So Europe after all. I didn't expect to write about Europe on this blog but, in the planning of longer, more distant adventures, I sometimes forget occasional, even regular, trips to our nearest neighbours that may only involve a car journey far shorter than our annual trek to the Hebrides, or the alternative, quickly forgotten horrors of the cutprice shorthaul flight - easily borne by avoiding food, drink, loos, or, ideally, any luggage bigger than your wallet.
This year I have taken the car to Europe twice: once by ferry to the Hook of Holland overnight - much to be recommended aside from the tannoy wakeup calls too early in the morning - food again should be avoided if possible and not least on grounds of poorest possible ratio between edibility and cost.
In August we travelled by Eurotunnel, the easiest route of all to France, returning, somewhat mistakenly, by ferry from Santander - my husband had a vision of a superior, brief and therefore bearable sparsely populated cruise, fun enough for under 24 hours; he got an overcrowded, very large ferry where the accommodation space to cost ratio equally failed to add up. Drink and plenty of it proved the way forward; mercifully the Bay of Biscay was flat as glass.
At Easter in Holland we were on a mission; culture of course, planned to the last painting with books, lists and maps; and then, most importantly, a visit, with my Mother, to my Grandfather's, her Father's, grave and that was very odd. He was killed near Arnhem in 1944 and my Mother, like us, had never seen the grave. I don't know how she stood it actually, not so much that emotional day but sitting between two of my enormous sons on the backseat being mobbed by them and their various car amusements all over Holland as well as suffering some of my less good accommodation choices.
Cockroaches are quite irregular occupants of even lowly hostelries in Europe I suppose but we had our alternative discomforts. A room for 3; my husband with a cold and worse, a cough, a daughter and me in a minutely proportioned bed and breakfast in hideous Arnhem; my sons in a separate cupboard on tiny bunks; my Mother, the daughter of a Duchess and a powerful career woman of reasonable maturity after all, in another with cardboard dividing wall, achieving the impossibility of finding the place tolerable surrounded as it was by the rest of a most lowering housing estate overlooked by grimly dirty tower blocks. Alcohol of course played a soothing role and there were a number of shark like dogs on the streets. My Mother sees all dogs as a sort of redemption and we left before breakfast.
We stayed with friends in France, basking in a sunny luxury well beyond the scope of any 5 star hotel and leaving sadly to drive as far as the Picos d'Europa in Cantabria on the old route to Compostela and well away from coastal crowds. Rural Spain is still so extremely, happily, soothingly. Spanish and I speak none which only adds to a delightful feeling of foreigness embellished by at least one menu translation bearing such gems as 'well-cooked piece of old cow'. Well it gave the general idea I suppose, much of the rest was guess work and surprises.
This year I have taken the car to Europe twice: once by ferry to the Hook of Holland overnight - much to be recommended aside from the tannoy wakeup calls too early in the morning - food again should be avoided if possible and not least on grounds of poorest possible ratio between edibility and cost.
In August we travelled by Eurotunnel, the easiest route of all to France, returning, somewhat mistakenly, by ferry from Santander - my husband had a vision of a superior, brief and therefore bearable sparsely populated cruise, fun enough for under 24 hours; he got an overcrowded, very large ferry where the accommodation space to cost ratio equally failed to add up. Drink and plenty of it proved the way forward; mercifully the Bay of Biscay was flat as glass.
At Easter in Holland we were on a mission; culture of course, planned to the last painting with books, lists and maps; and then, most importantly, a visit, with my Mother, to my Grandfather's, her Father's, grave and that was very odd. He was killed near Arnhem in 1944 and my Mother, like us, had never seen the grave. I don't know how she stood it actually, not so much that emotional day but sitting between two of my enormous sons on the backseat being mobbed by them and their various car amusements all over Holland as well as suffering some of my less good accommodation choices.
Cockroaches are quite irregular occupants of even lowly hostelries in Europe I suppose but we had our alternative discomforts. A room for 3; my husband with a cold and worse, a cough, a daughter and me in a minutely proportioned bed and breakfast in hideous Arnhem; my sons in a separate cupboard on tiny bunks; my Mother, the daughter of a Duchess and a powerful career woman of reasonable maturity after all, in another with cardboard dividing wall, achieving the impossibility of finding the place tolerable surrounded as it was by the rest of a most lowering housing estate overlooked by grimly dirty tower blocks. Alcohol of course played a soothing role and there were a number of shark like dogs on the streets. My Mother sees all dogs as a sort of redemption and we left before breakfast.
We stayed with friends in France, basking in a sunny luxury well beyond the scope of any 5 star hotel and leaving sadly to drive as far as the Picos d'Europa in Cantabria on the old route to Compostela and well away from coastal crowds. Rural Spain is still so extremely, happily, soothingly. Spanish and I speak none which only adds to a delightful feeling of foreigness embellished by at least one menu translation bearing such gems as 'well-cooked piece of old cow'. Well it gave the general idea I suppose, much of the rest was guess work and surprises.
Back in the Pyrenees, via the most photogenic building in the World, the Guggenheim in Bilbao, followed by lunch in the tapas bars of San Sebastian, we stayed in a boutique spa hotel in old valley village recently developed for skiing and barely patronised at the end of the summer. The Hotel, El Privilegio de Tena (http://www.elprivilegio.com/) is family run in a beautifully designed renovated abbey building and is much to be recommended for those ready to be stuffed with local wine and mountain food that requires a great deal of summer walking to be appreciated properly although skiing might do the trick better in winter.
Sadly my vision of a slow meander back through France to the Eurotunnel with a night perhaps at the blissfully crumbling Chateau de Labarom (http://www.labarom.com/) bed and breakfast near Poitier, where the home grown tomato jam at breakfast is a revelation and the sheets are exquisitely embroidered linen; and/or at some other boutique spot on the coast near La Rochelle, never came to pass. Our rather peculiar switchbacked route, involving hundreds of miles of driving backwards and forwards across vast areas of Spain was a factor of my careful planning turned on its head by my husband's strange yen for ferry transport. Serves him right.
Sadly my vision of a slow meander back through France to the Eurotunnel with a night perhaps at the blissfully crumbling Chateau de Labarom (http://www.labarom.com/) bed and breakfast near Poitier, where the home grown tomato jam at breakfast is a revelation and the sheets are exquisitely embroidered linen; and/or at some other boutique spot on the coast near La Rochelle, never came to pass. Our rather peculiar switchbacked route, involving hundreds of miles of driving backwards and forwards across vast areas of Spain was a factor of my careful planning turned on its head by my husband's strange yen for ferry transport. Serves him right.
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