Category Archives: Morocco to Iceland – en route

Bye bye Blighty – hello Spain

Portsmouth disappears over the horizon as we sail off to Bilbao
Portsmouth disappears over the horizon as we sail off to Bilbao

I haven’t covered myself in glory at the outset of this trip.

Just before leaving to catch the ferry to Bilbao from Portsmouth, I managed to set off the van fire extinguisher while trying to collapse the bed back to its day-time role as couch. This covered a significant part of the van in a fetching baby blue colour fine powder.

dsc_0130-2

The good thing was we got talking to our campsite neighbours. They are Brits running a gite business in France. Turns out their campervan parked outside their home was cleaned out by  thieves who used the fire extinguisher to obliterate all fingerprints. They advised us we needed to clean up every particle as it’s corrosive. (I reckon that’s a blue task it being blue and all). They also invited us to visit them some time – which was nice.

Good smooth ferry crossing on the Brittany Ferries ‘Cap Finesterre’ though as we waited for our turn to return to our vehicle, the army of Spanish cleaners marched past us ready to sort the ship for the return trip. One passed us lustily singing ‘oo la paloma blanca’…that’s been an ear worm ever since.

Second error – when we disembarked at Bilbao, I urged Stuart to press on with the journey to the first campsite rather than heed his counsel that we stop in the port car park and just ‘take a moment’. Due to navigation error, we ended up 20 km the wrong side of Bilbao. After a free and frank exchange of views, we set back on course and by 3 pm were very happily settled on our first campsite in the Spanish sunshine.

Camping Salopena did the job -it is 40 minutes metro from Bilbao so very convenient for our evening in the city – me in the Guggenheim enjoying the Ecole de Paris exhibition and Stuart out and about taking photos – of more anon.