As mentioned in the previous post, once we’d enjoyed the audio show by the couple down the corridor, we found somewhere to get some food, went and dug the car out of the claustrophobic underground car part under the Ibis and hit the road, heading down the E5 south towards the spanish border.
The stretch south of Bordeaux is actually quite pretty and picturesque and I imagine that if we’d had the time taking the smaller roads and possibly even a detour into Biarritz could have been fun. No time though! As we swung past the road for Biarritz we could see the western end of the Pyrenees in the distance and the roads noticably got more windy with the architecture shifting from ‘lowland french’ to more alpine with steeper roofs to cope with snow and the like.
Bizarrely even though it was still january we had glorious sunshine all the way to the border, such as it is. Essentially it’s a small set of kiosks that you stop at and show your passport which they glance at and wave you through.
So, 3rd country in 3 days!
Surrounded by pretty epic mountains and forests we realised it was almost lunch time and we decided to take a little detour off the main road towards the coast, picking a little fishing town called Getaria.
After finding somewhere to park we headed into the very pretty and old looking town where it turns out that Kostas, all unbeknownst to be could actually speak a little bit of Basque, which I think made the locals a bit happy. We had some excellent seafood and ham (can’t remember the local term, was awesome) and we had a wander around.
Kostas made the suggestion that we avoid the main road as we head south so instead of taking the E5 we swung up into the mountains through Azpeitia and Zumarraga – think massive forests, steep windy roads and rivers all over the place.
So, as usual we were running a bit late and decided to get a move on south towards madrid where we were staying with another friend of Kostas.
Taking the E5 past Burgos we headed south, and bizarrely (for me anyway) started to climb again and run into quite a lot of snow in the hills/mountains between Boceguillas and Madrid itself, all very pretty.
We finally made it to Madrid about 8pm and went out for some awesome chinese food – Kinda wish we’d had more time in Madrid to be honest!
Notes and Points
- Crossing borders in Europe is well easy, almost non-existent.
- Northern Spain and the Basque country is somewhere I’d quite like to spend some time, nice food, nice people and goo scenery
- Madrid seems like a cool place
Route
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