Tuesday 25th February 2025 – Burgos, Spain

 Jane decided to have a day at the campsite, what she calls a ‘poddle day’. I wanted to visit two museums in the city and so I caught the bus in again, arriving just in time for the opening of the Museum of Human Evolution. This is a very modern museum of huge size, housed in glass-fronted, five-storey building. No expense had been spared, there were lots of staff on duty and all of the exhibits had explanations in Spanish and English. For oldies like me, entry was free!
Atapuerca is probably the most important prehistoric site in Europe and was designated a World Heritage Site in 2000. They have found bones of early man dating to nearly a million years and evidence of the earliest known settlement of man in Western Europe. The museum has finds from a number of sites in the Atapuerca mountains and the results of the excavations of two caves are shown in dark, cave-like rooms. It was very impressive, especially coming face-to-skull with a pre-Neanderthal man and a stone hand axe, both approx. 400,000 years old.
That part of the museum was excellent. The rest of the museum, unsurprisingly, covered human evolution and was very well presented, although not of so much interest to me.
The next museum was the Museum of Burgos. This had two sections, one devoted to Christian art and the other to local archaeology. I have seen too much Christian art and walked through that section fairly rapidly. There was however some very good 15^th and 16^th century paintings in excellent condition.
The archaeological section was excellent although they obviously didn’t have the money that the Museum of Human Archaeology had. The displays were rather old fashioned and all of the information boards and find tags were only in Spanish. This made it difficult to follow but the quality of the finds, especially those from Iron Age sites, was excellent.
Time was getting on and I just had time to look in at the indoor market before it closed at 14:00. Both of the museums were on the opposite side of the river from the cathedral and it was obvious that this was much more an area for the locals with a large variety of independent, specialist shops.
I went back to the excellent Las Espuelas del Cid restaurant for lunch and had another wander around the centre before catching the bus back to the campsite.
Photos: The 400,000 year old pre-Neanderthal skull; An even older 500,000 year old hand axe; The courtyard of the Burgos Museum; One of the specialist shops near the Burgos Museum – it specialises in cod!

Monday 24th February 2025 – Burgos, Spain

There is a bus stop outside the campsite where four buses a day will take you into the centre of Burgos for £1. We caught the 09:30 in and headed to the tourist information office and obtained a brochure detailing suggested walking routes around the city. We find this a useful way to explore places and gives the opportunity to visit attractions on the route if they look interesting. Unfortunately, this brochure only listed the sites rather than showing a suggested route.
We started at the cathedral, a must-see site in Burgos. It really was magnificent and we spent a couple of hours going around admiring the architecture and wonderful stone carving. Another highlight were the choir stalls with their wood carving and marquetry. The audio guide was available by an app download and this meant that the peace of the cathedral was maintain.
Our combined ticket also covered two other churches, one of which was closed today but we were able to visit the church of St. Gil, another fascinating church but somewhat low-key when compared to the cathedral. It was British lunchtime (13:30) and we had identified a restaurant close to the church. Las Espuelas del Cid offered a 3-course meal for €20 and it was excellent.
Almost everything, shops, churches and other attractions close in Spain between 14:00 and 16:00 and our bus back to the campsite left at 16:00, so we decided to have a wander to use up the time. We headed up to the castle (closed for refurbishment) and enjoyed a great view over the city. We then followed a circuitous route through the centre admiring the architecture and doing some window shopping – much cheaper than the real thing.
Photos: The beautiful ‘Golden Staircase’ of Burgos cathedral; And an example of some of the excellent stone sculpture; View of the city from Burgos Castle; All through the city are wonderful bronze sculptures of everyday people and trades.

Sunday 23rd February 2025 – Burgos, Spain

All the advice that I have read on driving to Spain suggests that it is best to take the toll roads over the border. So, after a last French supermarket shop, it was motorways almost all the way and the €32 in tolls was well worth it to avoid the mountain roads and to save an hour in journey time. From sea level just after the border, we climbed continuously through many tunnels until we arrived in Burgos at 865 metres.
The mountain views were glorious and kept us entertained on the journey. On the way we stopped at the Monumento al Pastor, a great place for lunch with more lovely views and impressing rock sculptures.
There is only one campsite in Burgos, Camping Fuentes Blancas, situated just outside the city. There was plenty of space and we chose a pitch that had very little mud – they had obviously had some rain recently.
Photos: Mountain view at Monumento al Pastor; and one of its sculptures, the shepherd with a lamb – very suitable for the rural setting.

 

Saturday 22nd February 2025 – Saint-Paul-les-Dax, France

 Leaving Lussac we passed many vineyards with their owners often offering tastings but it was far too early. We were on a mission today as we wanted to get to the aire in Saint Paul les Dax early, so there were no stops on the way.
We arrived just after 12:30 and set off on the short walk into the large shopping mall on the edge of the town. A short distance from the mall we found a popular restaurant offering an excellent value 3-course meal. Turning down the offer of coffee after the meal, we walked into the centre of Dax and the ‘No Scrum, No Win’ rugby bar where the very friendly staff put the Wales v Ireland match of the TV. As the match continued, we were beginning to hope that Wales might win, but it wasn’t to be. We managed a quick walk around the vicinity before returning to the bar for the England v Scotland match. There were a few more customers now and the young French rugby supporters were cheering for Scotland - only because we were there and I was wearing my England shirt. It was all good natured and, after our glorious(?) 16 – 15 victory, I wished them luck for their match the next day and told them that they must to beat Ireland when they play them on 8^th March.
In order to avoid a 45 minute walk back to the aire, we managed to find a bus which, much to our surprise, was free – we have no idea why.
Photos: The Lussac vineyards looking rather dull in their winter clothes; The hot water spring rises in the centre of Dax, reaching a flow rate of 140 cubic metres an hour; Steaming from the spouts under the arches, the heath-giving, sulphurous water can be accessed by the locals.

Friday 21st February 2025 – Lussac-Saint-Emilion, France

We reviewed our planned stops on the route to Spain and decided to stop in two Camping Car Parks (CCP). These are aires, often municipal aires, that have been upgraded to have good fresh water and dumping facilities and also have wifi. The sites have barriers installed, which makes them more secure but there is also a charge, generally about £12 - £14 per 24 hours. Unlike most campsites, there are no restrictions on arrival or departure times, which can be very useful.
Today we headed to Lussac-Saint-Emilion in the heart of the famous St. Emilion wine area. But first, a map at the aire had showed us that there were some museums in the area and the Museum of Prehistory at Grand Pressigny sounded interesting. We weren’t expecting much but it turned out to be fascinating. We should have known about Grand Pressigny as it is famous for very high quality flint tools that were exported over a large part of France but also reached Holland and Switzerland during the final Neolithic period (3^rd millennium BC). Production of the flint was on an industrial scale, exploiting the flint by mining caves in the valley sides. Large stores of unfinished flint tools have been excavated together with vast quantities of waste from the flint knapping process. The museum was very well presented and there was an excellent video showing an expert flint knapper producing the distinctive long flint blades from the local flint.
The journey was through pleasant countryside with many rivers and lakes and, just as we approached Lussac, vineyards.
Arriving at the aire, we used our card to open the barrier and just got an error. We had to phone the CCP office to get a code to enter and then all was well. We found out that the Internet connection was down and this caused the problem and meant that we didn’t have Internet access on the wifi.
We walked into the village but, like many other wine villages that we have visited, it was unexciting. In particular, the only bar, where we had hoped to have a drink, was unappealing.
Photos: The Museum of Prehistory at Grand Pressigny is housed in a partly restored chateau; An example of the famous Neolithic flints produced in this area – producing flint blades of this length requires great skill and very high quality flint.

 

Thursday 20th February 2025 – Manthelan, France

In the morning we went for a short stroll along the side of the lake and admired the dolmen sat on an island in the lake just opposite the car park. The lake was created from the abandoned workings of a quarry but the dolmen remained in position.
Our Garmin satnav suggested that we should reserve our route towards Dreux before we headed south but I fancied going on the smaller roads directly south from the lake. This turned out to be an inspired decision as we passed through the small village of Mormoulins with a chateau and an impressive water mill, no doubt built by the owners of the chateau.
We travelled on and found an aire in the village of Reignac-sur-Indre which straddles the large Indre river. Signs indicated that they had serious floods in earlier years but flood banks had been created on both banks to protect the village. Very close to the aire was a mill on the river with a huge waterwheel and a very sophisticated system of weirs and sluices that could steer a very large volume of water through the mill.
We had lunch and read the aire notice board that showed that there was a dolmen in the grounds of the chateau. Interesting, we thought, we could see if we could find the chateau and the dolmen. The map showed a chateau and we set off for the short walk. Google showed that we were very close to the chateau but we couldn’t see it – there was only a very tall modern water tower. And then it clicked, the map and Google showed ‘Chateau eau’ not ‘Chateau Eau’ – the water tower was the chateau! We had a good laugh and returned to the van.
Onward then to the village of Manthelan where we discovered another aire with good (and free) water and dumping facilities. We decided to amend our plans and stay for the night. The site is next to a small lake, children’s playground and skate park and was a three minute walk from the main street. The village only offered a small pizza restaurant/takeaway but had a bakery that provided excellent croissants. It turned out that there were some very pleasant public toilets, always a bonus when staying in aires.
Photos: The mill at Mormoulins; And its chateau – a lovely building but its grounds need some TLC; The mill on the river at Reignac-sur-Indre.