Martin's Mag.

4 Sept 2018. We got an earlier-than-booked ferry from Dover.  On our way south we detoured for a couple of nights at an old favourite, Bagnoles de l’Orne, in Lower Normandy.

7 Sept 2018. Then a site by a lake north of Bordeaux. Lots of young-ish people on some sort of team-building course.

We spent the next day in Bordeaux.

Then drove to Salles, in Aquitaine, and had a pine wood to ourselves, which Lucy thought was fabulous as she didn’t need to be on her lead and had plenty of sticks to chase.

9 Sept 2018 Distant lightning during the night, which turned to rain just as we were getting up. Stocked up (food, drink and petrol) at local Carrefour, then long drive into Spain and to Saunces, west of Santander. Supper of prawns and lots of white wine courtesy of earlier shopping trip.

Saunces, Spain

10 Sept 2018 Continuing along the north Spain coast past Bilbao we glimpsed, from a motorway, a ruined church in a cornfield and turned back to find it. There was also a great beach. This was near to the town of Llanes, I think the beach was at San Antolín, but I’m not certain.

We drove on via twisting roads to Luarca and a campsite called Las Cantilcles, run (for the last fifty years!) by a German woman, with her German/Dutch son.

11 Sept 2018. Large German and Dutch contingent among campers, presumably due to the owners, who expressed their sadness re Brexit. I felt obliged to apologise for the short-sightedness of my kinsmen.

Early morning view of Luarca from camper.

We walked into Luarca, a very pretty “working” town with a nice harbour and broad beaches. Was shouted at by a man for taking Lucy onto beach. Pretended not to understand.

12 Sept 2018. We continued to drive west along the north Spain coast, stopping for supplies at local “agricultural” supermarket. Lunch in Mondoñedo. Then to A Coruña. We tried to find a site in Santa Cruz but got hopelessly lost, mainly because new roads had been built since our old map was printed. Finally settled for a site run by a woman in a bikini. Not in a good way, really. We had a good view of the local beach which belied the quality of the site itself. Also, as we discovered later, dogs were not allowed on the beach. Seems to be quite common in Spain, unfortunately, although plenty of people have dogs.

13 Sept 2018. We left the site and walked to the area known as Santa Cruz which had been so elusive yesterday. The main feature of Santa Cruz is a bay with an island connected by a pedestrian bridge to the land. Not to be missed.

After walking around the island we bought supplies in the town of Santa Cruz then continued the drive westward through A Coruña and inland to Carballo and through stunning scenery to Cee on the west coast. From there, south through Ezaro towards Muros. Sal had identified a couple of camp sites, the first of which was closed and the second, in Lariño, looked boring with no views, so we went back up the coast for a few kilometres to a huge beach with pinewoods behind the dunes and, after a stick-throwing session with Lucy, “wild” camped in the sunset.

Will we survive? Will we have to use hitherto untested in-house sanitary “arrangements?” Will we ever get to Portugal?

See Part 2, coming soon.

We stayed in Folkestone so as to be ready for a morning sailing from Dover to France.  Folkestone is quite a nice, quaint in parts, town, but looking rather tired these days, unlike in my childhood when it was popular with well-to-do elderly people, prompting the classic slogan: “Dover for the Continent; Folkestone for the incontinent”.

The river Lea used to mark, more or less, the boundary between London and Essex. It was an area to be avoided when I was a boy. The river itself was virtually a sewer, taking waste of all sorts down to the Thames docks at Poplar and Canning Town – now a hipster’s paradise and within a stone’s throw of the financial centre of Canary Wharf.

We stayed between Ponders End and Chingford, popular retirement “manor” for the  successful East End crook in days of old.  The Lea Valley park and the 2012 Olympic site at Stratford have transformed the area.  We caught three buses (Lucy was very well-behaved) down to the Olympic park and then, after looking around the excellent gardens (and West Ham United’s new London stadium) we walked the ten or eleven miles back along the river.

Steve’s 2018 cycle ride, this year north of Bristol through Avonmouth, under the Severn (M4) bridge, Pilning, Easter Compton, Henbury and back to The Nova Scotia pub in Hotwells. Here I am leading the over-65 peloton!
Photo by © Steve.

We’ve been to Milford in Hampshire, on the southern edge of the New Forest. The weather was good for a couple of days while we had a stroll around Lymington, sat on the beach in Milford and walked the mile-and-a-half shingle spit from Milford to Hurst Castle, out in the Solent close to the Isle of Wight. Fabulous views; don’t know why we’d never heard of it.

High tide near Milford-on-Sea

Food, drink, history of the port of Bristol and an excuse for a good time.

Llangorse [Llangors] is a pretty village with a lake and a common and wild, or at least free-roaming, horses. Also, due to the continuing unusually hot weather, a series of scrub fires up in the hills which added a dash of excitement to the scene, specially at night. It’s an “outdoor activities” sort of area, with young people walking around in hiking boots or kayaks on their backs.

We only stayed for a couple of nights but managed walks around the lake and along the hills avoiding fires. Also, Lucy and I launched my inflatable canoe, which I haven’t used for well over a year. No leaks. We circumnavigated the lake. Lucy didn’t move for the first half hour but relaxed when she started to realise that we might not drown after all.

View over Llangorse [Llangors] Lake towards Allt yr Esgair.

Llangorse Lake.

The Llangasty Bird Hide, Llangorse Lake.

Old carved canoe near Llangorse Lake.

View from the bedroom.

On the Allt yr Esgair, above Llangorse.

Llangorse Lake.

The Llangasty Bird Hide, from Llangorse Lake.

Lucy on Llangorse Lake.

Scrub fires above Llangorse.

Horses and camper van on Llangorse common.

A few days by the sea in South Wales. We actually swam in both the sea and a pool. The hot weather continues…

Mill Wood near Penrice, Swansea.

We’ve been staying in a village called Polruan, on the River Fowey in Cornwall. It is opposite to the town of Fowey. And very pretty it all is. But…

Despite the fact that it’s a beautiful area and everyone is having a good time on holiday, there is a sadness about these towns and villages. From bustling, self-sufficient communities they have become almost entirely dependent on tourism. In other word, us. Nearly all the charming cottages in the twisting streets going down to the estuary and beaches are holiday homes. “Genuine” Cornish pasty, souvenir and ice-cream shops abound. Yes, it’s very pleasant, but rather, I suppose, one-dimensional.

People delight in naming their houses “The Old School” or “The Old Fish Market”, etc., not realising that, to cynics like us, this is not so much amusingly twee but a reminder of a lost age.

For instance:

Still, there were some great walks and scenery, and crab sandwiches. Result! The weather brightened up after Sal’s birthday. Among other minor disasters I lost my smartphone which, against all the odds, was found (and returned), after we returned home, by another tourist.

With Miles, Flo and a very sceptical Lucy. (That’s me smiling not grimacing. I know it can be hard to tell.)