Travels in the Van 2024: Week Five

Spain again.

We’re not really on a wine tour, but our next destination is Rioja territory. This is where the sun is, and we finally find a campsite again. This one is special, all the ingredients you want. Hot showers come first and...people! This is the first time we’ve been on a campsite with other people since Porto. Bizarrely some of the vans are British which is unusual. It’s the typical combination of permanent caravans for weekenders from other cities and a smaller area available for campervan passing through. This is Haro. A lovely little town, where every day it seems, but we hit Friday night, there’s a very civilised gastronomic bar-crawl which involves going from bar to bar, sampling the Pinchos, the local term for tapas and drinking wine. It’s delightful, probably because it's mostly middle-age people and some kids having a good night out, a family thing.

 

We spend a good few days riding through the vineyard countryside in shorts. And after two visits to Bodegas to taste the wine, we realise that we’re much better off, going back to the bar in town and asking them to suggest wine to taste, which we do. We have a rather jolly evening with an inspirational Scottish couple in their nearing 80, who are thinking of winding down their travelling, but not quite yet. 

It’s hard to drag ourselves away from Haro, but time moves on and so do we. Not very far, not very fast, but we park for a night by a pretty reservoir, and then move onto Logroño, the capital of Rioja. The campsite we were going to stay in here is unexpectedly closed, so we park instead outside the municipal recreation centre and spend a few days living out of the van, cycling round the city, eating and drinking. 

Before we leave Rioja, We spend a day cycling around LaGuardia, where Richard has planned a great ride. The magnificent hilltop town is alive with revellers in evening. I noticed some unusual doors and doorways in the narrow streets. They open onto kind of ante-room..a public/private place with further doors to the individual households beyondand yes, they are a thing.

The need to stop at a campsite again grows, enjoy hot showers, use a washing machine, charge my e-bike... Although this last week in Logrono, I managed to do the washing and to charge my bike in a Laundrette at the same time which was a win. We find a campsite in Estella, which is on the Camino. It’s gloriously hot. We have a lovely time exploring, eating cheesecake and riding on the cycle green way. When I woke in the morning, I could smell on the air, a mixture of wine and cork, in a good way, and wondered what it was or where it was coming from. As we cycle down the lane into town, we come across the processing plant and see a mountain of the side produce of the wine industry, the pomace, which is where that smell was coming from. This natural waste is used for a myriad of purposes, fertilizer, food ingredients , bio-fuel, and of course in making Grappa. 

The last but one stop in Spain is Pamplona. We arrive in the evening and park in one of the increasing number of auto caravan facilities which provide waste disposal water and electricity for the night. This one is right next to a garage which is useful as they have a toilet. We have a quick ride round town in the dark, and spend the next day doing a city tour, the Star-Fort, (with chickens), the cobble streets where they hold the bull run, the fictitious address of the books I’m reading, more delicious food, and coffee at the café where Hemingway is reputed to have sat to write.