Welcome to the Grahams on Tour

We left the campsite near Porto not really sure where we'd head that night. We'd had some recommendations about nice places south of Porto but decided to head straight to Lisbon. We started off deciding to stick to our plan of keeping off the toll roads but the very slow roads soon put us off that idea, and once we were onto the toll road it seemed sensible to just keep going. We headed to the large Lisboa Camping site which, despite some mixed reviews online, was actually qu

The campsite we're in is pretty close to a metro line into Porto and the campsite folks called us a taxi to get there, which cost the princely sum of 6EUR. The Porto metro line is very good - clean, modern and pretty fast - and soon deposited us in the centre of town. The main tourist office is nearby so armed with tourist maps we started to work our way down to the river, as that seems to be where a lot of the interest is - plus everyone recommended we take a boat trip on th

First on the agenda after leaving the campsite was to refuel, as we were already intro the red. The station near the campsite in Santiago do Compostela was busy and was also one that was attendant service. The chap doing the attending spoke reasonable English but disputed that he'd started to fill up using the expensive diesel instead of the normal stuff. When, half way through, I pointed it out to him he did change and did refund us when we paid. Not sure whether he was play

We had a leisurely start to the day but eventually set off to walk the 2km or so into the centre of Santiago de Compostela. Almost immediate we encountered loads of folks also heading that way as we seemed to be on the same route as the Camino trail takes in towards the cathedral. The old town of Santiago is lovely. with lots of little narrow winding streets as well as lots of squares and plazas. On the way to the cathedral we passed the university buildings which are impress

271 miles, 28.5mpg We got up reasonably early and packed the motorhome ready to go, before heading up to the ridge above the campsite to take in the views over Riano and the nearby mountains. It was another lovely morning, with blue skies plus a band of cloud across the mountains. Being over 1100m up it was pretty chilly though - chilly enough that there was mists rising from the lake. There might well have been a frost if we'd been up early enough to see it - we did see fros

128 miles, 21.3 mpg (worst on the trip so far due to all the climbing today) It rained pretty heavily during the night and we had a rather rude awakening at about 7am when it sounded like some water was dripping into the motorhome. Turns out it was coming in from the hole where the wires lead into one of the lights, so looks like there might be an issue with the fitting of our solar panels! Will need to keep an eye on it, and I've removed that light fitting. The weather was s

Today we left France and moved into Spain, the first time we've been here with a motorhome and the first time we've been here at all for 15 years. As usual we'd set the satnav to avoid the toll roads so initially that routed us through various towns and villages until eventually, on crossing a river bridge, we found ourselves in Spain. There wasn't any actual "Spain" sign that we saw at the border - not sure if we missed it or if it was something to do with being in the Basqu

The weather was back to hot and sunny today - very hot and sunny in fact. Our campsite is a couple of miles outside of Biarritz but although there was a bus available directly outside we decided to stroll into town instead. Biarritz looks a very moneyed town with an interesting mix of older holidaymakers (like us!) as well as lots of younger, fitter surfing type folks. It certainly looks like it'd be a nice place to retire to if you could afford it, especially with weather li

Today we said goodbye to the Dordogne and instead decided to wander down to Biarritz, just short of the Spanish border. We'd had a recommendation from the France Camping group on Facebook for a campsite called Pavilion Royal in Bidart, just a couple of miles along the coast and with direct beach access. It's not the cheapest of sites (35EUR a night for the motorhome with electric and 2-persons out of season) but it is very well located as well as being recommended by lots of

Today was always going to be another scorcher with blue skies and 31C temperature - a far cry from the UK which was suffering under storm Ali. We'd decided to use the little motorbike again today, this time to visit the famous wine making town of Sainte Emilion which was only 10 miles away from the campsite. Several people had mentioned it as a favourite place in the Dordogne but despite having visited the region several times this would be the first time we'd been there. The