6. Sep, 2021

6. Sep, 2021

6. Sep, 2021

6. Sep, 2021

6. Sep, 2021

MONDAY  06-09-21

I know I've moaned in the past about the time it takes some motorhomers to do what they have to do on a dump station and go, but after today they pale in to insignificance. On our Aire, or Sosta there are five vehicles, across the road there are probably about another twenty parked on the coach park. The first vehicles arrived at the dump station at about 06:30, a bit early but that's fine. When we wanted to leave we had to join a short queue, we were fourth. It took us over an hour to clear the dump station. I have never seen such beggering about in all my life. I simply cannot understand how anybody can spend so long dumping waste water, emptying their toilet cassette and topping up there fresh water tank. One old fart in front of us had to have about six attempts just to get his vehicle lined up correctly, never mind dumping anything. It was just as well we weren't on a tight schedule.

Today we were heading to Cudillero, about seventy miles westwards along the coast. The route was further along the A8 motorway, an absolute boon, making the journey so much easier. The scenery along this coast is wonderful. As we drive along we have the coastline on our right, and on our left the mountains and green hills. If you're a hiker this is the area to come to.

We arrived at Cudillero about lunchtime. The area we finished up parking in was much better for motorhomes than the area identified in the Camperstop book, and so I have amended the Travelscript accordingly.

So a bit about Cudillero:

Cudillero is a municipality in the Principality of Asturias, Spain. Nowadays, Cudillero's main economic activities are related to tourism, but it is also known for its fishing industry. A legend says that it was founded by the Vikings. In addition to Castillian some locals still speak a dialect called Pixueto.

Spanish-media considers Cudillero to be one of the most beautiful villages in Spain.

Now the person who wrote that last sentence turns out to have been Pinocchio's cousin 'José the Nose'. Disappointing would be an understatement. The area closest to the marina was nothing but seafood restaurants all packed full of Spaniards enjoying shellfish which had grow fit and strong feeding off the effluent pumped in to the sea. Further up the hill they stopped painting and repairing the houses and it started looking pretty rough. This was obviously where the locals lived.

We'd finished looking round within about an hour and a half and so sat for a while to kill some time before making our way back to the motorhome. We thought we'd wander back down there this evening to look at the same thing again, only in the dark. Having studied the info available I suggested to The Chef that we just leave here and make our way to Ribadeo, our next scheduled stop. Poor old 'Fred Fendt' had to contend with a steep climb plus hairpin bends to reach the top of the hill, but we made it, and were soon back on the A8 motorway heading about forty miles further west. Again the scenery was magnificent, a walkers paradise, though anyone contemplating coming here on a walking holiday would need to search the walks etc available, otherwise it would be like taking a greasy Spaniard and dropping him in the Yorkshire Dales or the Lake District and telling him to enjoy himself. He needs to understand our OS maps, walks, bridleways etc, and it would be the same for us here.

Our host for tonight is the Eroski supermarket, (GPS: N43.54000° W7.06055°) which very kindly provide a dump station and ten parking spaces for motorhomes, you don't get that at Tesco's.

The Chef has already checked out not only Eroski's, but the Lidle store next door and tomorrow we shall be going shopping and then topping up with fuel, not that we've used that much.

Our ultimate destination tomorrow is Cathedrals Beach not far away. Low tide is at about 11:30, but we'll see how things turn out. I'm getting used to disappointments on this trip. However I am growing in confidence that the next few destinations will be good ones (they'd better be!).