Despite Burgos not being particularly exciting we stayed two nights, the first the last blog was posted and we didn’t go anywhere except to the churros and chocolate van at the end of the car park, a lovely man, 6 churros and some butchered Spanglish. It seemed very busy, and a little noisy, was that really the bin lorry at 02.30? The lady opposite thought so too.... Almost we stayed because it was busy, we hadn’t actually looked at the town, and we were in an official parking space, unlike many others. When we walked to get churros on Saturday night (12, but that was all we were having for dinner having been out to lunch) we counted 79 vans through the auto-caravanes parking (poor Ted is having quite an identity crisis, he’s gone from a motorhome, to a camping-car and now he’s an auto-caravan) and the regular parking on a site that’s meant to hold 30!
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| Queuing for churros and hot chocolate in Burgos |
So, Saturday morning we wandered into town and met our first tourist information man, still very helpful. Saw all the sights, weren’t that impressed so decided to have lunch, a simple portion of paella, a large plate of lamb chops and chips, and a flan. 1/4l wine, very full!
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| The impressive Burgos cathedral from the castle on the nearby hilltop |
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| Impressive hey? And the bull statue isn't bad either! |
We got back to Ted wondering if the weak sun would have worked on the solar panel to boost his battery, to find him down at 84%. In theory nothing to worry about, but not quite right. The battery volts and the percentage charge have been a bone of contention between us ever since we got the van, it charges to 100% when on Electric Hook Up but then gets a ? And then starts dropping, still with ? If left on the solar panel in storage it's just at 100% Brian says I overreact and I hate that it makes no sense! Anyway, with looking at why it hadn't charged up on the solar panel, we still don't know, though it's possible that the outside light, which does seem very inefficient, may have been knocked as we went out, BUT it appears that the control panel may think it's got one 80Ah battery as opposed to two 110's could this be the cause of all our strangeness? We decided to wait till we are on a campsite in a couple of days and reset it, see if it can get its life sorted out! All we've proved so far is we don't know what to believe.
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| Plaza Mayor panorama in Valladolid. It was the first plaza of its kind in Spain , originally laid out in sixteenth century, and became the model for plazas all over Spain and in South America. Columbus lived in Valladolid as did King Ferdinand and Isobel. The city was rivalling Madrid in the seventeenth century to become the capital city of Spain, but much of the city was destroyed in the Peninsular War with Napoleon's France, where the UK's Wellington came to the aid of Spain in 1804-14 |
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| The likeable city of Valladolid |
Anyway, we parked up in one of the 15 legal spaces in Valladolid aware that it had been as hideously busy as Burgos, there were vans all over, half parked in the dividing grass, all sorts. What a difference as towns go, there were Christmas lights, happy families, a lovely atmosphere. So much so we went out again after dinner to look at the lights in the dark.
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| Valladolid. L is Santa Maria la Antigua church, R is the cathedral |
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| Red squirrel in the park |
We heard from David and Linda, our Ozzie mates, who confirmed that bad luck does indeed go in threes, their ferry crossing had been cancelled, from Saturday to Thursday, but they were seeing the silver lining as they were doing some beautiful drives. I emailed back telling them how their story had made friendly ferry lady decide their problems were nothing, so they’d improved someone’s life without even being there, and how horrible the crossing into Spain had been according to a guy who had pulled in beside us about 5 minutes earlier.
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| Lots of happy people in Valladolid's Campo Grande park |
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| The beautiful San Pablo church in Valladolid |
Another day, another city, off to Salamanca (you know, him, the James Bond villain - I knew Brian was wrong but it took me such a long time to remember Scaramanga....) bright and early as the carpark was free till 09.00 and we had a little drive before bus messing about and you never know how long that will take... Actually not very long, we checked into a fairly basic and mostly closed campsite, but all clean, and lots of hot water before hopping on the bus. Campsite location: 41°00'00.9"N 5°40'42.3"W
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| Jackie said she looked happier after I'd cuddled her! As you can see, it was cold! |
As we left Valladolid we reset the control panel, telling Ted he had 220Ah of battery not 80, this obviously confused him as he decided he was 50%? charged, we were expecting this but it’s still horrible! On arrival at the site he decided he was 100% charged and we could breathe.....almost..... despite being on EHU he decided 99% was as high as he was going, so we’ll just have to see how we get on.
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| Tapas and beer in a Salamanca bar |
We liked Salamanca and were very pleased with the trip we took up to the bell tower of the Old Cathedral, only €3.75 but everything seemed to be €3.75 and they could have soon added up. The lady in the tourist information had said it was her favourite, so glad she did. We saw into both new and old cathedrals from above and had some amazing views over the city, saw some very scary cracks that were probably caused by the Lisbon earthquake in 1755. It’s not fallen down yet, but we didn’t hang about in that doorway! Lunch was a 3 tapas and small beer for €4 deal, can’t be bad, except don’t have rabo de cerdo, pigs tail, I can’t recommend it, but you have to try something new.... the other 5 things were great.
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| Views from the splendid cathedral at Salamanca |
Today was a scenic driving day, (though actually not as scenic as the drive from Cabarceno to Burgos,)to Plasencia, a nice enough town, though we weren’t going to bother with the town except it was a longish drive. So, no Aire here, but a carpark on Searchforsites and on Park4night, so we decided to give it a go, just randomly park in a carpark. It’s all legal, as long as we are only parked and not camping, so no chairs, washing, bbqing etc but we arrived and were the only ones here. It’s stupid, but when three other vans turned up about 16.30 we decided perhaps we would be ok to have a glass of wine after all... Tomorrow (which might be today when this gets posted) we are going to a national park, just down the road as we are a bit citied out, do a bit of a walk and stay on another campsite.
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| The old cathedral at Salamanca |
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| Near the top of the bell tower |
We normally do ‘things’ in the morning and chill in the afternoon, today however it’s very foggy, so chilling this morning and hopefully walking this afternoon, after a fine night in the carpark, except for the bin men at 04.00!
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