Wednesday 6th June 2018
The combination of heavy rain, poor weather forecasts, and not least, the thoroughly waterlogged ground our caravan was parked on brought about a big change of plan today. We had intended staying in northern Spain for at least another week to visit the region around Bilbao and Guggenheim museum.
With the prospect of better weather to the east, in France, and the desire still to visit Scandinavia this summer, we decided to leave the visit to the Basque country to another time.
Towing Kilometres – Today: 334 Cumulative: 14,280
We chose a site to aim for from the Camping Card book and set off for Campsite Ur-Onea at Bidart, in Nouvelle-Aquitaine.
This would involve a slightly longer towing day than we have undertaken lately but we hoped the search for dryer weather would pay off.
We got packed up to leave the, by now, quite muddy site. We paid for our two nights and turned out onto the N621 to head north to the A8, hoping it would by quiet. It wasn’t 🙂
There were huge cranes, excavators, and massive tipper trucks and still the three bridge works. Kim counted at least 12 tourist coaches coming toward us, which always involved slowing to a crawl and getting as close to the rocks or barriers as possible and squeezing past each other. Add to that the need to pull over and allow faster traffic past when the opportunity arose, the first part of the days trip was leisurely, to say the least!
As we were about to join the A8 we spotted a fuel station selling LPG. As we were down to half of the second bottle we refilled the tanks and took the chance to have a coffee and calm the frazzled nerves.
We continued our trip on A8, and AP-8. I did wonder if we were making a mistake just passing Bilbao and San Sebastián, but they’ll still be there next year.
On arrival at Campsite Ur-Onea we chose a comfort pitch, which costs €3 a night more than the camping card rate of €19, to save me having to fill and empty water tanks for the five nights we intend to stay.
The facilities are excellent. The swimming pools, one inside, one outside, are heated.
The restaurant shouldn’t be missed, the food is excellent and the service better 🙂
