Back to town

Day 20 - 4th of June

Digger had a restless night and seemed a little nervous of the local cow's clonking bells, he wasn't too impressed when he saw them close up in a field yesterday.

PHOTO Cows and Bull

We found him curled up in the footwells rather than his usual bed space under the table - he is a funny chap!

Another morning walk on the deserted beach before breakfast (the surfers seem to be later risers than us) then we made plans for the day.

PHOTO Surfers still asleep

We needed some essential laundry doing but rather than find a campsite just for that Caro used the shower tray as a big bowl and did some handwashing to see us through, we reckon we have another couple of weeks before we'll be home. Now needing fresh water and to empty wastes we decided to return to the service point at Cangas de Onis to replenish  and empty our tanks.

Leaving this beautiful beach location we again inched our way through the access hole in the rock and got on our way via a Mercadona at Arriondas to stock up on provisions too.

Settled back onto the Aire at Cangas de Onis we got our jobs done and went for a walk along the rushing river that goes through the town, its signposted to be a salmon area so we were hoping to see one or two leaping up river - apparently not today though. Digger waded into the river at a calm stretch and cooled himself down.

We walked back through the town centre to find some wifi. There was a bar with a wifi sign up and the kind lady said that we could take Digger in with us. Returning with our laptop we settled down with a beer to upload some blog. The beer was good but the wifi just wouldn't accept a connection so we finished our drinks and left to find somewhere else. The tourist Office was open and told us of a particular street that is a free wifi zone so we headed there.

Another bar and another kind lady who let us take Digger inside, more beer and success this time so the blog got uploaded, Digger curled out fast asleep under the table - he really is a great 'pub dog'! A great bar, not unlike an English pub so we spent a lot of the afternoon there - hic!

There was a bit of a fiesta feel about the town and a fairground belted out some techno stuff from the dodgems until late but all went quiet just before midnight so we all got a good night's sleep.

PHOTO Fun on the dodgems

Are we nearly there yet?

Day 16 Tuesday 31st May

Woken early to the sound of a grounds maintenance crew going about their business of cutting the grass of the hospital grounds next door to us we got up a little earlier than normal and were pleased to see that the weather was brightening a little. After breakfast we made use of the services (always best to when you can!) and set off for our next Aire along the coast.

An hour or so later we pulled off the main road to get nearer to the sea to search out a bit of suitable parking. We stumbled across a beautiful little rocky cove at A Corida which would be ideal for overnighting, at least out of season, and stayed for lunch and a walk, knowing that we only had an hour or two to get to our destination for the day.

PHOTO Bay

Back on the road we eventually found the campsite/aire at Santa Maria Del Mar only to find it was shut and then that it only opened at weekends - brilliant! Never mind, there was another Aire less than an hour away. Our PDA that runs our TomTom switched itself off unhelpfully and would not reset. Eventually it came back to life but showed us driving about 100 metres to one side of the road we were actually on! Another reset and it seemed better although the graphics became sluggish and difficult to relate to.

After struggling with TomTom's directions we squeezed down some tiny roads and arrived at Aviles, or the Aire behind the restaurant by the hospital. This one is on a grass pitch which despite assurances seemed to offer the possibility of getting bogged down with the damp weather, so we moved on again.

An hour or so later and a little inland we arrived at the Aire at El Entrego, a car park in a scruffy edge of town location surrounded by flats. Oh joy! The designated motorhome spaces were blocked by parked cars so with all things considered we moved on again.....

TomTom was still being a pain with slow responses but we made our way out of town heading for our next option a couple of hours away! We climbed out of the town gaining altitude quickly on a twisty hairpinned road that although two way would have been impossible to pass 2 vehicles, no crash barriers and serious drop offs to boot! The rain started again which dampened our spirits further.

On and on we went, up, round, down, round, up again - maybe an hour later we came out onto a reasonable road so were able to improve our pace a bit and ticked off the kilometres to the next Aire at Cangas de Onis eventually arriving at about 10pm.

After a quick chat with another English couple (a rare site on this trip) we had home cooked MacBurgers and went to bed.