Diana and Brian's Holidays

Green Hills of Spain 13-27 June Day one and Two

Again this blog will contain lots of photographs, they will be in a fairly small format on these pages but just click them to expand them.

The holiday was organised by Ffestiniog Travel who we have travelled with before and they cover everything from St Pancras, London and back.
This blog is not arranged in chronological order but more by location as we visited some places twice.

The map of our trip can be seen on Google maps, click the map to enlarge

We normally stay at the Premier Inn Hub before traveling on Eurostar but this time their prices were ridiculous, we think it was due to a football match and a train full of Scotsmen going to it on the same morning we were traveling, so we stayed in a basement room of a small hotel in Argyle Square. The view from our basement window was shall we say interesting.

That evening we had a wander round the area looking for somewhere to eat and came upon a small Italian restaurant, Casa Tua that looked more like a corner café, but the food was excellent but not corner café price.

Next morning it was a short walk to the station and meet Adrian who was our tour leader for the duration of our holiday and also our fellow travellers, there were only 12 of us at this point as two were meeting up in Spain.
Things didn’t start too well as Eurostar, first they issued us with new tickets as we checked in and then it was followed by train delayed. Soon there was another announcement, all tickets void and to exchange them for general passes, these were handed out on a first come first served basis, they didn’t have a seat number only a carriage number. and about half an hour later we were on our way to Paris. The delay wasn’t critical as Ffestiniog had allowed plenty of time for our transfer to Paris Montparnasse and organised two 7 seater taxis for the trip across the city.
From here we caught a train to Poitiers for our first nights accommodation.
Next morning straight after Breakfast, we were off again this time heading for Spain. The first train took us to Bordeaux where we had a couple of hours to kill before our next train to Hendaye. From here we caught a light railway to our first nights destination at San Sebastian.

Green Hills of Spain 13-27 June San Sebastian

Our stop in san Sebastian was very short and wet. It wasn’t actually raining when we arrived, or when we left. Our original plan was to walk as a group down to the beach and old town. As we set off down a main road and large roundabout we decided to give it a miss and head back to the hotel for waterproofs, a good job we did because minutes latter it did start to rain.
Our hotel was right by the river and to get to the old town we just walked along the side of the river towards the sea.The top floor of the hotel gave quite a good view of the river, the main new town being on the far side. Most of the bridges over the river are modern but one of them nearer the mouth is older and quite ornate.

We wandered round the old town stopping in a bar for a drink, we would return there latter to eat, while we were there the rain eased and we were on our way again. We visited the old market now mainly retail but the old bidding clock is still there from when things were auctioned off and it doesn’t look that old.

Back outside and a walk through the gardens and down to above the beach, it was probably a 6mt drop to the beach and the chap doing the sand drawings had a cloth spread out to catch the coins.

Not sure what this building was but it faced the gardens and was at 90° to the beach.

You can see what the weather was like by the pavements so we took refuge in the church which was half way back to our hotel.

Later the weather cleared out which was good so we didn’t get wet walking back down to the old town for dinner nor walking back afterwards.
The next morning we only had a short time before departing on the next leg of the journey so we took a walk up stream, over the first bridge we came to, down the other side and back over the next bridge. There were several rowers out on the river getting a bit of exercise.

Our train didn’t depart until almost 11 am so no need to rush around and thankfully the rain had stopped as we sat on the station waiting its arrival, another trip on a 1 meter gauge line like most of them since we arrived in Spain.

Green Hills of Spain 13-27 June A Coruna

We set off on a nice bright sunny morning to walk to the light house, this is not just any light house but the worlds oldest working lighthouse built by the Romans with an oil lamp the size of a large washing up bowl and known as The Tower of Hercules. (Please click the link for much more information)
You actually go in through the foundations where there are some artefacts on display including the original oil lamp bowl You can see from the blue sign there are lots of steps and you are not allowed to pee off the top.

It was quite a walk there in the heat so a chance to sit down on a comfy sofa was not to be missed, at one time lots of this part of the town were served by a tram system but that has been abandoned now, I wonder if they will regret it but there is some nice street furniture about.

At the other end of the bay is a fort built to protect the town, it even has its own chapel.

The fort or castle overlooks the harbour that now provides moorings for commercial shipping but also cruise ships and there was a bit of coming and going while we were there.

There was some interesting architecture in the town, just behind the harbour is the old town wall and some of the properties overlooking the water have large, multi pane windows.