The long way to Spain
For various reasons I am not too good at keeping in touch
with family and friends: I suppose this blog is my main means of keeping doing
so and quite a few of my previous blogs have been about Spain. This year I
decided that it was about time I visited an old Swedish friend that I met
through my work as a consultant, he lives in Stockholm. So, an obvious thought
occurred: why not visit him on my way to Spain? A little out of the way of
course, but this seemed like the foundation for an adventure. I had always
wanted to visit those three intriguing Baltic States that border Russia and discovered
that there was a ferry between Stockholm and Estonia – this journey was clearly
meant to be.
The first time I visited Sweden was in the 1960s when my
teenage friend William Lefebve and I decided to go there in search of the
claimed availability of free love. In those days there was a ferry directly
from Immingham to Gothenburg but sadly there are now no direct ferries so we
made for the Hook of Holland. That ferry starts from Felixstowe where I have
another neglected old friend so we visited him and his wife along the way. Talk
about a trip down memory lane.
Naturally I wrote notes as we travelled the 3,000 miles in
our motor caravan and one day I might write them up as a book or something, but
here’s a few brief recollections. I had a travelling `companion, Margaret of
course, but also Thomas Mann via his fascinating book The Magic Mountain.
We visited 12 countries in total and took the whole of
September 2024 to do it. The most memorable part of our Dutch experience was crossing
the Zuiderzee, driving over a 19-mile dam with salt water on the sea side and
fresh on the lake side.
Margaret had a strong desire to visit Denmark inspired by
her favourite Scottish aunt’s love of the country and its friendly people. So
we went there and found that auntie was quite correct. Interestingly, the least
friendly country in our experience was the Czeck Republic. In Sweden we made fours
stop including Taaby where my friend Bjorn lives in that nice suburban town, so
neat and well run, very Swedish, very Viking.
The ferry to Estonia was a highlight. Parking at the head of
one of the queues waiting to board I glanced at the driver of the van at the
head of next queue and saw the father of our Spanish grandsons!! This was one
hell of a coincidence. We had not seen each other for years and there we were
thrown together by fate. We had a great time on the boat, drinking and dancing
(the entertainment was stunning), recalling old times and catching up with the
current lives of Jordie and his Swedish wife Boodil.
The three Baltic countries were flat and pretty boring to
drive through. However, the capital towns of Tallin and Riga made up for all of
that and our accidental visit to a small impoverished village in Lithuanian was
educational.
In Poland the highlight was Warsaw where it rained, no, poured.
We had a pretty lousy campsite but with easy access to the city by bus. There
we were impressed by the traffic free centre with its grandiose churches and
castle. So difficult to countenance that the Nazis destroyed 75% of this place.
I thoroughly enjoyed a visit to the Marie Curie museum and to a simple church with
a pure white interior nearby.
Next day we entered the Czeck Republic and were roaring
along at the usual 60-70mph regularly overtaking lorries and being over taken
by cars when something odd happened, the road emptied of traffic and then
suddenly was blocked by a barrier and we were forced off it. The cause was the
flooding that affected much of central Europe just then and that finally landed
us at Frydek Mistret where we were greeted by avoiding eyes and downcast faces.
Still the beer was good and the food served in overly generous quantities.
We moved on to Olomouc which we both agreed was our
favourite city with its two connected ‘squares’, wonderful buildings and spirited
street art. We passed on to stay the night at a highly commercial campsite
alongside Lake Musov then, next day, we entered our favourite country Austria.
There we found the small town of Illmitz next to the beautiful Neusieder Lake, a
town surrounded by nature parks. I cycled out to one and met a man from near Witney
in a hide, and he shared his telescope with me. More bird watching and an
overnight stay in a small Hungarian village whose only restaurant was fully
booked for a private party, then continued along that country’s van rattling
roads to Sofron where we enjoyed a view of this Hungarian city from its tall
fire tower.
Then we were back in Austria and were brought to tears by
the wonderful buildings and courtyards of the city of Graz backed up by the pealing
of many bells from its many wonderful churches. As we travelled south blue
mountains appeared on the horizon and grew to dominate our journey. We were
much taken by our stay in the long lakeside village of Portschach until we discovered
that almost all of the lake’s edges were inaccessible, privately owned. So we
moved to Villach where the camping ground had its own lake into which I dived after
a long and somewhat scary walk in the adjacent mountains.
After this we entered Italy spending one night in a small
village parked within a line of rotting camping cars, a graveyard we will never
understand. We followed this with the seaside town of Caorle just above Venice,
a pleasant place with boats parked almost alongside cars in the centre of the town.
Next the big one, Florence, and our largest and most expensive campsite of the
whole journey. I believe we had become over churched by this time and the Duomo
struck me as being somewhat over the top, excellent as it is, so we were glad
to divert to the pretty seaside village of Le Grazi on the Mediterranean side
of the country followed by the lakeside town of Marta where we had a smashing spot
beside its small port and spied rather rare red-faced pochards. I took my
longest bike ride of the trip there alongside the lake, claimed to be the largest
volcanic lake in Europe.
Next day we visited the stunning town of Tuscana on our way
to Rome’s ferry port and then, after a disappointingly boring crossing of the Med,
disembarked at Barcelona. From there it was just about four hours to our second
home, La Fresneda.