298 Spain to Madrid

25th August 2018  Miles Today 5, total 233.


After a night of rocking and rolling in bed, we arose to find that the bad weather was easing and the barometer was rising. Wohoo...

We had breakfast and then waited the long day with our Kindles in full swing for the ferry to dock at Santander. Finally.... we were there....

The Santander waterfront.

The call to go down to the car deck finally came at around 5pm and after 9 flights of stairs (fortunately downwards this time) we were reacquainted with Wallace and eventually rode off the ferry and into Spain.

I set the sat nav to take us to our first hotel, The Posada, El Jardin de Angela (Garden of Angels) and arrived there after about 10 minutes. It took a few minutes to get back in the swing of driving on the wrong side of the road but all was good. The hotel was a quaint old place perched on the top of a small hill. The walls were painted purple and with the old furniture, looked like a film set from the Munsters. It was not unpleasant, just weird. We liked it a lot.

The hotel Posada (the top bit) from our restaurant for the evening.

The hotel manager advised Karen where to go and eat. I have to say, she is getting braver at speaking in Spanish, good job too really as the owner didn't speak any English. We walked to a restaurant that overlooked the small valley we had just walked through.

A clearing sky for our first Spanish sunset.

We got to the restaurant, the 'ASADOR EL ESCONDRIJO' at about 7:30 and thought we might be there too late. We were wrong, it turned out that in keeping with this part of Spain, the place opens at 9pm. So we did what we do best when bored or waiting for something. Hit the bar!

Karen asked for a Vodka and Tonic and was given this monster. The wry smile says it all.

 

 

 

Once the restaurant was open we went through and were served by a Romanian and later, a Moroccan waiter. Spain, it appears is the same as the UK in this respect.
I ordered fish and the Romanian guy showed me a large fresh beast and told me it would be nice. I am not a lover of fish. I like the taste but the bones just put me off but I thought when in Spain etc. The filleted fish turned up and it was delicious. My likes have been altered to some extent.

I orderd fish. Technical name is 'fish'. (I have no real idea what it is)

 The restaurant is clearly very popular as toward the end of our meal, the place was packed and the atmosphere was very pleasant. We would recomend this place to anyone. The staff were helpful and polite. It was a good re-introduction to Spain.

Thew outside of the place bore no resemblance to the huge interior.

We left the restaurant at about 10pm intending to walk back across the valley and go to bed. We didn't quite make it. About 4 doors down, we passed a small bar, the 'CASA SAMPEDRO' that had been closed on our way out and it was seriously buzzing. We had no choice but to mix with the locals and more drinks with free Tapas. Awesome.

Eventually, at about midnight we finally got to bed. We like Spain a lot.

26th August 2018  Miles Today, 266, Total 499.

We have a long hard day ahead of us today. We have 260 miles (416km now we are in Spain) to do and it is likely to be hot as we approach Madrid in the centre of the country.
We set off along what we thought was to be a boring motorway, or Autovia as they call them here. We were pleasantly surprised. The scenery was such as would be called a National Park in the UK. Having said that, we started out at about 10am and the temperature was 20 deg C. After a couple of hours, the temperature had gone up to 28 deg C. We were doing fine buy the sky was clear and the sun was beating down on my thighs and they were cooking.
The landscape at the beginning of the day was lush and green like this.

We passed through several mountain tunnels and eventually ended up at over 1400m (4,600 ft), higher that Ben Nevis.

These were strange. Listening to the engine and exhaust noise bouncing off the walls was weird.

The Motorways were very quiet. This is normal for Spain and it was also Sunday si I suppose that helped. We stopped for a coffee just after half way and after we set off again, we noticed that the landscape was changing into yellow parched fields. It was also hotting up some more. It was now after 1pm and as they say, 'Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun', so we did. The temperature was now up to 31 deg C but we were still doing OK.

The landscape was now semi desert. It was hot too.

We just had to get this. They are all over Spain and obviously part of it's culture and heritage.

As we entered Madrid, the temperature had gone up to 35 deg C and it was stifling. It was bearable when on main roads with the wind chill but when we hit the traffic lights of the city with all our bike gear on it was positively horrible. Fortunately, the roads were very quiet at 3pm on a hot Sunday afternoon when all sensible people were having a siesta and we got to the hotel relatively quickly.

Finally. We were about to get really hot.

We booked in and I took Wallace to a secure parking area. We were tired hot and sweaty so after a shower we decided to wash our dirty clothes in the bath. We had nowhere to hang them up so I popped back to Wallace and borrowed some elastic bungees off of him and made a washing line inside the balcony. Out of sight, out of mind.
We then set off to look for a food outlet. We searched for a specific Rincon Tapas one (famous -  apparently) without success but we found one that served German bratwurst and frankfurters. German food is one of our favourites so naturally we had both - with chips and sauerkraut. This was the square that we ate our food 'al fresco'.

Can't think why but it reminded us of Stonehenge.

 After it got dark we wandered back to our hotel and stumbled upon the place we were looking for earlier. We are such muppets. We could actually see it from our hotel window. Doh!
So a few more drinks and a lot of Tapas later we hit the sack for a long good sleep.

Karen wondering what it was she was about to eat.

A giggling heap having had a good night out.