Wednesday 30th December

We started driving about trying to find the motorhome shop and were getting nowhere. We were about to give up and head down the road to San Sebastian, hopeful of finding something en route, but I decided to ask someone in my very basic Spanish. Well it turned out the bloke new where it was and even better his son spoke English so I was able to actually understand the directions. Turns out the shop was just round the corner on the road to San Sebastian, we wouldn’t be able to miss it. After another discussion at the shop in my broken Spanish, well I say broken more like few phrases and use of a Spanish dictionary. We brought a new tap for a very cheap price (13€), now Spain is better at France on price.

We then headed for the coastal city of San Sebastian. Upon entering the city and driving round and round in bad traffic slightly lost, we realised we were missing tom, or at least a good detailed map. The one we have shows the whole of Europe and is great for planning and handy if you stick to the main roads, but city centre’s mmmmm. We finally decided to give up on the city and head for motorhome stops along the coast, from our Camper stop Europe book.

We had a long winding windy journey, with some great sea views looking for places to stop. But it seems Spain’s coastal towns like their No Motorhome signs, or the one beach we found, was rather grim and slightly dodgy. Also we took a road that after a while decided it was closed, so we had to turn back. We ended up on a car park over looking the sea and a disused hotel in the town of Gorliz above the City of Bilbao.

At this point we realised two things, 1) Spain’s road signs seem hard to work out, as they will point you in the direction of the town you want to head for, then will just point out towns and villages along the way. Only problem being most of the towns along the way aren’t on our map, so it takes some guesswork, but we get there in the end. 2) We really needed to find a Laundrette as the clothes are piling up and running out. Spain though doesn’t seem that keen to show us where any are, so it was pants in the bathroom sink to wash by hand. The Glamour of life on the road.