Awake, for morning in the bowl of night has flung the stone that puts the stars to flight.

And, lo, has caught the sultan’s turret in a noose of light!

Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable: Christopher Howse: ‘A Pilgrim in Spain’

We head home today. So, I’ve written some End-of-Trip travel notes, which can be found at the end of this post. Talking of travelling . . . Here’s 6 ways to avoid your holiday being as hellish as it might turn out to be.

En route home, we aim to test the claim that the tortilla in Betanzos – at Casa Miranda – is the best in the world . . .

Cosas de España

Kissgate; Sr Rubiales has 3 daughters, it seems. These are the lessons which someone thinks he should have learned from them. Hard to argue with. Especailly as I have 2 daughters.

The deadline looms for the application by Brits for a Spanish driving licence. Only 4 days left.

HT to Lenox Napier of Business Over Tapas for this tip – from Maldita – on how to avoid real-estate scammers.

Marca is the Spanish newspaper for sports of all sorts. But I scoured it in vain this morning for an article on the rugby World Cup matches of the weekend. Incidentally, efforts to ensure complete safety in this rough sport are said to be causing confusion and anger. Even more so than in football, it seems. . . After an exciting opening weekend of the World Cup it is the refereeing and not the rugby that is dominating so many conversations.

Portugal

A village in the centre of the country has suffered a flood of 2 million litres of wine from a nearby distillery. I fear none of it was drinkable.

English

What exactly is a ‘yacht’? My old friend castigated me for using this term for the small vessels in Llanes harbour, even for those with sails. In the ‘sailing’ community, he said one never uses this term but, rather, that of the type of vessel – ‘Laser’ or ‘470’, for example. He said that ‘yacht’ sounded pretentious to him. I replied that I thought things were the other way round, How we laughed.

Spanish

Spain’s language authority is under pressure from Jewish groups to remove ant-Semitic terms from its dictionary, including one entry that describes a Jew as “a greedy person or usurer”. More than 20 Jewish groups, mainly from Spanish-speaking countries, have sent a letter to the Spanish Royal Academy (RAE) urging it to change entries it says are “outdated” and “offensive”.

Did you know? . . .

Yesterday, a Swissair flight to Barcelona arrived with a full complement of passenger but not a single suitcase. The former waited 2 hours before being told that this had happened – because of ‘ground-staff shortage in Zurich’.

For new readers:– If you’ve landed here looking for info on Galicia or Pontevedra, try here. If you’re passing through Pontevedra on the Camino, you’ll find a guide to the city there – updated a bit in early July 2023.

For those thinking of moving to Spain:- This is an extremely comprehensive and accurate guide to the challenge, written by a Brit who lives in both the North and the South and who’s very involved in helping Camino walkers. Which is possibly why, I’ve just belatedly realised, his nom-de-plume is Johnnie Walker . . . And I’d thought he was a big whisky fan.

TRAVEL NOTES

Long term readers will recall, maybe, that during a month-long drive around Portugal and southern Spain back in 2017, I compiled a list of 15 criteria for a ‘perfect’ public toilet. Having now driven another 2-3,000km around northern Spain, I can state with conviction that few places meet all the criteria. The most frequent deficiency is some way of driving your hands. Followed by the lack of soap. I guess you can imagine the worst.

Tourist/Inforamtion offices – as I claimed years ago – seem to work to hours convenient to employees, rather than to tourists. We found the offices in both Villaviciosa and Oviedo to be closed in the evening. But in Oviedo at least, there were QRs on the facade for various leaflets. And even better, a machine giving a much better map of the city than the one given to us in our hotel.

Wifi availability varies greatly. As a generalisation, large 3-star hotels will always have it in the lobby and ground-floor facilities but little to no signal in the rooms. This happened to us in Jaca and in Oviedo.

You need to make sure that a hotel means when it says it offers parking, usually by calling them. In practice, these are the possibilities:-

• Parking in their garage, at an extra (unstated) cost of more than 10% of the room cost.
• Parking in a street space reserved for guests, again at a cost of more than 10% of the room cost.
• Parking in a nearby carpark, at a discounted overnight rate.
• Parking in a nearby street where there are meters
• Parking in a nearby street where it’s free
• Parking for free in the hotel carpark. Rare in towns or cities

Incidentally the receptionist in our Llanes hotel advised that street parking was free on Sunday but there’d be a metered charge from 9am Monday morning. What he failed to tell me was what a friendly local told me as I tried to work out how the machine worked, viz. that the meters are no longer operative there. So, a saving of €10 by not taking up the offer of a hotel space in the street.

This road trip – though very enjoyable – has left me wondering if the hostelry industry hasn’t picked up a few tricks from the low-cost flying business. For example, my impression is that Booking.com are employing the trick of quoting you a price which assumes you pay them direct but then add 9-10%, if you decide to pay at the hotel desk. Which is always easier when there are 2 of wanting separate bills. I need to check this out.

If you’re making a same-day booking via Booking.com and put in the wrong date, even if you cancel this within seconds and ask for the right night, the hotel will be merciless. I did this for the first time in more than 20 years and more than 100 bookings. Booking.com noticed what had happened and said they’d talk to the hotel about waiving their charge. But advised me 24 hours later that the hotel hadn’t responded. I’m now planning to ask Booking.com to credit me with the commission they got from the charge the hotel made in defiance of their request.

Finally – and sadly – I don’t know what happened to the rider(s) of the bike we saw against a tree halfway up a slope but today’s Oviedo paper reports the death of 2 British motorcyclists killed yesterday on the A8 near Llanes, when they skidded in heavy rain and were run over by a car and a lorry/truck)..