Santander

It's very much mixed emotions being back in Santander. We've loved our journey across Portugal and Spain but it will also be good to get back home to see our family and friends.

The weather here is very sunny and hot, 22 ish, but feels hotter especially as we had slightly cooler temperatures in Segovia. Segovia sits on the Meseta Central, a huge plateau across Spain that we climbed onto North of Cordoba and only descended from 70Km or so from Santander. The Mesata Central is bigger than England with alot of it over 1,000M high, higher than Scafell Pike!

It was a bit odd re-fuelling in Segovia, knowing that this would be enough to get us home to Northamptonshire. Just 370 Km to Santander, 32 hours on the ferry to Portsmouth then a quick hop up the A34 and A43 and we're home.

It was suggested when we left the hotel in Segovia we should stop off at Pedraza, 'one on the most beautiful villages in Spain', which we did. Pedraza is pretty amazing, a tiny walled medieval village on a hill which is virtually un-touched. Not surpringly its featured in loads of films, It would be pretty in-expensive too use as a medieval set, bit of straw on the floor a few chickens running about and people suitably dressed and you're done. We had breakfast, coffee and tortilla (Spanish tortilla is egg and potato 'cake', sounds bland but isn't, its very tasty).

The drive to Santander is pretty easy, 300Km of plateau that seems to go on forever and no need in April to worry about the snow sticks at the side of the road. The last 70 Km is a descent through the little known Cantabroan mountains. The scenery is very pretty and quite Alpine with lots of tunnels, bridges and viaducts. This includes the highest in Spain, the Viaducto de Montabliz, 198M high and 721M long. What makes it especially intimidating is that it's immediately after a tunnel, which you hurtle out of at 120 Km/h onto a very high bridge that curves away into the distance. The height is very obvious, no wonder I was scared!

Here's a picture of the bridge and me on it. I was alot more scared than I look!

We've really enjoyed an extra day in Santander, the most we've done before is an overnighter before getting on the ferry. We had time today to walk the whole of the northern end of the city which has beautiful beaches and a peninsula which frames the Western entrance to the main harbour.

The entrance to the harbour is narrow, strewn with rocks and has a lot of sandbanks. A mariner's nightmare if it weren't for two big lighthouses set up as a transit. No longer a nightmare, with the lighthouses a doddle!

Just another couple of pictures of Santander.

That's it, goodbye Santander, see you next year 🙂