Tag Archives: Caceres

Back and Back…

Posted on by
Reply

It’s become clear, on this terraced camp site opposite an industrial estate in Caceres, Spain, that our electrics are not going to work in any of their sockets. Worse still, it seems that the problem is ours, not theirs. Everyone else’s van is plugged in and working fine. This is a major hitch to our plans. We can cope for two days on battery power before we need to move and charge up, but we’d planned to stay longer in some of the sites we’ve booked- one, on the coast, almost a week.

Husband goes down to reception and returns triumphant, bearing the name and address of someone in the industrial estate who could help. The man in reception had been kind and helpful. We pin our hopes on the name and address and settle in for the evening. I’m relieved to have had a shower in the cleaner bathroom, as although the ranting French lady and her husband have moved on, they’ve been replaced by a Dutch couple.

By morning the weather hasn’t improved and it’s colder, overcast and breezy. With the address of the electrician in the SATNAV, we plunge into the industrial estate, pulling in at a forecourt. The helpful campsite reception man has phoned ahead to alert him, explaining that we are English and a youngish man appears, brandishing a phone, on which he has downloaded the language app. It takes no more than 30 seconds for him to shrug and shake his head, once he’s seen the set-up. That’s a ‘no’ then.

We trundle round the roads of the industrial estate in the remote hope that there’s somewhere that might help and I try one or two likely places as well as some unlikely ones. Eventually we decide it’s no-go. I begin to feel that this lack of interest is more to do with the impending Easter holiday than anything else. Everywhere is winding down. Everyone is focused on their time off.

There’s nothing for it but to turn back, so we set the SAT back to Salamanca and get back on the motorway. At the whizzo services I go inside for over-the-top chocolatey pastries to revive our flagging spirits, then we’re on again, back to Salamanca, where, at least we know there’s plenty of space. The weather continues to get colder and there’s a nasty, biting edge to the wind.

When we turn into the entrance to ‘Don Quijote’, the lovely Salamanca site, I notice a building we hadn’t seen before- ‘Motorhome Services’. Motorhome Services! I experience a frisson of excitement. We’ll check in and investigate, though it has some hefty gates and they are closed. We check in and enquire at reception, where the man says they might help, although holidays are fast approaching and they’ll be wanting to get their existing work finished beforehand.

On the site, everyone is swathed in puffa jackets, hats and scarves. It is perishing cold now- 3 degrees! We won’t be getting chairs out for a bask in the sunshine. We wait until the motorhome place is open then take the van along there. A woman emerges from a large hanger and beckons us in. She looks. She has us plug in to their socket. It blows. She shrugs, shakes her head. I feel my shoulders sag.

In the morning we track back towards Burgos. It’s now Wednesday and we can’t get a ferry home until Saturday so we opt to spend two nights. We can hunker down with books and at least now we have internet. We check back in. The wind is blowing horizontally across the site and I’m hoping a tree doesn’t fall on anyone. In the evening we go to the restaurant for a change of scene.

The afternoon of the following day is brighter and we stretch our legs with a bracing walk around the extensive park by the site. It’s been landscaped with barbecues and footpaths, one of which follows the river. Along the way we encounter more pilgrims with their walking poles and large backpacks. Presumably they’ll be trekking to Burgos for the Easter shindig.

We leave next day and head to a site on the coast between Santander and Bilbao where we’ve stayed before. We’ll stay our final two nights there- and we have a plan for our final day…

For fiction by me, Jane Deans, search for novels: The Conways at Earthsend [an eco-thriller] and The Year of Familiar Strangers [mystery drama]. Visit my website: janedeans.com

On to Salamanca

Posted on by
Reply

So we leave Burgos and continue down towards our next stop, Salamanca. The Spanish motorways are excellent; toll-free, quiet and well served with service areas, although they do vary quite a bit, some being right by the roadside, others a detour into a village. Some of the roadside ones boast modest hotels, together with a host of facilities including cafes and shops. Others may just be a petrol station with a coffee machine.

We take a break, veering off to a village gas station where a man emerges and dolls out the diesel rather than it being self-service. This is endearing, a step back in time for us. There is a small parking area and three picnic tables beside the petrol station and as it’s fine enough to sit outside we have coffee at one of the tables, entertained by a stream of hikers, pilgrims making their way along the path towards Santiago de Compostela. At this stage, close to Easter, it seems unlikely that they’ll achieve Santiago, but perhaps they use a cheeky bit of public transport? Or is part of the way enough? At one point an entire family turns up in a 4×4, get out, smoke cigarettes, change their shoes and set off walking…

It’s not too far to Salamanca. For those who haven’t been to this most gorgeous of cities, it is well worth a visit- a historic centre of beautiful buildings of golden stone- best seen in sunshine, when the yellow stone zings. But again, we’ve been before and it’s not our destination this time so we check in for one night. I remember the site, tidy and tree strewn, by a river, with a cycle/footpath leading into the city. The sun has enough warmth for us to get chairs out for a bask, which we do. There’s also a tempting looking restaurant at which we just about manage to squeeze a booking by saying we’ll go at 9.30pm. It’s a wonderful meal, though and worth the wait, and while we feel it’s late for us to be eating there are many coming in later still on this Saturday night- some at 10.30pm! This is Spain, after all, with a culture of late evening dining that includes small children, too.

We’re off again in the morning, the weather having turned more gloomy, but we strike out on the road to Caceres- another city we’ve visited in the past, memorable for its nesting storks on every lofty perch, its wacky Easter parades of floats and pointy-hat adorned bearers and its huge plates of beef. En route we stop at a wonderful service area with a fruit and veg stall, shop and cafe, where coaches are pulling in, presumably carrying Easter travellers. Easter is a big holiday for the Spanish and everyone, it seems, is on the move.

By the time we get to Caceres there’s a strong breeze blowing. We locate the camp site but it’s not one we recognise and I’m at a loss to recall where we staryed last time. This site is opposite and industrial estate and is terraced, with pitches housing individual bathrooms, according to our ACSI book. We check in and find our pitch, which is under a large tree. When I take a look at the bathroom I’m less than impressed. It’s grubby, with leaves blown inside and furniture piled up in the shower cubicle.

I go in to put the kettle on while Husband grabs the cable to plug the van in. But there’s no power. He tries the socket in the neighbouring [empty] pitch. No power. He goes to reception, where he’s told it’s ok to use next-door’s socket, although it’s becoming clear that something is badly amiss. Next door’s bathroom, however, is altogether cleaner, so I get a shower in there before anyone else turns up- which they do- a massive motorhome and a woman gabbling a tirade of French at us with no thought that we might not be compatriots on this Spanish site…

For fiction by me, Jane Deans, search for novels: The Conways at Earthsend [an eco-thriller] and The Year of Familiar Strangers [mystery drama]. Visit my website: janedeans.com

Spanish Nights and Gourmet Delights

Posted on by
Reply

We are sitting outside at a restaurant table in Caceres, central Spain. It is 9.30pm. The balmy evening sky is a clear cobalt blue and I pause in my perusal of the incomprehensible menu to zoom my camera lens up to the summit of a church steeple where two storks have mounted guard over their mountainous nest. It is a pleasing shot-mostly silhouette. At any rate-I am pleased.

Meandering up from Portugal through central Spain has become an unexpected pleasure and explains why this kind of travel is such a joy. You happen across places you’ve barely, or never heard of and yet they may be tourist magnets [underlining your ignorance] or simply unpretentious, lovely and little known.

Caceres is evidently well known, judging by the thronging masses clogging up the centre on this Tuesday evening, although it is Holy Week-only the most important week of the world in the entire Christian world, which explains the crowds waiting outside the cathedral, lining the roads and blocking our access to any likely-looking restaurants. From the grand cathedral doors some elaborately got-up figures have emerged. They are dressed in white habits with purple capes and some sport alarming pointy headgear a la Klu-Klux-Klan. One is trudging along with a black timber cross slung over his shoulder, for all the world as if he is off to complete some roofing work.

We perform some lengthy manoeuvres in order to access the square offering up most of the restaurants which takes up enough time for Husband to become vociferously grumpy, such are his hunger pangs. He has expressed a desire for steak and nothing else will do.

Having accomplished the mission and found a table by virtue of being only two rather than a family of eight we enter a period of confusion involving several waiters until someone is found who can explain the list of delights. The attention of a Spanish diner at the neighbouring table is captured. My schoolgirl Spanish fails beyond ‘carne’. Earlier I’d thought myself accomplished when asking ‘Hay aseos aqui?’ in the tourist office but my understanding of the rapid stream that issued as reply let me down. Fortunately the toilets were next door.

We finish our starters-enormous plates of salad-and some small plates are brought, plus steak knives-we are evidently to get a shared dish. A large area of table is cleared. A waiter emerges bearing aloft a platter the size of a tray which spits and sizzles like a cornered alley cat then lowers into the cleared space something that may be the pieces of half a cow. Full of salad we stare speechless at the mountain of sputtering ribs before dissolving into semi-hysterical laughter, which is vastly entertaining for the neighbouring Spaniard.

We do our best, struggling through as much as we can before admitting defeat. Would we like desert? Er…

When I ask Husband why they are taking so long with the bill he tells me they are in the kitchen chewing on the returned ribs. He mimes this, using his hands, prompting a loud explosion of laughter from me and causing the Spaniard’s face to crease into mirth despite having no knowledge of the cause. I mop my tears with the napkin, we pay up and leave, only to discover we’ve missed the last bus back. Ho hum.