - still a little achy from our hike! Our journey through the Picos to Santillana del Mar is wonderful; we go through the Desfiladero de La Hermida, a gorge that spans Asturias and Cantabria.  The road is narrow and winding with many overhangs and nets to catch the rocks which presumably fall regularly from the cliffs above.

An added challenge is that extensive roadworks are taking place as the outer carriageway appears to have begun crumbling into the river below.

We exit the gorge and the scenery changes abruptly into much gentler, rolling countryside and it continues this way until we reach Santillana. 

Santillana del Mar is known as the Village of Three Lies - el peublo de las tres mentiras - because it is not holy (san) it is not flat (llana) and it isn't on the sea (del mar)!

Jean-Paul Sartre famously referred to this village as the most beautiful in Spain and it is a really lovely, medieval village hidden in a green valley, you could easily miss it if you didn’t know it was there. 

Unsurprisingly Santillana attracts many tourists and given that fact and its historical importance, understandably, it has been fully restored however for us, it felt like a place of great loveliness but without a soul or community.

We have found humbler and less pristine places to be more up our street but of course, that’s a matter of taste, and judging by the number of visitors Santillana plays host to on a February day we are in the minority!

We have been lucky to see Santillana in the sun; shortly after we return to Lionel the sky turns an ominous black and the heavens open for our trip to Santander and our ferry journey home, it seems that we will leave Spain as we found it, in the rain!

We don’t set sail until dusk and we are expecting it to be choppy but nothing prepares us, any other passengers, or seemingly the crew for the swell which hits us as we leave the harbour. Witnesses described seeing a freak wave like a tsunami soon after we left the harbour. It caught the ferry broadside and pandemonium ensued!

There is mayhem. In the restaurant the chairs and tables all slide to one side of the room, drinks and food go flying and glasses and crockery smash. 

People are thrown to the floor and there are cut heads, glass lacerations, and blood, it’s carnage!

We can hear the car alarms going off from two floors below us and receive messages from Lionel’s tracker to say the vehicle has moved - yikes!! We aren't allowed to go and check until we dock in Portsmouth.

The weather doesn’t improve all night and we wake periodically to hear the ship groaning and to feel it rolling.

Things don’t improve until later the next morning when we have crossed the Bay of Biscay and turned for home across northern France.   

We've got another 12 or so hours to go, so we take the opportunity the ferry journey gives us to reflect on our trip, the things we’ve enjoyed, the things we haven’t so much; the places we’ve been, and the people we’ve met.

The first thing to say is what a really brilliant time we’ve had, much better than we dared hope.  We did lots of research and lots of planning and preparation before we embarked on this journey and it has undoubtedly paid off and kept stress to a minimum.

Although Lionel is very comfortable and a reasonable size for a motorhome, it’s still a small space for two adults and two dogs to live in for almost four months but Lionel was brilliant.  He became like home. We never felt cooped up or cramped and we didn’t get on each other’s nerves (Millie and Pip may say differently, we haven’t asked them!).

We had some reservations about taking the dogs with us and it was a bureaucratic nightmare to get all the vaccinations, tests, and paperwork together which continued even while we were away with numerous visits to the vets required. 

However, the dogs fitted into the lifestyle really well and we enjoyed having them along.

Lionel provided us with the ability to be completely self-contained. This meant that whatever kind of overnight stopover or grotty campsite (and there were some) we found ourselves in, we had everything we needed – electricity from solar panels, heating, cooking and hot water from on-board gas, a really good shower, TV and Wi-Fi.

On-board Wi-Fi and local SIM cards for whichever country we were in enabled us to stay in regular touch with our girls and our friends.

One drawback we found with Lionel was his size made it difficult, or impossible to venture into the off-road terrain we’d have liked to explore such as narrow mountain passes and rough unmade roads and tracks however we have a plan so watch this space……..!

We both enjoyed exploring the same sort of places and the constant journeying kept it interesting for both of us.  

The highlights of the journey, perhaps unsurprisingly, were the amazing places we visited and the things we learned about other cultures.

The people were the icing on the cake - the old friends we met up with, the family and friends from home who visited us, and the new friends we made along the way...

and of course, the encounters we had with local people.  Many wonderful memories to treasure.

Creating the blog could have become a bit burdensome; we began the blog to keep our family and friends updated on where we were and what we were doing but to our surprise, the readership has grown to include fellow travellers from far and wide. We’ve had over 3,000 website and blog views from over 500 visitors spanning 32 countries!

We have had fun producing it every week and it will give us a great record of our trip; we hope you have all enjoyed it too.