Freddie Mercury and kamikaze larks

23.2.12

Stocking up with borrowed DVDs to while away any chilly nights, we said au revoir to our friends and set off for Bordeaux, and thence down into Spain.

The combined efforts of loggers, roadworks gangs and prairie farmers with their ranks of huge irrigation booms alongside the route south to the Pyrenees have created a scorched-earth landscape of such spectacular hideousness that even the buzzards have given it up as a bad job and gone elsewhere.

After a day of solid motorway driving, the first Spanish aire we stopped at, in Miranda de Ebro, did nothing to lift our spirits, having sounded far more pleasant in the guidebook than in reality, with rudimentary facilities, and lorries thundering by on a main road almost overhead into the early hours. Sitting in our little tin can cooking up pasta, we really did feel, in a forlorn way, in a little world of our own. And we felt compelled to set the alarm before going to sleep.

But next night saw us up in the snow-capped mountains, in the tidy little spa village of La Alberca, near Bejar. En route we’d seen red kites and buzzards galore from a grotty roadside service area, storks nesting on roofs as we crossed a high plateau where the earth was the brightest rusty orange-red, griffon vultures, and countless kamikaze crested larks and sparrows on the hard shoulder. We’d been surprised by the abundance of wind turbines on the hilltops – the Spanish are clearly going for green energy in a big way – but such is the scale of the landscape that they did not seem out of place.

We arrived at our free car park aire in time for a relaxing walk through the forest – the area is a national park – and found a ‘free gift’ that must have been left behind in the CD player by the previous owner of our motorhome. So we sat there eating a wonderful warm salad that included sundried tomatoes, chorizo, marinated anchovies and all sorts of salvage from the fridge, listening to Freddie Mercury singing “It’s a kind of magic.” Which it was. And to make it even better, there was a phone call from Number One Son, to say he’d arrived home safely from India.