The Ham Nomads

15 Jan 2015. <ES> Vitoria-Gasteiz, Araba/Álava; Burgos & Orsono la Mayor, Palencia, Castile y León —

Today was not really a 'tourist' day, but we did walk in through the residential areas of Vitoria-Gasteiz. The whole city is surrounded by medium-rise residential blocks, each one with the ground floor populated with shops. Totally different from what we have in Oz!

Today was windy, and the fallen leaves — remember, Autumn's been and gone — were blowing everywhere. There were teams of people in the streets trying to get them raked up and into bags for disposal.

We walked through a large park and reached a huge shopping complex, El Boulevard, where we wandered around and tried (unsuccessfully) to get some stuff for the computer. Suzie keeps commenting as we make our way through Spain that the number of obese or even overweight people (adults or children) is virtually nil. Australia, you have a lot to learn!

We turned about and wandered back to the van, had a bite to eat, and then set off.

We drove through beautiful countryside — at times flat, at times mountainous. On the edge of the road were interesting decorations — a couple of huge bulls, and the Monumento al buen Pastor near Burgos (which we could see only part of from the road).

On the way we've passed through quite a few road tunnels. Some are ultra-modern, some are rather quaint in their retro design. When we think of the trouble Campbell Newman has had getting tunnels put in place for Brisbane, and then we see the old and new tunnels here in Spain, and the way they facilitate travel, we can't help but query the short-sightedness of the 'tunnel blockers'.

We drove through the city of Burgos, but decided to push on to an aire in Orsono la Mayor, about a third of the way between Burgos and León (where there's an iconic cathedral we want to visit tomorrow). Stopped off at the aire in Orsono, right beside a cement works where a front-end loader was running backwards and forwards mixing the cement. He stopped early in the night, but apparently cement trucks pull in at all hours to fill up. (There are huge road works not far away, and presumably they were kkeeping the cement supplies up to these 24/7.) Fortunately it didn't interfere with our sleep!

Distance driven — today, 114 miles ( 184 km ); to date, 11,075 miles ( 17,824 km )