2nd July 2018

Jul 022018
 

We did the last bits of packing up in sunshine and paid our campsite fees and left at 9.40am and retraced our route back onto the A8 motorway passing a Guardia Civil roadside check at the motorway entrance. We joined the A8 heading back east again towards Gijon, the skies had already started to darken and look threatening, then turned onto the A66 motorway heading south. The scenery was spectacular as we skirted the western side of the Picos de Europe. The mountains were green right to the top and the vegetation was a lush green, only to be expected with all the rain. We ran through the centre of a large town with a wide shallow fast flowing river for some distance and then the road started to climb. As we got higher it became darker and the rain / drizzle started. Some of the climbs were steep with slow vehicle lanes, we went through several tunnels, some of them over 1.5kms long. We reached the top of the mountains at over 1200m and then started a gradual descent and came to a service area, which was the first that we had seen for some time and stopped for coffee.

It was still wet with light rain after we resumed our journey and we then ran alongside and over a huge lake with islands in it, it must have been well over 3km in length as we were alongside it for quite a while. The lower we got the skies started to clear and the rain stopped. We then started to run across some flat plains and we saw several birds of prey hovering at the sides of the motorway. This continued as we joined the AP66 all the way to Leon which we skirted and then we turned onto the A231 heading towards Sahagun. The motorway was very quiet with huge yellow and green broom bushes in the central reservation and on the edges. We turned off the A231 for Sahagun and saw the first signs for the pilgrim’s route and we saw several hikers walking along the route. We then turned in to the campsite at 12.40pm after 227kms and checked in. We were sent to a large plot with room for about 10 closely parked vans / caravans but we were allowed to spread out and had a huge area all to ourselves. We set up and had lunch and a quiet afternoon. For dinner we had marinated chicken on the BBQ and salad.

Today’s route

1st July 2018

Jul 012018
 

A quiet day at the campsite today, a lot of people left early this morning and we are now the only British couple left along with few Spanish families. The weather forecast for the afternoon was for rain and the clouds became very heavy and black after lunch and at Ingrid’s prompting we put the awning, chairs and groundsheet away before it started.. The wifi at the site was good enough for streaming and I settled down to watch the F1 grand prix from Austria, shortly after it started the rain started and it got progressively heavier. There was even hail stones mixed in with the rain and the wind picked up and then the wifi died along with the sites computers and so I missed the last half of the grand prix. See the video below for an example of what we had to put up with. The rain was that heavy and with the wind blowing as hard as it was it pushed some rain into the bottom vent of the fridge which then came out onto the floor of the motorhome.

Using our 4G wifi box we looked at the weather forecast for our next two planned stops of Barreiros and Covelo and found that they were both showing rain and cool temperatures every day for the next week. As a result we then started looking for places to go not too far away that didn’t have any rain in the forecast for the next week. We found that we needed to go at least 150km away from the north or west coasts of Spain. We researched the campsites available looking at user reviews online and in the ACSI book and eventually settled on a municipal site in Sahagun about 200km south of Cullidero. The rain let up for about an hour in the early evening and then started again.

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