I've driven abroad before so it bothered me not and generally I am a good 'sailor' however our crossing from Portsmouth to Bilbao was foul! to be honest it was fine until we entered the Bay of Biscay when things got lets say a little rough, this was not helped by the fact that the good lady had booked a luxury cabin at the front of the ship at deck level ...a nice thought but we felt every single movement of the ship and there were plenty of them!
The crossing was roughly a day long and we saw plenty of dolphins and I am sure at least one beaked whale however I'd forgotten a pair of binoculars (I have around 40 pairs!), madam said " don't worry I am sure you'll get some at the car boot" (where we stop there is a very good car boot).
We arrived in Bilbao (Santurzi) around 5 ish and drove to Burgos( an hour away) for our first overnight at a nice little family hotel/B&B (the Las Vegas http://hotelasvegas.es/index.en.html ), it was bizarrely on the edge of a industrial estate but was quiet and very good value, very clean and comfortable and the locals were friendly in the extreme.
we went into the town next day and found Burgos http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burgos
to be a nice little city worth a visit with connections to El Cid I believe?
After a decent lunch in Burgos we set off down to Toledo, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toledo,_Spain
we arrived there about 5 hours later so again around 5pm ish.....now imagine York with sunshine on a grander scale and you won't be far out....Toledo was stunning!
and our hotel The Abaceria http://www.hotelabaceria.es/en
was fantastic with wonderful views over the old city, as we stepped out of the car at the hotel we all but melted as it was 40 degrees centigrade in the car it was almost arctic.
After a great evening meal and an even better nights sleep as I was knackered from the crossing and drive down we went for a few hours looking around Toledo and loved it, we should have stayed longer and will be visiting there again later this year at the same hotel in the same room overlooking the pool! around 2 we set off for our final destination of Nerja http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerja
a quaint seaside town on the south coast but nothing like Benidorm et al.
We arrived around 7pm and parked up at our rented villa and nipped out for a quick meal then returned back to the villa for another good sleep, nothing much to say about the villa apart from it's one we often use, it suits us, is bright, clean big enough for six has off road parking it's own pool and is very close to the town centre, sadly they only really rent it out to people they know.
The next morning (a Sunday) we wandered up to the car boot, already it was around 34c so sun cream, hat and sunglasses were in fact PPE and required....I've had some really good stuff off the car boot there over the years and on the first stall I bagged a pair of Sendra 'cowboy boots for ten euro I'll post those later on a cowboy boot post!
Further round the good lady wife spooted a pair of binoculars on a stall but at 20 euro and being a pair of 'Boots' I passed as they are only average, three stalls down I saw these German made Hensoldt Wetzlar 12x 20 Stereor's and snapped them up at just 10 euro, internally they are bright and too clean to even bother stripping out and cleaning the internals, the case needs a bit of work but the binoculars are great and I used them often whilst there up in the foothills of the Pyrenees and more importantly on our way back up in the hills near Bilbao on our last stop over three weeks later and then again on the ferry back to watch dolphins, sadly I didn't see any beaked whales this time!
optically almost perfect if a little dim in dull conditions due to small objective lenses, these Hensoldt Wetzlar Stereor 12x 20's with inlaid wire markings are a joy to use,
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