Day 4:
Oviedo to
Valencia
Day 4, and Mum and I were headed to Checkpoint 3 on our Race Across Europe: Santiago de Compostela.
We checked out of the hotel in the dark at 5:15am. The Ibis here had been incredible value - £30 for a room, a short walk from the bus station, allowing us to arrive in plenty of time for our bus with our carefully packed Asturias cheeseboard.
And you know what? I had been too quick to assume nothing would be open. Even at 5:30am, the bus station was not deserted. Almost every bay was filled with a dark bus - although only a few were actually in use. And the station café was even open! We ordered coffees to take away.
The only thing that was switched off was the giant departures board, which tells you where to find each bus. We would have to find the bus manually, by ourselves. We started out with a quick scan up and down the long rows of buses, but no sign of it.
It got to 5:50 - 10 minutes to our departure - and now Mum was not the only one getting worried that we might miss the bus simply because we couldn’t find it. We split up and searched the long row of dark buses more briskly. Still no sign of it.
Seven minutes to go. I started asking the very few drivers for directions, but none was going in that direction or knew where to find the right bus. I could see Mum in the distance asking a few other passengers, unsuccessfully. I started jogging up and down through the rows of buses.
Finally, at 5:58 a bus with “Santiago” arrived and pulled into an empty bay near me. It was pure coincidence that I saw it! Missing this bus would have thrown the rest of our planned day into chaos, and cost us our tickets. But the bus set off into the still-dark morning with both of us safely on board.
Purple wisps of cloud clung around the hills above the apartment blocks on the edge of the city. There was very little traffic at this early hour. As we left Oviedo behind we passed green meadows, low scraps of mist just visible drifting over the grass in the twilight.
The bus quickly reached Gijon on the coast just as the sun was rising, and then headed west, following the coast in the early morning light. After yesterday’s drizzle, it was clear and windless this morning, and the scenery was beautiful – washed-clean green hills and mirror-like sea.
Finally, we turned inland, following a glassy blue estuary and then wriggling up a curvy country road towards Lugo. I was blown away by the views – the estuary with its glossy reflections and green hills reminded me of Norway. I hadn’t expected northern Spain to remind me of Norway. I had been very reluctant to book this particular bus, because it departed so early, and took such a long route - but what a fantastic bus trip it turned out to be.
I turned to the WhatsApp group and caught up on the overnight happenings. The race had been won last night, at about 3am! There were short announcements from Lupine Travel and heaps of celebratory messages from other Racers. I added some congratulations, and also shared some pictures of the view from our bus window of Asturias coastline in the early morning sun. “We packed the Asturias cheeseboard from last night and brought it for breakfast!” I posted. “We’re doing the food tour properly.”
Meanwhile, on the WhatsApp group, one person has messaged that they lost their ipad, which was now in Lost Property at Bordeaux station. The distressed owner is hundreds of kilometres away, but in receipt of a ground swell of sympathetic and supportive messages from the collected Racer community. I also received a message - someone had seen we planned to visit Santiago this today and wondered if our timetables will allow us to meet up. That’s a shame – we only have a tight stopover before we need to be on a train to Valencia, so probably not. We should have allowed more time for meetups.
The cheese, by the way, was magnificent. I feel like I understand now the secret to making the trip successful for both of us: look for opportunities to take scenic routes (like this bus journey) and try to break the journey in interesting places. Oviedo had been a terrific choice for us.
Yesterday Mum had suggested we set a deadline of Thursday to cross over to Morocco. But I’d been thinking hard about this overnight. I was not worried about getting to Marrakech – we had plenty of time. But if we crossed to Morocco one day later – on Friday – that gave us an extra day to break the long journey down to the south of Spain somewhere interesting. After looking through the timetables, Mum agrees. We still haven’t decided how we will break our journey, though.
It was a short – but entirely uphill - walk from the bus station in Santiago up to the cathedral, our Checkpoint 3 target. At the top of the hill, we turned a corner and plunged into a historic city centre. Narrow cobbled lanes forked and rejoined, forming a medieval labyrinth of streets and plazas circling the richly-decorated cathedral. We wandered gradually, completing the circumnavigation and obtaining our Checkpoint photograph. The largest plaza, directly in front of the cathedral, was filled with brightly coloured backpacks and hiking poles while exhausted hikers rested in the sun with water bottles and sandwiches. The cathedral represents the end point of one of the world’s most famous long-distance walks, and many of those walkers will have started in St-Jean-Pied-du-Port (our Checkpoint 2).
We found a shady table and a cool drink for Mum, and I set out on foot to explore as much as I could in the short window we had. The city was beautiful and briskly busy in May without being crowded. I found myself an ice cream (and shared it on the WhatsApp group – Checkpoint 3 done! And I don’t know where this ice cream came from) before meeting Mum at the train station.
Meanwhile Mum had met some familiar faces - a team of 2 ladies who had overnighted in Biarritz on Sunday. They had experienced significant delays following the storm and travel interruptions on Sunday night, while Mum and I were enjoying our buses.
Not much time to chat, though. It was my first time on a high speed line in Spain. I particularly liked seeing our train traverse the gauge-changing shed, which adjusted the gauge (width between the wheels) of the train underneath us so that we could transition from an older, slower line onto the newer, high-speed line. We also had 1 hour wait to change trains at Ourense. Ourense is famous for its bridges, so I spent most of the hour going to see them, a short walk from the train station, while Mum had a sit down in the station café. My favourite was the Old Bridge (Ponta Vella or Ponta Romano), Roman but rebuilt in the 14th century, from where there is a great view of more modern Millenium Bridge.
Our (eventual) route through Spain
On the train we discussed plans. When we leave Valencia, we need to turn south towards Algeciras for the ferry to Africa. Where should we aim to break the journey? We brainstormed some ideas and finally plumped for Toledo, which we thought would make a fine overnight stopover, after completing our Checkpoint duties in Valencia.
Meanwhile, on the WhatsApp group, someone had now volunteered to stop at Bordeaux station and collect the missing ipad! There was also a growing discussion of the best options for sailing to Tangiers. Some people have made the crossing from Spain to Morocco already, and posted their experiences and recommendations. Some very helpful tips there which I squirreled away for later.
We stopped for another change of train at Madrid Chamartin station - a confusing jumble of hoardings and temporary routes, due to major renovation and building works - and finally pulled into Valencia (Checkpoint 4) well after 10:00pm. There was a Race meet-up in Valencia tonight, kindly hosted by Jack’s Flight Club but we’ve arrived far too late to join. Tomorrow we will have time to look around.
Valencia has been the most expensive place we have stayed so far. Our budget stretched to a very small room a long way outside the city centre. I set my alarm and I fell asleep immediately.
