The rain in France falls mainly on Biarritz.
Don’t let the sales images of sun-kissed trophy wives and protracted beach-bar
bacchanals fool you — this is a town standing foursquare into the Gulf
Stream, catching more drizzle than Barry Island and feeling the full brunt
of every storm that takes a fancy to France.
It was four days into our early-summer camping trip, inspired by dreams of
falling asleep to the sound of the surf and worrying about little more than
a few too many ants following the baguette crumbs under the canvas — and
we’d yet to unpack the tent.
The budget was being sautéed by hoteliers with the Gallic gall to charge peak
rates to a clientele who would rather be anywhere else on earth, the
forecast was to get, somehow, wetter, and spirits were low indeed. Watching
another front roll in from behind the wobbling windows of a promenade
brasserie, we unfurled the map and a plan was hatched. Just over the
Pyrenees lay a nation where, rumour had it, rainfall was extremely locally
isolated. If we just stayed clear of the plains...
Unencumbered by guidebooks, reservations or so much as an ounce of local
knowledge, we pointed the rental car towards the border, and the twisting,
windblown haul over the mountains. Thick, sodden clouds overshadowed then
enveloped the road, dulling the lush colours of the hillsides, slicking the
tarmac.
Then, with sleet whistling around the gullies and clifftops, came the final
pass — and a heaven-sent change in meteorological mood. Greens shaded to
parched browns, slate grey was blown into eggshell blue, and there was
Spain, rolling away like a bone-dry welcome mat.
Heading south, the road bisected a vast acreage of wheat fields and wind
farms, barely garnished with a handful of compact townships. Pamplona
whizzed past, sweating in its geological frying pan, a lonely looking place
that probably organises its bull run just for the company. Then the signs
announced Soria, the tiny provincial city in Castilla y Leon that had been
indiscriminately pinpricked as our first port of call.
We parked up and wandered Soria’s few elegant avenues, manicured parks and
cobbled squares, while the locals completed their Saturday morning chores
with a lack of self-regard befitting (I’d later learn) their home town’s
humble status.
Having last enjoyed an economic boom when the wool market went bullish in
medieval times, Soria is regional capital of the emptiest part of Spain, and
is something of a national byword for provincial sleepiness. It is the kind
of unchanging backwater that might seem laughable if you were a fancy-pants
urbanista from Madrid but is heavenly if you’re on holiday from the
Vauxhall/Stockwell hinterland.
We sat on a bench in the Plaza Mayor, soaking up a restorative dose of Spain’s
two abundant luxuries — time and sunshine — and watching as a crowd slowly
began to gather in the square with congenial, back-slapping familiarity. It
seemed the golden rule of Iberian travel was about to be proved once again.
Many elements of community life in the Spanish countryside can be eulogised:
the traditions, the rites, the closeness of family, the adherence to the
past, the blood on the sand, the lemons on the road, and so on. For more
prosaic sorts, a simple motto might suffice: “There’s always something going
on.”
Stick, or stumble, around a Spanish town long enough, and some kind of
festivity will surely begin; on my own far-from-comprehensive travels, I’ve
bumped into children dressed as devils carrying catherine wheels through
Catalonia, helped set fire to a straw Judas in Andalusia, wandered into a
stately procession of Mallorca’s finest dressed as pigs and chickens, and
silently followed the saints through the streets of the Costa de la Luz.
And here in Soria it was clear that, once again, something was about to go on.
Midday on Saturday was, it emerged, the time when practically the whole town
converged on the Plaza Mayor for a beer and a catch-up.
Tiny, oak-lined holes in the walls now opened up, miniature bars serving cold
ones and hot snacks. The citizens of Soria toured the square with well-worn
etiquette, each shaking a hundred hands, delivering a hundred dutiful nods,
everything from the creases in their trousers to the conduct of their
children speaking of a careful respectability that might have been a touch
burdensome to live with, but was nothing but enviable from the sidelines.
We sat on our bench and duly envied, before plunging into the crowd,
brandishing a road map, in search of advice for where to head next. An
elderly burgher, pristine in blazer and cravat, came to the rescue: “You
want to see real Spanish country? Drive west out of town: you will find it.”
North-central Spain was once, he explained, a surprisingly leafy locality, but
the sheep on which Soria was built needed grazing lands, and the region’s
forests were cleared about the same time as England’s, in the early medieval
period. One sizable section remained to the west of town, though, and it was
here that we were directed, to the pine-covered mountains of the Sierra de
la Demanda.
The air cooled as the road reached the foothills of the forested Sierra. One
of the outlying valleys of this rolling range had been plugged and flooded
to make an isolated reservoir, its needle-covered banks dotted with a few
camp sites and wooden bungalows. We checked in — much to the surprise of a
camp-site manager who had clearly opened his gates more from habit than hope
— then took a long swim in the brisk water, built a campfire at the lakeside
and fell asleep while the stars came out. So far, pot luck was working well.
The next morning, the Sierra’s distance from the beaten track was writ large
on a provision-hunting mission to the forest’s gateway metropolis: the
dusty, silent, storks-in-the-spires village of Abejar. You know foreigners
are a novelty when all the kids abandon their futbols and rush to the edge
of the playground as you walk past, staring at you through the bars,
waiting, perhaps, for you to start feeding, or mating. The reception was
equally cautious as we stopped for a jolt of coffee in the town’s shady cafe
— prudishly deciding to lay off the alcohol over breakfast, while the local
men convivially toasted the new day with wine.
Back outside, Abejar’s admirable disinclination to sell itself was also
evident in the near-total absence of shop signs; surely everyone who matters
knows that behind that anonymous bead curtain lies the butcher’s, and that
basement with heat and aroma rolling up its steps can only be the panaderia?
We spent the morning wandering empty alleys and climbing whitewashed steps,
torn between the threat of starvation and the fear of barging into someone’s
living room, demanding tinned tuna.
ABEJAR DOES have aspirations for its one possible tourist attraction, though.
Southeast of town lies the curving Cañon del Rio Lobos, its cliffs and caves
plunging unexpectedly from rolling grassland down to a distant riverbed
banked with ribbons of pasture. The next day, we trekked the canyon floor
from wide flood plain to narrow gully, followed at all times by the shadows
of the sitting tenants: vultures, gliding noiselessly from shady caves to
bare treetops, sometimes more than a dozen silhouettes above us at once.
Not, perhaps, a place to twist an ankle.
The spectacular isolation of the canyon clearly suited the vultures, and it
had served others well: monks had lived here, their sandstone church yet
standing at a curve in the river, and shepherds still moved sheep and goats
up and down the pastures. One shepherd decided eloquently to express his
opinion of receiving guests in his private canyon by wandering to the edge
of his cave, in full view of our walking path, and dropping his trousers.
Point made.
In general, though, this lonely region’s satisfaction with its isolation
didn’t preclude a steadily warming welcome. As a week passed, Abejar’s
cafe-stool philosophers managed a daily nod of acknowledgment, culinary tips
were offered in the now-recognisable shops, an extra roll was popped in the
bag with a smile — the kind of small-town moments that are meaningless to
the residents but priceless for the visitor. The cagey schoolkids even
tolerated a demonstration of the traditional English virtues of fist-pumping
enthusiasm and stump-footed mal-coordination during a sunset kickabout.
In an age of online prebooking and five-page itineraries, if you fancy leaving
it to chance, it seems backwater Spain rewards a gambler. Relaxed and
revived, we headed back towards the clouds over Biarritz, and a
weather-delayed flight home.
TRAVEL BRIEF
Getting there: P&O Ferries (0870 598 0333,
www.poferries.com) and AT Ferries (www.atferries.com) sail from Portsmouth
to Bilbao, and Brittany Ferries (0870 907 6103, www.brittany-ferries.co.uk)
crosses from Plymouth to Santander. Expect to pay from about £300 return for
a car and two adults.
Ryanair (0871 246 0000, www.ryanair.com) flies from Stansted to Valladolid and
Zaragoza, both about 115 miles away. Holiday Autos (0870 400 4461,
www.holidayautos.co.uk) has a week’s car rental from Valladolid or Zaragoza
for £137. Or try Hertz (0870 844 8844, www.hertz.co.uk).
Where to stay: of course, you could just wing it, but if you
want to book ahead, Hotel La Barrosa (00 34-975 373 405,
www.hotellabarrosa.com; doubles from £40) is a brand-new hotel on the edge
of Abejar, with a lovely terrace and pleasant, simple rooms. Alternatively,
Hotel Ciudad de Soria (975 224 205, www.hotelciudaddesoria.com; doubles from
£53) is a smart, centrally located choice to explore the petite city.
Camping El Concurso (975 373 361, www.campingelconcurso.com) is a large camp
site, with lots of facilities, on the edge of the Sierra de la Demanda; two
people sharing a tent pay about £12 per night.
