Adventures With Harvey

Pays Basque… and pintxos!

The best part of a visit to Northern Spain is undoubtedly Pintxos. “What” I hear you ask… “are pintxos?” This is the Basque word for tapas and with this in mind, the way to eat an evening meal in Bilbao or San Sebastian is as follows: Visit pintxos bar #1. Choose a delicious little titbit from those displayed behind the bar, or order a small hot morsel from the menu. Order a liquid refreshment of your choice. Find a little table (outside if the weather is warm enough) and consume, either on your own or perhaps with new friends you have made along the way. Visit pintxos bar #2. Repeat. Visit pintxos bar #3… you get the picture. The pintxos could be anything from slow cooked beef cheek to goat’s cheese wrapped in courgette to crab served on a slice of baguette. We spent 2 wonderful evenings in San Sebastian doing exactly as described above however I’ll flesh this story out a little more shortly.

Our first stop in Pays Basque was Bilbao, a middle sized city (population 340,000) bisected by the Nervión River which then travels a further 15km before reaching the Bay of Biscay and the Atlantic Ocean. Your intrepid correspondent rode his bike almost all the way to that point, passing by the little towns of Portugalete and Santurtzi which were quaint, picturesque and bustling. The most interesting aspect on the return ride was crossing the river via the Vizcaya Bridge which hardly qualifies as a bridge at all if I was to be totally honest. Built in 1893, it was a revolutionary method of river crossing, you’ll have to check out the photo, but the river has basically been spanned by a huge overhead gantry which supports a type of cable car hanging from wires many metres below. The aforementioned cable car can carry 6-8 cars plus a handful of bikes, motorbikes etc as well as several dozen foot passengers and takes only a few minutes to cross the river. This unique solution would have cost a fraction of the price to build a normal bridge but retained the navigability of the river for even the largest of ships. Ingenious!

Bilbao’s most famous tourist attraction is the Guggenheim Museum, built on former dock wasteland right in the middle of the city. By all accounts this one drawcard has been responsible for the rejuvenation of Bilbao from a downtrodden shadow of its former prosperous self to a modern and vibrant tourist town. And to some extent we would concur, Bilbao is a wonderful place to visit, the old city is alive with buskers and all the hustle-and-bustle you might expect from a place thus rejuvenated. However, the museum was… how shall we say… interesting! The building itself is worth the price of admission, massive in size with some of the most creative modern architecture we have seen (with a few exceptions such as Sagrada Familia etc) it is undoubtedly built to impress. However, the contents of the museum left us shaking our heads a little, especially after the huge enjoyment we had from our visit to the Prado in Madrid just a week or two earlier. The Guggenheim is a modern art museum and perhaps we’re just a bit philistine-like when it comes to such complexities however your author found himself actually laughing out loud a few times. “Is that it?” I said to my lovely travelling companion, and on most occasions she agreed with me that what we were looking at was far too abstract for our little brains. Overall, we had a great time visiting the city and we would certainly recommend Bilbao be added to any Spanish itinerary.

I’ll leave you with one other little vignette before we leave Bilbao altogether. Harvey’s parking spot was amazing, right on the top of a hill overlooking the town, you could see the river below meandering through with the magnificent football stadium (home to Athletic Bilbao) in the foreground. The day we arrived we met a lovely couple from Doncaster in South Yorkshire although their names could have been straight out of Home & Away – yes, our new friends were named Grub and Shaz! They were walking their two little dogs and stopped to say gidday, they were having motorhome mechanical issues so we were well qualified to commiserate with them!

Anyway, the next day just as Grub stopped by for another chat a gust of wind caught our awning, it was the first time we'd used it in a few months and I forgot one small but critical part of the erection process... which meant that the awning blew up and over onto the roof of Harvey, breaking a couple of the fixing brackets and one of the skylights.

"do you need a hand?" asked Grub.

"yes I sure could do with one" I replied"

"all you'll need is a cordless drill and a hacksaw, it’ll be easy to bodgie that up. Grub is the best bodgier in Doncaster you know!"

"I don't actually have those tools on board - do you?"

And about 2 minutes later Grub returns with a full tool kit, is down on his knees drill in hand displaying his not inconsiderable builders crack, and about half an hour later the two of us had got the awning working better than it was before. We invited them over for dinner in Harvey that evening and enjoyed getting to know our new friends over a nice meal and a few bottles of rosé!!

Not far up the road is San Sebastian which we actually enjoyed even more (if that was indeed possible). We arrived on Friday which happened to be St Patricks Day so the first stop after walking through the town was to find an Irish pub and down a pint of Guinness. Which turned out to be the strangest experience ever! It was 5pm on Paddy’s Day, in a pub called Belfast and there was only ourselves and one other group there… and they left shortly after we arrived. There was no Guinness on tap (although Murphy’s is a quite satisfactory alternative) and not a drunk Irishman in sight – it was odd to say the least! Throughout the evening we didn’t really see any Paddy’s celebrations, I guess there can’t be that many Irish living in San Sebastian. However, there was no time to waste, there were pintxos bars to visit. As I mentioned earlier, the culture in this part of the world involves visiting a bunch of these little bars and on the Friday we met a young English couple, Sam & Josh who ended up joining us for the evening and then on the Saturday when it was the final day of Six Nations Rugby we made friends with an Irishman called Mac and a couple of his people as well as Colin and Linda, also from Ireland, then Sam & Josh came joined us at the same pub and watched the rugby with us. Then we bumped into them again later in the evening for more pintxos. Too much fun I tell you!!!

San Sebastian has the most stunning beach, by all accounts it’s the most beautiful city beach in Europe and we would wholeheartedly concur! It’s a perfect horseshoe shape with a variety of art deco apartment blocks and other waterfront architecture from different eras. There is the obligatory church up on the hill, a carousel and lots of liveliness and atmosphere, and we arrived on a gorgeous warm sunny day. Your author wished he had been a little more organised because it would most definitely have been warm and pleasant enough for a swim.

We were sad when it was time to farewell Spain, we’ve had an absolute blast on our 3 months or so on the Iberian Peninsula however it was time to head back into France to continue our adventures.

Pays Basque is the term used to describe this part of the world, it is partly in Spain and partly in France and is an ethnically distinct people group that have culturally more in common with their cousins over the border than they do with their countrymen from other regions. Their language is also unique and not known to be related to any other in the world. In France the main towns are Biarritz and Bayonne which is where this report will shortly conclude. Biarritz was the first stop and is a gorgeous seaside town which was a playground of the rich and famous up until the 1970’s. Much of the architecture is old-fashionedly grand however most definitely in the ‘faded glory’ category. These days it is a world-famous surf beach which we enjoyed strolling, particularly the hall of fame which has the feet of famous surfers concreted into the ground, much like the hands at Hollywood Boulevard. Your author was pleased to pick out a couple of names he recognised, those being Kelly Slater and Mick Fanning.

Since contemplating the lack of a swim in San Sebastian, an Atlantic Ocean swim was deemed necessary so on this outing to town the requisite boardies and towel were packed. This little foray now means this correspondent has now been fortunate enough to swim in the big three: Pacific, Indian and Atlantic Oceans as well as the Mediterranean and Red Seas. The water was a chilly 13deg and the waves very large and dumpy so it was indeed a short but very refreshing and satisfying dip. Needless to say Anita was content to take the photos.

Finally, we travelling Woodies have had some very exciting news in the last few days - it’s been confirmed that we’ll be having some visitors over the summer, Anita’s Dad & Step-Mum Ian and Sophia will be coming to Europe in June and plan to spend some of that time hanging out with us in Italy. Also, our oldest daughter Deanna is reasonably well set on heading over in August to spend some time with us exploring the Croatian coast. We also know of several other friends who will be in Europe over the summer so we hope it will be a fun time connecting with friends in rather different than usual locations!

With that in mind, our general direction of travel in the upcoming week or two will be east, we expect to work our way along the south coast of France and head into Italy to enjoy some spring weather and hopefully not too many crowds!

Wishing all of our friends and family lots of love and all the very best from… (with appropriate sniggers from those with me in the blue corner)… the town of Condom in France 😊😊😊