Going to Spain

Being very organised people, we were on the road at 9.40 am, heading for a town called Valdepeñas which happens to be about 200 kms from Madrid. Rather than do a 600 km drive to Madrid in one go we thought it made sense to break the back of the journey, have a restful night, and then drive in to Madrid. There we had to hand in our car and catch the AVE, or high speed train, to Segovia from Madrid’s Chamartin station.

Booking.com found a reasonably priced hotel just out of Valdepeñas which was very easy to find, being at the 194km turnoff from the A4. Only thing is, there is more than one Valdepeñas in Spain and our GPS, although heading us in the right direction to start with, then told us to turn off the A4 and go onto a regional backroad. After 6kms we just knew that this was not right. After a look at Google maps, and whatever we had to hand, we backtracked and hit the A4 again. Just as well we did, because the Valdepeñas we had been going to was nowhere near where we wanted to go. A loss of 12 kms is neither here nor there in the greater scheme of things, and so we kept going toward the REAL Valdepeñas.

The thing that was most noticeable during our drive was the huge number of olive trees. We saw millions of them, and probably another million or so of fresh plantings. We wonder just how much olive oil and olives the planet needs!

The hotel near Valdepeñas is one of those places that would have been built 30 years ago, and was at the time a pretty good show. The rooms were huge, everything was as good as you could ask for, and the staff were so very helpful.

Robyn had not slept well the last few nights so she had a kip while I went for a 4km walk up through vineyards. It was dark when I returned, but so peaceful.

The restaurant was very, very quiet, although we were eating early for them, but we enjoyed our meal, and the helpful staff. Local wine, local olive oil, local bread, and local menu added up to a nice experience.Read more