Road Trip through Spain

[Newbornbairn]

Now we're back and recovered, a few points.

1) Benidorm was fantastic for my wife in her wheelchair - pretty accessible and the hotel with the ramped access to the pool was brilliant.  Such a simple thing - a ramp with handrails into the water but it meant she could get in and out of the pool under her own steam and once in, for the first time in 15 years she felt no pain as the water supported her. For me, the entire trip was worth it just for that! Disappointingly, checking the pools around Stirling, there's nothing like that here - just hoists that they manhandle people in and out of. 

2) As mentioned upthread, Zaragoza was ace. As someone put it earlier - Spain is just so civilised and Zaragoza exemplified that. Beautiful architecture and great cafes. 

3) Doing the road trip meant we discovered Spanish service stations, some meh but some like our transport cafes of 20 years ago - just Spanish. Had some great tortilla patatas at them, with some quite weird ham. Thoroughly recommend the service station cafes (try the huevos rotos y jamon)

4) Valencia was cool - being up close and personal with Beluga whales was awesome. Driving is mental though.

5) Went to a Safari Park in the hills near Benidorm - really good but the wife found the drive up the steep, windy road a bit scary. Go during the week and it's deserted - we had it entirely to ourselves and were able to walk with elephants, zebra, rhinos and the wife was thrilled to bits when she got to clap a giraffe!

6) Wee trip to Cartagena which was ridiculously hot and swarming with flies for some reason. Again, just so civilised but was quite amusing to see the waitress at our cafe get angry with a Russian guy who was trying to get her attention by clicking his fingers and shouting "Hey, chica!" 

7) Madrid was in many ways just another big city but we went to a Flamenco show in a city bar which was cool

8  Santander was good - for our last night I'd booked us into a really swanky hotel and I'm glad I did - it was like Fawlty Towers with an obsequious receptionist guy, a harassed manageress and a rude as hell French Maitre'd. 

9)  Hated the ferries. Going out was Portsmouth to Bilbao over two nights and I was seasick and bored rotten. Going back they changed the itinerary and we went from Santander to Plymouth which again was boring but also meant a 9 hr drive home.

 

Overall, Spain is a great place for a road trip. We stuck to the main roads mainly because we had fixed destinations to hit. The toll roads are quiet and smooth and not too expensive whilst the free motorways varied between excellent and potholed to buggery. We got off the main roads occasionally and discovered little villages clustered round churches and quite often impressive castles - in fact the whole place is littered with castles that make Stirling & Edinburgh look like Premier Inns. Whole trip was 2352 miles driving.