Planning for Ireland

We do the 30 hour ferry crossing to Ireland in two weeks... May 7th, to be exact. So we've been doing some planning. We're going to be there for probably two months, although we've got some flexibility. If we want to stay longer, we certainly can. From there, we'll go to either Scotland or Wales. We haven't decided yet, and it can be a last minute decision depending on how long we stay in Ireland.

The cheapest fuel in Spain!

We actually had a fair bit of rain on Friday night! Haven't heard that noise on Max's roof in a long time. I think we had a few drops the last night we were in Morocco, but that was just spitting. This time it came down fairly hard for a few hours.

But at least it was overnight, and by the time we got ready to walk back into Salamanca it was clearing up.

Salamanca is worth a visit!

We are parked just over 3 kms (2 miles) from the city center of Salamanca. We set off at 10:30am to walk downtown, do some exploring, and try to match up three more of my dad's photos.

The first one was taken from the south side of the Tormes River looking towards the cathedral.

An update on our Schengen visa problem

First off, some of you may have missed yesterday's post due to a technical error. The problem is now solved, so if you didn't see it yesterday, you can read it here now...

https://www.travelwithkevinandruth.com/2023/04/the-walled-city-of-avila-spain.html.

Yesterday, we drove the rest of the way to Salamanca. When we arrived, we got sidetracked by a big Walmart style store, and Ruth needed some new walking shoes and a few other things. So we went and did some shopping. 

The walled city of Avila, Spain

We left our nice spot by the stream as soon as we got up at 7:30am. It was only a short drive to the small city of Avila, and we were headed to a laundromat that opened at 8:00am. We figured if we got there early, we could get laundry done while having breakfast, then go explore the city.

Found a great parking spot right by the laundry, and close enough to the center that we could walk in.

Police in the middle of the night

Another gorgeous day in Spain. We left Max in his spot by the dirt road, and set off on a morning hike. We didn't really have any plans, but there are so many different trails that we figured we would just choose something and make up our route as we went along.

Didn't really plan on doing 13 kms (8 miles), but that's the way it worked out!

A gorgeous free camping spot

Our friends Glen and Steve had told me about a waterfall near the village of Riofrio where there was a difficult to access, but beautiful overnight spot. 

It turned out that we couldn't access it all, but we found an even better spot nearby!

Drive through the mountains

Sunday was a day of rest, but we did do a 50 km (30 mile) drive through a mountain pass just for a change of scenery. I had read of a couple of vans that had done the drive, but no motorhomes. The only problem would be the width of having to pass someone coming the other way.

And it was only 50 kms (30 miles) but it took an hour.

We hiked 19 kms (12 miles) to see a tree!

And of course we saw thousands of trees along the way, but this one tree is special.

It always makes a hike better when there is a destination of some kind... a waterfall, a cave, or maybe a viewpoint. But I'm not sure we've ever done a hike to see a tree!

We finally made it into the mountains!

Mostly cloudy yesterday as we made or way into the mountains west of Madrid. We ended up at the town of La Adrada where they have a motorhome service area to empty and fill our tanks, and somewhere to park for the night.

The parking isn't ideal, it's in a kind of a residential area. But the area surrounding the town has so many hiking trails and walks that we can do that without having to drive anywhere that we'll probably stay put for another night.

Sidetracked by a castle

Our original intention was to get into the mountains for some nature and peace and quiet after having spent too much time in cities. But we stopped for lunch in the town of Escalona, and decided to spend the night.

But along the way, we stopped in the town of Torrijos to do some shopping. They had a Lidl and a Mercadona right beside each other with easy parking for a motorhome.

Photo matching in Toledo, Spain

For those of you new here, my father had done two extended trips to Europe in the 1950's, one in 1954, and one in 1957. He took a lot of photos in slide format, and Ruth has digitized them and we have them on our laptops. So when we are in the same place as he was, we try to match up some of those photos by standing in the exact same spot that he might have stood almost 70 years ago.

We were pretty successful in this exercise here in Toledo, Spain yesterday!

We're actually a little ahead of schedule

Yesterday. we did the drive to the small city of Toledo, located just south of the big city of Madrid. We don't have to be at the ferry port in Bilbao until May 6 which is still three and a half weeks away.

So we're actually a little ahead of schedule. If we drove directly there, we're only 500 kms (300 miles) or so from Bilbao, but we've got quite a lot of things to see along the way, plus we're going to do some zig zagging to get up there. 

Castle and windmills in Consuegra, Spain.

There's been an odd haze in the air the last couple of days. It's the Sahara dust again that finds it's way drifting across the south of Spain a few times per year. It was pretty bad yesterday morning, but seemed to clear up a bit by the end of the day, and this morning it seems we have our nice blue sky back again.

We went for a short walk before we left the hill behind Piedrabuena, then headed for the town of Consuegra.

A visit from the park rangers...

We had a totally peaceful night, and woke up to see that all of the crowds of people had disappeared. Surprisingly, very little trash left behind despite the fact that there are no trash bins. 

I went for a walk around to see which spot by the river looked easiest to get Max moved to. Such a nice spot, and a few walks we could do in the area so we planned to stay a least one more night, possibly two.