Spain. Again.

SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA

We find our camp in Santiago pretty easily which is always good when you've been on holiday for over a hundred days! We settle in and find to our delight that there is free wifi in camp so we set to downloading (naughty, naughty) some episodes of Outrageous Fortune. Ryan heads off on a 20 minute walk to the nearest supermarket. Two hours later after getting a bit lost he returns. Seems the campground lady sent him on a wild goose chase, but on the way back from the supermarket he found the easy way back to camp. We have hot showers and crawl into bed early. We haven't headed far north from Portugal but there is a chilly nip in the wind that we are not used to after almost four months of hot summer weather!

The next morning is bitterly cold (remember this is relative to the high 20/early 30 temperatures we've been having!) so we wait for the day to warm up before heading into town. We head to the Santiago De Compostela Cathedral first, and think that all the people in their hiking gear are a little odd, until we remember that a lot of pilgrims walk to here from all over Europe. After a look through the church we head into the streets of the old town which is said to be the prettiest in all of Spain. It's alright, but we've seen better (no really we have - Ronda, Cordoba or Segovia for starters).

We come across the post office so head in to get some stamps for the small mountain of postcards that we've had building up. The lady serving us doesn't seem able to read our '37' that we write down for her to know how many stamps we want (she has no English and we have no Spanish!), but we eventually get it across. We show her the postcards, pointing to the country they are destined for - New Zealand. She tells us the stamps will be 61c which seems suspiciously cheap compared with other countries in Europe we've posted from. We say 'New Zealand, near Australia??' She doesn't quite understand, but does tell us that stamps to Australia are 78c. Hmm. We start to spell New Zealand on a piece of paper for her, but she waves it away and hands over our stamps. We ask in English if she is sure that the stamps are the right ones for postcards to New Zealand. She tells us in Spanish that they are stamps, that she thinks they will do and that she doesn't really care (our interpretation).

We head out into the street extremely uncertain where our postcards would end up if we put these stamps on and post them. A short way down the street we decide to head back and see if anyone else has any better English. We get lucky with a slight improvement in English and a great improvement in a willingness to listen and help. We explain our postcards are for New Zealand and that a woman just sold us 61c stamps. It turns out that we do need 78c stamps so we get a swap done by the same cross-eyed wench who sold us the wrong stamps. Just to be sure we check at the tourist office where they confirm that the 78c stamp is sufficient to get our postcards all the way to little old NZ. We gladly dump all 37 postcards into a post box.

To relax after the tricky stamp business we sit down in the sunshine and have a coffee and a Spanish hot chocolate that's heavy on the chocolate part (mmm so good!)

We have a bit of a mooch about the town, with Ryan admiring all the seafood on display at restaurants along the main street. We pass a couple of pintox bars, with all their tapas on offer lined up along the bar and take some snaps with a couple of cute statue ladies. Ryan has to pull me out of a chocolate shop selling the tasty stuff in all shapes and forms. After a couple of hours we've had enough so head back to camp. Ryan makes friends with the dog in camp that looks kind of like a lion. Maybe he's feeling guilty because last night a golden lab in camp owned by some other campers gobbled up the very un-eatable rind off our cheese out of our rubbish! He wolfed it down before we could do anything to stop him!

LOSING OUR FREEDOM-CAMPING VIRGINITY

Well it was bound to happen sooner or later. From Santiago we had a long drive along the coast to Santander. In Santander we found two camps closed for the season. So we headed further along the coast to Loredo where three camps we could find were all closed. Out of ideas after our long drive we're unsure about whether to keep driving to San Sebastian or stop for the night. Stopping for the night wins, and we decide to follow the lead of three campers already parked up on the grass across from a pony club on the road to two of the campgrounds. Ryan heads up the street to find somewhere playing the F1 race while I stay with Betty.

One by one the campers around us leave until it is just us and a French campervan left. When Ryan returns from watching the race it's almost dark so we settle in for the night. We snuggle into bed when it gets dark and listen to every little sound. We're a little nervous, mainly about being asked to move on by the police as free camping isn't legal in Spain. Around 10pm we are joined by a third van. We spend a quiet night without being accosted by the police or anyone else and move on early in the morning.

THE POST-SUMMER SANDS OF SAN SEBASTIAN

From our little free camping spot we don't have far to go up the road to San Sebastian. Ruth directs us off the motorway to our campground. Soon we are questioning Ruth's choice of roads, as we are on one of the narrowest, one laned, crazy tracks, heading up, up and up away from the motorway. With no chances to turn around we press on, hoping we don't meet any locals coming the other way. Eventually the road tops the hill and broadens out and we find our campground.

We settle in and have showers and some breakfast before we catch a local bus into town. Once in town we hike up to the top of an observatory hill and take in the views of La Concha Bay below us, stretching wide across the beach. We walk back down and walk the length of the beach. We admire the hardiness of the old locals who are in the water swimming. Once I dip my toes in gingerly and beat a hasty retreat from the chilly waves my admiration for those swimming increases. It was not warm! At the other end of La Concha Bay we catch an old funicular up a ridiculously steep hill to another viewpoint. After finishing our day in town we head back to camp and watch some more Outrageous.

On our second day in San Seb we explore the streets of the old town and eventually find an elusive Christmas decoration. We continue our exploring and are taking pictures of a pretty square we happened across when an old lady taps us on the arm and beckons for us to follow her. We follow her across the square, not sure what's going on, is she offering to take our picture for us? No, she wants to show us something - its an old black and white picture of the square. Through our Spanish/English divide we manage to understand that the square has been used since ages ago for bullfighting. The apartments with balconies are used for viewing the fighting, with numbers still above each apartment balcony for spectators. She tells us that if you had a lot of money you would watch from the balconies. If you had only a little money then you had less advantageous seats. The old black and white photo was taken during a bullfight that Napoleon was watching.

We thank her and carry on our way, exploring the streets until we come across a little cafe serving chocolate and churros, which we haven't tried yet. We head in and order two servings. Our chocolate comes first as it's kept warm and viscous in a machine on top of the counter. This is not just chocolatey hot chocolate, its hot, melted, liquid chocolate. We sit sipping teaspoons of the stuff, giving ourselves chocolate moustaches and smiling chocolate filled smiles at one another and generally being very grown up while we wait for our churros. The lady indicates that they just need to cook first, which intrigues us, us being not exactly sure what churros even are! They come out soon enough, two piping hot platefuls. Turns out they're a type of donut, but much thinner and not quite round, more horseshoe shaped. They're hot and good and covered in sugar. We discover that you don't need much melted hot chocolate and hot sugary churros to fill you up and that we probably could have shared a serving! But then we wouldn't have any to takeaway with us in a little doggie-bag for later!

From the cafe we decide to pop into a supermarket and get some chilli beans and natural yoghurt for nachos for dinner. But things go a bit awry at the checkout. It turned out that the yoghurt was part of a four-pack. We don't want four natural yoghurts. We try to indicate that we did not know it was a four pack and wish to leave the yoghurt behind and just take the chilli beans. This has worked for us in a number of other supermarkets where we've unwittingly made the same mistake and separated a yoghurt. It does not work this time. The checkout woman has an unusual take on things. We must either buy the full four-set of yoghurts or she will not let us buy anything! Not even the poor unrelated kidney beans! We are at an impasse, she will not let us leave the yoghurt and will not let us buy just the kidney beans! Eventually frustrated we walk out. No yoghurt and no kidney beans.