We stayed overnight in Saint Emilion in an Aire - the carpark behind the tennis court along with about a dozen other motorhomers. This is rumoured to be the one of the best wine regions in France. You know the Bordeaux wine region; world class French vintages; centuries of winemaking; yadda yadda, yadda. Well I was totally overwhelmed by the town and totally underwhelmed by the wine. Unfortunately the French haven't sussed out that the best wines in the world are now made below 30° South and on three continents.
The town on the other hand is stunning. It not only looks old it feels old, as if it sprung from the bones of the earth. The church looks that unremarkable you would mistake it for just another medieval building but the interior belies its age. It is exceedingly old and although it has not aged well it still shows glimpses of it's former beauty. There are few stained glass window left but the three panels above the altar are spectacular in vivid reds, blues and yellows. There is even the remains of an ancient fresco on one of the side wall, the figures so faded now it is impossible to decipher the content.
The rest of the town straddles the hillside and the streets are steep and meandering. Walking down the age old cobbled streets is like stepping back at least a thousand year and probably even more. Most of the buildings are filled with local wine merchants offering Degustation and sticker shock for what I personally think is outrageously expensive wine that comprises 25% winemaking skill and 75% pseudo historical spin. Wine for an Emperor with no clothes on. Hans Christian Anderson would be pissing himself.
The next morning dawned grey and bleak so we headed out for the South west coast and St Jean de Luz, just north of the Spanish border. We found a campground right on the beach and were ready to stay and boost our Vitamin D intake for a while but the rainclouds that had threatened in Saint Emilion finally made good their threat and it rained all afternoon and night. We had no intention of sitting around in the van for the next few days waiting for the front to move off, so we picked up sticks and headed into Spain.
Forty years ago I was blown away by the engineering marvel that was the Italian Autostrada system. I was astonished at the way they tunnelled and bridged the backbone of Italy from North to South. Today in Spain they have put the Italians to shame. This country may be on the bones of its arse but at least they spent what they had when they had it on one of the biggest and best modernising infrastructure programs anywhere outside China. The road and rail network is a wonder to behold. It is even more impressive than that of France – and that's saying something.
And it's cheaper. Once they jettison the outrageously obscene subsidies for wind and solar power generation (and they will, it's only a matter of time) they will be well on the way to recovery.
What the Spanish have done makes our outrageously obscene stimulus spending on pink batts, school halls and superfluous rubbish, infantile by comparison.
The rest of Europe is finally waking up from the Wicked Green Witch's spell. The cold hard kiss of reality has woken even the Germans who are now returning to coal fired power to stave off the threat of the power shortages that have plagued Europe for the last three winters. Spring still hasn't arrived and even here in Spain they are planting this years crop late. Some weather pundits here are talking about 'a year without a summer'. Something that hasn't happened here for over a hundred years.
Well here we are in Burgos, on the high plateau that is midway between Santander on the north coast and Madrid at the centre. We are going to have to learn a whole new vocabulary for please thank you and a host of necessary words that we just learned, like bonjour, merci, pomme, lait, burre, baguette and what the hell is a pappelmousse anyway.
We rode our bike into town through the park and along the river. And all the pedestrian zones are shared with bike rider so you can tour the city from the saddle and stop when you like to take in the sights.
Burgos was another one of those unexpected surprises. It was just a stopover on the way from St Jean de Luz to to Madrid. But I'm glad we decided to stay for two nights. It is a beautiful city with bike track and pedestrian streets throughout the heart of the city. The main city is on the northern side of the Rio Arlanzon and on the southern side is the Paseo de la Quinta, a park that stretches the entire length of the city and beyond that is the Fuentes Blancas nature reserve where our campground is situated. This place is old, as old as Saint Emilion in France and just as spectacular, albeit on a much larger scale. Burgos has it all, gothic cathedral (the first in Spain), 12th century Cistercian monastery, a medieval fortress overlooking the town, parks and gardens throughout the city and wonderful open air plazas where you can sip coffee or have a quiet beer and sit and watch the pace of life go by. Tomorrow we head for Madrid and weather permitting an extended stay.
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