2018-09-28 Sos del Rey Católico to Elciego

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Sos del Rey Católico to Elciego

Another hot and sunny day. Mr C. walks to the bread shop in sos Del Rey Catolico and buys bread and a flat, almond circle that is sweet like dessert and delicious – see photos below.

We count the days until we must be at Santander for the ferry: four days and five nights, we are about 350km away. We spend the morning planning our route and decide we will spend the last few days in the Rioja region, between Lagrono and Haro. We have an early lunch and head towards Logrono, taking the A127 back to Sangüesa and the A21 to Pamplona. The roads become very busy as we take the A15 around the city and head south on the A12 towards Logrono which is about 80km. We turn off onto the smaller N232 to Fuenmayor and then take the A211 to the small town of Elciego in the centre of the Rioja wine growing region.

The Autocaravanas parking is newly made, 14 spaces, each with their own separate hook-up post for electricity (€2/12 hours), there is water and grey/septic disposal and it is free, the only charge is for the electricity. The camping area is right in the middle of the town and next to the Valdelana Bodega, which we later discover they partly own.

Walking into town we call and purchase two electricity tokens (fiecha) from the Valdelana bodega who tell us that we can have a free wine-tasting and tour in return! We wander around the old town for about half an hour (the tour starts at 4.30pm), it is very old, with archaic arched market and market square dating back to the 1550 and, of course, the eglesia which is immense. It has a large addition to the nave, but there are deep cracks running down the outside of the wall and we wonder if one day this section will just ‘fall off’ down the hill!

Back down to the Bodega we take part in the tour of the old bodega and cellars also dating from about 1587 and having belonged to the same family all this time! The tour is very interesting but a little long and we are more than ready to taste when we finally got to the bar. There are ten of us and all are British, more Brits that we have seen altogether on our entire trip! The wines are all Rioja, one young white, one young red, one Crianza (from 45 year old vines) and one Reserva (almost 100 year old vines). This was a good wine but we didn’t want to buy red Rioja as it is so freely available in the UK. We try a semi-sweet and Crianza white, both made from Malvasia grapes that grow in this area and both are good. We buy 6 of each €6 and €8 respectively. Back to the camper and drink a little more wine with local bread and hummus. This kind of living is really starting to become addictive, it’s a shame we have only a few days left.