21 June 2012 the longest day and the longest day

No I haven’t repeated myself in the heading – 21 June was the longest day and it was the longest day for us travelling. We spent ALL day driving, so not a lot to report except about the roads and the countryside and our experiences along the way.

We had decided to skip breakfast and leave early as we knew we had a long way to go. We slept in, so leaving early didn’t happen. Next we had to get our car from the parking station where we had left it for the night, to the front of the hotel to pick up our bags. This took longer than we expected as we got caught up in the one way system of the roads and got lost. We got to see the fortress on the top of the hill as the one way system took us all the way around it!!!! After collecting our bags, we then had a similar problem getting out of the town and onto the road to Saragossa.

Once onto the road it was all pretty straightforward, thanks to the help of Karen, the voice of Bill’s trusty Tom Tom application on his iPhone. I don’t think we could have done it without Karen as the map we had didn’t have all the junctions, turn offs etc, in enough detail.

When we left Saragossa we didn’t manage to get onto the Autopista initially, which was a blessing in disguise as it meant we were driving on a minor road and came across a small café so that we could get a cup of coffee, we had bought fruit previously so had an orange before we set out. Just as well too as we ended up not getting any lunch, we pulled off the autopista, where there was a sign indicating there was a service station and food, but all they had was chips and ice blocks!!! The next time we followed a similar sign the road took us through a small town where everywhere was closed – it was siesta time of course!!! 

We travelled through interesting and varied countryside, from dry arid regions to lush pastureland, forested areas to coastline to mountainous. We travelled through several different regions, from Catalonia through Aragon, Nevarra ,Cantabria to Asturia. To our final destination Pola De Someido in the Cordillera Cantabrica.

We passed by hundreds of wind turbines, the number we saw in France paled into insignificance compared to the number here. It was so windy that they had windsocks on the Autopista. We also came across huge solar farms.

We passed under an arch signifying the Greenwich Meridian

We passed through Pamploma but the only bull we saw was this one on the hillside (not the one we saw in France either, although it looked the same)

We went through numerous tunnels when we were going through the hilly countryside.

I did like their Rest area sign

When we reached the northern coastline the road did travel a fair distance alongside the coast of the Bay of Biscay

We ended up paying a fortune on tolls for the roads. We had to stop numerous times to either pick up a ticket or pay cash for the use of the autovias and autopistas. We got confused with the signage a couple of times and went into the wrong gate!!!

Unfortunately travelling along on the Autovia you can’t just pull over to get a photo so most of the photos that I took en route were pretty hit and miss

The final leg of the journey to Pola De Someido took us through some incredible mountainous country with winding roads. On arrival at our destination we were blown away by the splendour of our accommodation. Palacio it is, a beautiful old stone building dating back to the 1700s, the home of Don Alvaro Florez Estrada who was a liberal politician and economist.

Our room overlooks a pretty babbling brook. We are very fortunate to be spending three days here in this house and in this region.