TOURS AND HOME

Bonjour,

Re last post - restaurant closed so bread and cheese for my birthday. Still plenty of good meals to remember. A very good salade de gesiers in Narbonne (if goose/duck gizzards are your thing) but the arroz de negro in Benicassim must take the prize.
We had some interesting beer in a one bar village a few miles from the campsite. They served Floreffe Blonde en pression but how a Wallonian beer from the Lefebvre Brewery in the middle of Belgium should end up as the only draught offering in the west of France will have to remain a mystery. But good beer in general is making a resurgence in France and we enjoyed several cask conditioned bottles from the nearby Brasserie de l'Aurore.
We cycled into Tours along the banks of the Loire which was great and a couple of days later the other way which Pauline also assured me was flat although the destination, Montlouis, might have hinted that a few hills were involved.
Tours is a nice compact city with an impressive cathedral inside and out as shown below.

A good little red devil in the stained glass.

The old town.

The former archbishop's residence now the Musee des Beaux Arts.

Having reached the town of Montlouis by bike we can look down on the Loire. No photos of Montlouis which is, probably, the most boring town in France.

From Tours we decided to return to UK on the Caen - Portsmouth route and had our last French meal in the port of Ouistreham; oysters, steak and tarte tatin for me, prawns, chicken and chocolate mousse for Pauline. A couple of days followed in Moreton in Marsh to clean the van and have our first English food and drink, although a curry is a bit of adopted English dish although the steak and ale pie the following night was a bit more British! Some good English ale at reasonably sensible prices, at least compared to France and Spain was savoured and finally home.

So lots to reflect on but we're likely to do similar next year. Many thanks to all those who sent their comments and those who e-mailed separately and all the others who just followed our progress - over 600 views of the blog for this journey. Special thanks to or neighbours Peter and Mary who kept an eye on our house and all the others who were a telephone call away should they have been needed: we couldn't go away for these long trips without your help.

We will no doubt be in contact with you all over the next few weeks. Next blog - not sure when - but there will be one.

Toodle Pip,

J&P

INTO FRANCE

Bonjour,

We leave our camping in Spain,

and move into France. Our first resting place is Narbonne.

a splendid small town with an historic centre. Currently there is a sports photography exhibition at various historic locations around the town. Most of the town appears to have been cleaned and spruced up; town hall above, the main square and part of the cathedral area below.

The cathedral was impressive enough as seems to be the case in most French towns. The photo below is the approach into Narbonne which we cycled to from our campsite. I took a long range shot because only a hundred metres ahead the paths disappeared as there was major reconstruction of the canal towpath and surrounding roads with dust and noise pollution defying this rather pretty scene. The signage suggested that work would be complete by July 2013 - it added that this was stage 5. It neglected to say how many stages there were. It's a bit odd when we read Europe is suffering from recession, that there are so many major construction projects in France and Spain.

Although the weather was warm, for the first 24 hours there were gale force winds which meant our initial cycle from the campsite took a lot longer than it should. But there were vineyards to stop and taste along the way and there was a really excellent covered food market on arrival. Can't stop me then:  just buy pates, rillettes and most of all cheeses. The fridge now full, when opened, fills the van with scents of the formargerie. 

Apart from the language the move from Spain to France has two major impacts. Eating times - rather than take lunch at 3pm, the French eat at noon and often well before. Dinner by 7:30pm rather than 9:30pm. It takes a while to adjust. No time for breakfast! Also prices are way higher. In Spain a 3 course menu del dia including a glass of wine/beer would cost an average of 7 or 8 euros. In France without wine the cost would be at least double. Rather strangely, a bottle of drinkable local wine in a restaurant in Spain costs about 12 euros; similar in France, about 8 euros. Beer is mega expensive in France. A 25cl glass of the pression costs an average of 3 euros, in Spain about 1.30 euros including a tapa of olives or nuts. The beer in France is generally better though and micro-breweries are springing up all over the place. More on this next week. 

Thank you for all your comments and good wishes for my birthday. We shall have to get to the bottom of what Andy is doing at an all girls reunion at a later date! Pauline is about to take me for my birthday lunch or so I hope. The only restaurant within 5 miles of our new campsite was closed yesterday without warning. Otherwise, we do have a baguette and, of course, plenty of cheeses!

Birthday wishes this week to Toby. 

Final blog next week will cover our time in Tours, some unexpected beer and our arrival back in the UK.

Adieu

J&P

BARCELONA Part 2

Hola,

We've made 3 trips into Barcelona and barely scraped the surface. For our future reference, it would probably be best to get some sort of combined ticket to allow us entrance to several venues without queuing for tickets. Also it would be great to see it at night: there are buses all through the night back to our local town so that's on the list for next time.
Park Guell, below, designed by Gaudi and financially backed by Guell, was meant to offer housing in a large park but there were no buyers so now it is just a park.

I suppose it was a sort of Port Merion type experiment. 

Apart from the trouble getting into places, finding places was also quite a problem. A better map would have solved it but we have found the hundreds of policemen in the streets throughout Spain really helpful. They also salute you as you greet them. I seem to remember British police did likewise many years ago but probably stopped when Dixon of Dock Green went off air.

Above is the National Museum of Catalonian Art, housed in a spectacular old royal palace. The interior matches the outside for splendour and the exhibits are exceptional. I thought I had had my fill of old church frescoes, but these have been transferred from old churches which have been demolished and 'stencilled' onto the walls inside the palace with brilliant results. Because of these we only had time for a brief look around the rest of the galleries so it is on our list to return.

Mataro also has its' fair share of Gaudi. Below is his original warehouse building now housing an art gallery devoted to modern Catalan artists.

We also discovered this rather strange dance competition on Sunday morning in the main square. It was quite complex and judges were going from group to group and occasionally waving a team off. It seemed to last several hours so sadly we didn't see the final result. The band were playing some fairly strange Catalan music but the intricacies were lost on us.

The Catalan people although quite friendly are also very proud. I went into a shop and asked for cuatro postres of some sort. The woman looked at me baffled and I repeated. She said, in Catalan, you want one. No! Cuatro. She bustled off to find another assistant to whom I repeated my request. Ah! she said, you want quatre. Rarely has one letter caused so much confusion.

Next stop is over the French border in Narbonne. The penultimate post is next week.

Bona Tarda

J&P

BARCELONA

Bon Dia,

Another place, another language not to understand. Catalan is about as incomprehensible as East End Glaswegian. Still in Barcelona people will understand Spanish and often English. (not sure about Glaswegian, though.) This is a 2 part post as there are so many photos following our 3 days in the City.
This is Barcelona's Gothic Cathedral, inside and out.

And then on to the impressive Port building:

other weird and wonderful Gaudi creations,

recycled lamp posts,

most of which pictures we took from the open topped tourist bus. It was nearly impossible, without queuing for literally hours, to get inside many of these attractions and we had to be content to admire from the outside, including the La Sagrada Familia, Gaudi's masterpiece.

It is almost 50 years to the day that I was last in Barcelona with Mum and Dad and I will be eager to compare my black and white Brownie camera photos taken then to what we can see now. It has certainly progressed and is expected to be finished in the next 10 years eventually having 18 towers.

The other thing I remember from all that time ago is a visit to the bullring, but I can't remember if it was this one, below, since converted to an arena. More to check in the old photo album.

Barcelona is incredibly busy with a huge amount to do. Practically everything costs upwards of 10 euros each to get in and sometimes more than 20 euros. We don't know how lucky we are with our free entrance to many museums in UK. 

More on Barcelona and Mataro, where are based at the weekend. 

Thanks to everybody who have e-mailed and texted me outside the blog following Crystal Palace's epic victory.

Adeu

J&P

BENICASSIM

Hola,

So we bid farewell to our site near Crevillent. On reflection, despite its' good facilities, the nearby towns are not nearby enough and is probably not what we are looking for in a one month stay.

So we move further north to the seaside resort of Benicassim. It is a very laid back, even genteel resort town and was once the scene of Spanish society who owned villas such as those below and threw massive parties for the rich and famous. It is according to our research an 80% Spanish resort which would probably be unbearable in mid-summer but right now is just about perfect. The campsite has all we need, tennis, indoor and outdoor pool, gym, bar and restaurant and a supermarket right outside. It is a short walk to the town and there are proper marked walking and cycling routes along the coast and into the city of Castellon. It is about as far north as you would want it out of season but right now the temps are in the high teens/low twenties which is fine as it is a particularly cold spring in Spain this year. 

There are some top restaurants along the prom, at least one serving probably our favourite Spanish dish, Arroz Negro. The restaurant we tried gave us almost certainly the best Arroz Negro we have eaten (and we've eaten a few!)

Last year, we remarked on the large number of Germans we encountered almost everywhere we went. This year is the year of the Dutch. Holland must surely be empty; nearly every van has the familiar orange number plates and the bars and restaurants full of Steve McClaren impersonators.

The university city of Castellon is a 45 minute bike ride away and was well worth the effort.

A very fine square flanked by a large indoor food market, cathedral, town hall and university there was plenty to see and do.

It was only a question of where to go for lunch?

Even the post office, below, was mightily impressive. So this might be our main resting place next spring if we decide to repeat this year's experiment. But in the last day or so we have moved north again to Mataro, a large, prosperous town about 25km from Barcelona.

We have so far had just one day in Barcelona (free bus from the campsite) and just enough time to confirm that Columbus is a Barca fan. And on the subject of football,

tomorrow is a huge day for CPFC. It will be the first play-off final I've missed and I'm unlikely to find it on the TVs over here. But for all fans out there, my one and only beer I've had in Barcelona so far is the locally brewed Moritz! So Moritz first goalscorer, 2-1 to Palace = 50/1 at your friendly bookies. I'd have been happier to find a beer called Zaha but we can't have it always.

Thank you Jude and Andy for last week's comments, the building materials might come in handy for completing Gaudi's cathedral.

Adios

J&P

/

LORCA AND MOVING NORTH

Hola,

We took a local bus ride to the rather refined town of Lorca. We have seen very little poverty on our travels through southern Spain which is surprising given the dire economic situation being reported. Our guidebook, albeit 13 years old, gave four recommendations for things to see. The Casa de los Guevara, housing the Tourist Office, had green netting round it in 2000 and was subject of a lengthy restoration. As you can see below the green netting has gone but so has the tourist office. In fact it is still being restored inside and all we could see were pictures of the restoration.

Two free museums housing elaborate costumes of the two blue and white factions for Semana Santa are no longer free and one was only half open due to restoration. (The other was shut due to lunch.) At least, tgere was a short film of the celebrations which looked very spectacular. Most impressive, we were told was the Collegiate church below - Colegiata de San Patricio. Although this side looks pretty well preserved, the rest and all the interior was being restored and was closed.

Below is a relief from the Courthouse.

And finally a very impressive bullring - shut! At least we had a good lunch.

We are now moving on north, first to a huge campsite (1000 places) near Crevillent which is a bit isolated and on first viewing seems a bit soulless. 

We are visiting with an eye to a future longer winter stay and it does have an indoor and outdoor pool, free wi-fi, tennis courts, padel courts, gym and spa and a decent bar and restaurant. We are exploring the surrounding area on our bikes and there is a nature reserve with well-signposted (hooray!) cycle tracks:

but we could not linger in the hides as all round there were mosquitoes the size of small rodents which did their very worst even as we were cycling along. The nearby towns, both about 10kms away seem pretty good so who knows, we may return. In the meantime we shall continue heading north. Anybody who happens to be in the Barcelona area in the next couple of weeks and fancies meeting up, please let us know - we are due to arrive around 23rd and stay for about 10 days.

Buenos Tardes,

J&P

PS. Thanks for comments Jude and Andy. All comments very much appreciated. Hope you had a great time messing around on the river.

BOLNUEVO

Hola,

Just woken up from my siesta following large lunch of croquetas, fish stuffed red peppers and a mixed meat (easy on the snails) and fish paella washed down with a decent bottle of house rosado (very reasonable 5 euros) and a cafe solo to conclude.
We are now in Bolnuevo, a small but lively seaside resort about 6 km from Puerto Mazzaron. Its' main claim to fame are the 'erosions' below: otherwise there are a few bars and restaurants and a couple of small supermarkets.

About 6 km cycle ride is the port of Mazarron. This is a bigger town and resort and has some good restaurants but not much else to see.

So we took a bus ride into the regional centre of Murcia. The cathedral below was its main highlight, in fact its only highlight and if you tried to leave,

these two dudes would make sure you didn't get past the doors.

Below is the casino which had a spectacular inside although many of the rooms were only open to members. Murcia is trying to sell itself as a tourist destination but it trails in below Cadiz as far as we are concerned. Of the 40 odd listed attractions, about 30 are churches none of which, cathedral aside were open. The art gallery was mediocre, only in Spanish but at least free. The other museums closed between 1 and 5 so if you were on public transport they might as well have been shut. If you want people to visit your city you've got to try harder.

Our campsites we have stayed on have varied enormously. This has smaller pitches and is noisier (campsite speak says it is a 'sociable' site) but they keep it spotless and have very well maintained and original flower beds including many topiaries;

and a resident terrapin. Although the site is right in the town and right next to the beach it also has a very nice temperature controlled (24 c) swimming pool and tennis court.

We're spending a couple of weeks here before moving north for our last month. Temps will probably drop a bit. It was 33c in Murcia which is hot enough and a few degrees cooler on the coast. But we're not complaining!!! Thanks for your continued reading (166 visits in the last month) and another post next week.

Adios

J&P