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Castles in Spain road trip

September - October 2018
A 22-day adventure by Tim Lynette Read more
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  • TravelerCastles in Spain road trip
    Day 16

    Bilbao

    September 25, 2018 in Spain ⋅ 🌙 13 °C

    As first I thought that Bilbao didn't have anything going for it - a fairly boring city without any sites other than the Guggenheim. After a day and night I see that I am mistaken. Not great sights but a really nice friendly city that it's easy to feel comfortable. It reminds me a lot of Xerez. We looked at the cathedral , another one, but it is small and rather like a working church, and without the usual Spanish heavy decoration. Tomorrow a quick trip to the archaeological museum, a final long lunch and then to the airport for home. It's been a great trip, but I think I'm ready to go home. Until the next one!Read more

  • TravelerCastles in Spain road trip
    Day 16

    Guggenheim museum

    September 25, 2018 in Spain ⋅ ⛅ 18 °C

    This spectacular building sits on the river front in the heart of Bilbao and was opened in 1997 to a Frank Gehry design, and is probably the reason most people come to Bilbao. We spent all morning there and it is certainly worth the visit. The building itself is created from huge sheets of thin titanium and shimmers and glows in the sun. Inside the exhibition spaces are huge, and perfect for modern sculptures and installations.

    Outside sit some sculptures like the huge spider, and a puppy made out of fresh flowers which was supposed to be temporary but so big was the outcry when the time came to take it down that they decided to keep it and water and maintain it. Our favourite piece was a light installation of pillars of red words that flowed up to the ceiling. After a while you realise that the wall behind it acts like a reflection in a pool of water and backs of the pillars, with blue words, are reflected back to you. Then you see people walking out from behind between the pillars and you see that you can walk through and view it from behind.    Read more

  • TravelerCastles in Spain road trip
    Day 15

    Final day of road trip

    September 24, 2018 in Spain ⋅ ⛅ 18 °C

    We left LaGuardia this morning for a longish drive to Bilbao. Our first stop was at a viewpoint up the mountain but it was in the clouds and drizzling so we didn't get much view. So far this trip we have been really lucky with the weather. We had only had a couple of short light showers. Yesterday was very hot 33C but today struggled to reach 20C and feels decidedly chilly. Our next stop was in Guernica to pay our respects before continuing to Bilbao where we have dropped off the car. We now have 2 days in Bilbao before we fly home.Read more

  • TravelerCastles in Spain road trip
    Day 14

    Granny meets the dinosaurs!

    September 23, 2018 in Spain ⋅ ☀️ 29 °C

    120 million years ago the plain south of Rioja was a flat swampy wetland, home to many herbivore dinosaurs and so also the carnivore raptors. As these dinosaurs walked in the mud , it dried, was covered by later sediments and fossilised. Their footprints can still be seen today as the sediments have eroded. We drove around some of the sites and to a small interpretation centre. It was blinding hot out in the hillsides but I've never seen anything of dinosaurs before so well worth it. In many places they have put up replicas so you see what the creatures that made the prints looked like. Many of the tracks are from bipeds, in one case a family of two adults and a junior iguanodon, but there were also tracks of giant quadripeds such as saurodons.Read more

  • TravelerCastles in Spain road trip
    Day 13

    laguardia archaeology

    September 22, 2018 in Spain ⋅ ⛅ 24 °C

    In the afternoon we visited two sites just outside of Laguardia. The first was the remains of a celticiberian settlement dating from 1400 BC to 400 BC. Although there are only the low remains of walls it's easy to see the layout of the village and the streets through it. The outer walls would have been just wattle and daube to keep the animals in so they have all disappeared. At the site there is a nice little museum of some of the finds, and it was a great place to sit and eat our bocadillos (rolls) with spectacular views around us. Then on to a stone dolmen from around 3000 b.c, one of a great number all over the Basque Country, like in the uk and northern France. It took us a while to find and Google decided to send us over the hills over rough gravel track roads, and when we got there we could see the proper Tarmac road that we could have used.Read more

  • TravelerCastles in Spain road trip
    Day 13

    laguardia

    September 22, 2018 in Spain ⋅ ⛅ 27 °C

    We spent the morning wandering the narrow medieval streets of Laguardia, and walking around the walls. The town is so small and confined to a narrow hilltop that it only takes 20 or 30 minutes to walk around. The tiny main square has a clock that as it chimes the hours little people come and out and spin and dance. It seems to be a huge tourist attraction as the square every hour is full of tour groups standing waiting for the show. We also went into one of the churches here, which was built in the 14c with a magnificent coloured portico. This was repainted in the 17c and an extension to the church built so from then it wasn't open to the elements and now is still in fine condition. Later the streets were filled the sounds of a basque pipe group - being Celtic they seem to have the bagpipes in heritage.Read more

  • TravelerCastles in Spain road trip
    Day 13

    Bodega visits

    September 22, 2018 in Spain ⋅ ⛅ 15 °C

    On our way into Laguardia we stopped to see the winery of Marques de Riscal, which is one of the biggest and most famous Rioja names. The estate is huge and I guess hadn't suffered much from Spain's economic problems as it is beautifully maintained and has built a splendid new hotel and restaurant designed by Frank Gehry of the Bilbao Guggenheim museum fame. The building has become a tourist attraction in itself and well worth a visit. In the car park we came across a vintage Bentley on a British Bentley owners club tour of Spain and Portugal. Later in the day, in Laguardia, we went to tour the opposite size bodega. In the town of Laguardia itself, the bodega of Carlos San Pedro is family owned and operated by just seven people, with casual labour help, producing only 50,000 bottles a year. All the houses in Laguardia, including our hotel, have dug caves and tunnels down into the rock underneath them, and the bodega still uses theirs for wine making and storage. We tasted three wines there, a 2014 crianza, a 2010 reserva and a 2009 grand crianza which were all really good, and the best, the grand crianza superb.Read more

  • TravelerCastles in Spain road trip
    Day 12

    Rioja

    September 21, 2018 in Spain ⋅ ☀️ 25 °C

    Fòr most of this trip we have been travelling through brown flat countryside- the massive high Spanish plain - that is used mainly for growing wheat, now harvested. Also mile upon mile of sunflowers ripening in the sun. This must be sunflower oil country rather than olive oil. No fields of olive trees like there are in Andalusia. Just once we saw a few cows in a field but there is not much grass here for them.
    Today all that changed and as we left Burgos we encountered hills and now we are surrounded by mountains - and VINES! We have arrived in Rioja and everywhere there are vines covered in purple grapes just waiting to be made into delicious red wine. We are no longer in Castille y Leon we have crossed into Pays Vasco - Basque country and all the signs are in a strange language - a bit like Welsh.    Read more

  • TravelerCastles in Spain road trip
    Day 11

    Camino de Santiago

    September 20, 2018 in Spain ⋅ ⛅ 17 °C

    When we were in Segovia the road outside our hotel had brass scallop shells embedded in it, which are the symbol of the pilgrims taking the Camino de Santiago to Santiago de Compostela. The story is that Saint James , having being beheaded in Jerusalem was buried in Spain and his shrine became a centre for pilgrimage. There are now many routes of the Camino, including ones from Britain, but the major ones go through northern Spain and the Basque Country, and many go through Burgos. A minor one goes from Madrid through Segovia by our hotel, and there is even one from andulcia from Seville. Burgos has many hostels for the travellers, and the Camino is a big thing here with maps and souvenirs everywhere. Our apartment here is in close sights of the cathedral so there are scallop shells in the road here too, and lots of pilgrims trekking the streets.Read more

  • TravelerCastles in Spain road trip
    Day 11

    A trip 1.3 million years into the past

    September 20, 2018 in Spain ⋅ ⛅ 20 °C

    Woke this morning to thick fog, with even the spires of the cathedral barely visible. Thankfully it dispersed as soon as the sun came up and the day was clear and hot as usual. We drove out of town to the site of the archeological digs at Atapuerca, where a series of cave systems were discovered during the cutting of a railway. It is a dig that has been going on for forty years and shows no sign of getting to any kind of end. The caves have animal and human habitation going back 1.3 million years (that's a lot!) with a series of types of humans, including a completely new subspecies never found before. Sadly the tour around the site was all in rapid Spanish so we didn't keep up very much. Must go and get a Spanish refresher course I think!

    Back in Burgos we trekked up the hill overlooking the city to go to the castle (oh, another one!) which was founded in the 9c and rebuilt in the 14c. It was the centre of napoleon's army in Spain until Wellington came along and defeated it. No doubt with Sharpe's help - read the books !

    Then back to the museum to go and see again the finds from this mornings dig site.

    We leave Burgos in the morning to drive to Rioja. We have enjoyed this city a lot, it has a lot going for it, and the food has been excellent- always a big plus. In places you find life sized statues of ordinary people doing ordinary things, like the photo of a young lady looking out over the river. It all seems very human.    Read more

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