2024 September: France and Spain  – Txingudi to Elciego

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After breakfast we make preparations to leave Txingudi and San Sebastian.

As we eat breakfast we watch our interesting German neighbour reverse their arrival process. First, they drive over to the disposal taking about 8 attempts to reverse onto the very roomy concrete disposal rectangle. Next much faffing around… first he empties the toilet cassette, then they both watch the grey water flow from the pipe… ‘Mrs’ watching from the doorway in a glamorous cream track suit her blonde hair flowing around her shoulders (making the rest of us more usual motorhome inhabitants look quite dowdy!).

Then… after about 5 minutes of watching the water, ‘Mr’ gets out a tiny water hose (for a big motorhome) in a complete tangle, and spends about 5 minutes untangling it (like a piece of knotted string) all the time watched by ‘Mrs’ from the doorway… There are now two motorhomes waiting to empty. Finally he attaches the super-thin hose to the water tap and they stand for another 10 minutes and watch as the water slowly glugs in… now four motorhomes are waiting! Finally after about 20 minutes they gather everything into the locker (another 5 minutes) and swan off up the road.

There are now five motorhomes queueing to use the services, this is important to know as this Parking area has a cut off time of 12.00 midday, passing the barrier a second over the time and you pay for another day! We walk round to Alcampo and buy 4 boxes of Rioja wine. On returning the others have gone so we service our own vehicle, empty and filling with water in parallel. We fill with diesel at Alcampo before we leave Txingudi, the price of diesel in this part of Spain is very low when compared to France and the UK.

We leave and turn onto GI-636 the busy ring road around San Sebastian. Crossing the river, with an unpronounceable name (we think of our Evan-Sophie game… that all the Basque words have many x-z-j and lots of vowels all strung together) we pass the port, a huge inland basin that must take the shipping from the Bay of Biscay to the Spanish/French border. We join GI-20 and take A-1, the major dual carriageway south away from the city and inland towards the mountains. The A-1 climbs steadily, snaking its way upwards and over the mountains, mile after mile of serious hills and bends upwards and upwards, crawler lanes especially needed for the trucks and heavy vehicles.

We stop at the service station at Tolosa and park up with the trucks, a good place off the road to eat lunch and have a break. We change drivers, onwards and upwards and cross a short Sierra, at Agurain the elevation is almost 2000ft (over 600m). Mr C. finding it hard to be a passenger as we negotiate some steep declines and hard bends together with the trucks. We arrive at Vitoria Gesteiz, the capital of the Basque region and still at 525m (1720ft) and take N-124, a much small road that leads south towards Rioja-land. At Briňas we turn onto the smaller N-232a through Labastida where we leave the Basque Country and enter La Rioja.

The landscape changes to the more fertile land of vineyards and sunflower fields with small Pueblas between them. Oh what bliss, acre upon acre of vines and Bodegas on almost every bend! Taking A-3214 we arrive at Elciego (last here in September 2018  opens a new tab) about 3.45 and park up on the Area Autocaravanas, ten of the 14 level tarmac pitches taken. We note we are on the pitch next to our 2018 stop, next to the hook-up pillar on a small triangular island (more space for us). We park up, have a beer and an ice lolly and relax.

The weather is cooler, maybe 22°C (it was 33°C last time we were here) and we wander down to Valdelana, the larger bodega in the village. It is definitely up-market and catering to the tourists who are booking tours/wine tasting (we did this last time). We wander up the little streets and note that most of the bodegas are closing at 6.00pm, tomorrow will be a better day for tasting.

Back at Hymer we sit and taste our own wine, a bottle of cava, outside and eat chicken stir-fry later.

Photos from –  San Sebastian by train from Txingudi

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