Into the Cantabrian Hills, the Village of Ontaneda

Zagan the motorhome is all alone, sat in a new, official aire which has space for over 30 of us alongside the village of Ontaneda in the Cantabrian hills south of Santander (N43.203971 W3.925289). It costs a mere €7 a night to stay, which includes electrical hook-up (4 or 6 amps, we managed to trip it yesterday). The electricity is one of the reasons we’re here: our leisure batteries were down to about 60% capacity after five days off-grid and not that much driving being done. Update: two British motorhomes have since turned up!

Santander proved a worthwhile stopover for us. The city looked pretty grim as we’d driven down the dockside having left the ferry, and if we’d taken the motorway that would have been the only perspective we had. By staying a couple of days we got to see much more of the place, its parks, surf beaches, steep streets and market areas. A two day fire back in 1941 destroyed a fair chunk of it, apparently leading to the construction of blocks of flats, which are everywhere across the city these days, many sprouting washing drying in the winter sun.

In all we walked a fair few miles, partly driven by the fact Spain’s shops tend to close for two or three hours from 2pm, so we needed to kill some time! As well as wanting to buy a Spanish SIM, we’d discovered this year’s forgotten item: spare van keys. We have the spare master ignition key and an alarm fob, but not the deadlock and standard door/locker keys, which are safely sat in a dish at home. Whoops, must add ’em to the packing list.

We found the SIMYO mobile phone SIM shop first. It had just locked for lunch so we headed into the centre of town, happening across the tourist information where we asked if they know where we could get spare keys cut, we like to challenge these guys! They quickly drew the location of a place which did shoes repairs too, much like in the UK, and after tucking into a traditional tuna pastry slice thing (I’ll never make a travel writer) and riding up and down some outdoor escalators, we went and hung around outside.

Key man finally arrived and opened up, giving Ju a chance to test her Duolingo (an app which teaches foreign languages) skills on him, requesting a copy of each llave. He understood, eyeballed ’em and told us he could cut one but not the other. Better than nothing, at least we can leave the van separately now, and the cost was a bargain €1.70. Next up: the SIM. Back over the hill (making good use of escalators plus a small free funicular), we found the shop was open and stepped into what felt like the Graveyard of the Laptop. They were everywhere, hundred’s of ’em, with two blokes stood up gruffly disemboweling one of the poor swines as we watched. Ju employed more magic Duolingo, handed over a passport, phone number and email address and some fifteen minutes later we left, success(ish)! There’s often some weird step you have to do with local SIM cards and this one required us to pay the shop man €10, and then we needed to top-up a further €7 online for it to work. That would give us 32GB a month, and any unused data would roll over for up to 3 months (more about our internet system here).

Sorted, but for the fact all of our many cards (we carry several types to cater for stuff like this) would not work. No reason given: they just errored every time. After Ju’s failed attempt to rectify the problem with their call centre (in Spanish – it was always going to be a bit of a stretch), a bit of Googling revealed SIMYO don’t accept UK credit or debit cards. I admit I reacted a teeny bit at this point: why do SIMYO have a system where you have to already be on the internet in order to connect to it? Makes no sense from a customer perspective, nor does this weird €10 + €7 thing, why not just sell us the top-up in the shop and we could walk out with a working SIM? Digging deep into stoic reserves (tongue-in-cheek…), we sussed we could buy the top-up in one of many shops, post offices and garages, and our Three SIM would keep us going for a while, so we popped it to one side.

With our two days in the motorhome aire up, the decision on where to go couldn’t be put off any longer. We’re in Green Spain up here, with rolling fields and forests, a craggy coastline with sandy coves and the high and mighty Picos de Europa mountains, standing packed with snow, monochrome in the distance as we headed west from the aire. There are a ton of wonderful places we could go, but like many of us we’re driven by the weather, and the good weather in Spain in winter is south, so south it was. Once we’d been to Lidl that is, and brimmed the empty fridge, and even then we only managed about 30 miles before pulling in here, driving onto a ramp and chilling out with a cuppa. Big drivers we ain’t, although the rain and snow looks to be coming in the next few days so that might be about to change.

This is farming country folks. Stone cottages stand with tractors outside, paused in their muck-spreading duties and everyone seems to have a big stick with ’em. One Spanish guy who’d been to the aire gave it a single star (most reviews were 5 stars), citing the fact he had to pay (I love being a British motorhomer, as €7 with hook-up feels cheap to me) and the fact it smelled of cows. Yep, it smells of cows, only mildly mind you despite the fact there are a field of them next door. We’re alongside one of Spain’s Vía Verde paths here too, an old railway line which would have likely taken agricultural produce north to Santander, and is now paved for cyclists and pedestrians (although this one seems to have speeding cars and honking tractors on parts of it too). We’ve had a run down it this morning, and it’s cows all the way, plus a few sheep, a saw mill and lots of barking guard dogs. The path shares the valley with a stone-filled mountain river, which is refreshingly flowing with water, unlike Spain’s many dry ramblas to the south, and going by a small statue of a salmon, is good for fishing.

With a tip-off Repsol garages sell SIMYO top-ups we’ve headed the kilometre or so into the village, finding the garage was actually just a pump by the side of the road. Nipping into the small supermarket next to the pump, the lady pointed us at a tiny shop opposite, where we found a chap sat in a chair positioned to get some sun through the glass door (not daft that chap) who turned out to be the garage attendant. Within a couple of minutes and more Spanish deployed (mainly Ju, as my Duolingo efforts have been shockingly minimal), we were topped up and working. Huzzah! Was it worth it when we could have just bought a UK Vodafone SIM and had none of this? Yeah, maybe, it forced us to interact with a few locals which is no bad thing. On the way back to the van we’d a second tip-off to grab some sobao, a sort of sponge, from a tiny bakery in the village (apparently it’s a signature dish of this valley). This was an experience in itself, as the wee door was locked tight with a small sign saying ‘open, press the bell’ (in Spanish).

We pressed the bell and within seconds an elderly gent appeared and let us inside. The only thing for sale were packets of sobao so it wasn’t too difficult to get across the fact we wanted some. His wife appeared at this point and between the four of us we managed to effect the transaction, albeit with bemused confusion on our part whenever they mentioned pretty much any Spanish word in their vocabulary. We both seem to pick up on the word camión (lorry) at one point, which we think might have been explained why we could only buy a pack of 6 of the sponges, almost a kilo of the stuff, as we guess it’s usually shipped out to parts of Spain by lorry? Dunno, but for €6 we were happy and it made for a very different experience to Lidl. Back at the van we chopped one in half and shared it. Conclusion: it’s alright. Needs a bit of jam.

Not much else to report folks. The decision’s been taken to head south via Madrid and Toledo, probably, but other than that we’ve not yet figured out where we’re going tomorrow. Let us whip out the sobao this fine evening and over pudding decide (with maybe a bit of squirty cream).

Cheers, Jay