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.