The last leg to The Bay of Biscay...........well almost

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The shutters that are installed on the windows of most hotel rooms in Europe certainly keep the early morning light out and leave you to sleep.Again,we have slept in and of course the sun is rising a little later every day as well.
We were the only guests in last night but the staff,all 3 of them,are still dusting and sweeping.Still if it keeps the place looking pristine then the hotel will keep getting good reviews.
We asked the guy on the reception desk the most direct route back to the road we had been on yesterday but his English was broken and we could only understand part of what he said.So rather than trying to find what we thought he had said we simply retraced our path from yesterday and rejoined the A68 where we had left it.
This road has been excellent to drive on all the way from Barcelona and we hope that will continue for today being the last leg of the journey to our overnight stay just outside Bilbao.
The desert like conditions that was our view on both sides of the road and in front of us continued for a further 50 odd kilometres when almost without us noticing orchards started to appear again.
At Logrono,a sizeable industrial city,there were signs that Spain is serious about alternative methods of generating electricity with bank upon bank of solar panels all built so they could swivel to get the best of the sun.On the hills there are also dozens of wind turbines.And although we have passed through a couple of sizeable industrial cities which would be hungry for power we did not see any sign of nuclear power to keep the industries running.
We took a break a short distance further on as we spotted an attractive looking hilltop village from the road with a large church standing atop the hill and below the remains of an ancient wall.We bypassed the hillside village of Briones to arrive at San Clemente.As we got closer to where the road climbed the hill there was a medieval bridge that once carried traffic across the Elba River,the principal waterway in this northern area of Spain.The bridge looked in good condition even after 700 years in existence and was coping well with the river in partial flood after recent heavy rain further north and in the hills.
We took a walk around the village which was quite similar to others we have visited with a mix of old and newish buildings which tends to spoil photos if you are looking for real authenticity.The church was being renovated and we couldn’t get access to it which was a bit disappointing as it was such a large structure for the small town and it clearly had had some importance for the town.
We couldn’t find a bakery to buy some lunch so after we had completed our walk it was back in OO and on our way again.
The land we are passing through now is much more productive and for the first time in several days there are animals grazing in the fields although the sheep are too far off to have a photo taken with Murray.
A huge amount of money appears to have been pumped into the roading system around the next major town we come across of Vitoria-Gasteiz and even though it is not a toll road the E05/E80 is 6 lanes wide,3 in each direction with local roads crossing this road at regular intervals carried on two lane bridges.How we would love this sort on money spent on our roading infrastructure in New Zealand but we have to remind ourselves we are just a small country of 4 and a quarter million people compared to Spain with nearly 50 million.
The road we were on passed through the back of the city where the traffic wasn’t too busy and we found a bakery and bought enough croissants and pastries to keep us happy for lunch while we watched the locals go about their day.
We actually needed to avoid V-G by taking the ring road to the north of the city and so we retraced our steps and continued from where we had left off.
For the first time in 3 days the road began to become a bit windy and climbed steadily to an altitude of 600metres above sea level.We may have been at this height on the road in the past few days but we had not noticed it because the grades had been so easy.
We felt we must be getting to closer to the coastline and within reach of where the rain falls because everything around us was now so green yet just a few hours before in the day and the previous day and a half the landscape we had driven through had been so desert like.
On the other side of the pass the road was steep down to a narrow valley with steep sides and a fast flowing river full in flood from the recent rains taking up nearly half of the flat land leaving the rest for the twisting road and the occasional house or two.
We thought we had followed our Google instructions correctly when we entered the small village that we thought was Areatza where our hotel was located.There was only a handful of streets and it didn’t take long to drive up and down most of them but we couldn’t find the hotel.The lack of visible street names didn’t help and just how Google Maps know the names of the streets when they are not on any corners is beyond us and not at all useful to us.
We drove to the end of town and discovered it’s name and then realised we were not yet in Areatza so we continued on passing through another two small villages before we reached the place we needed.
From then on it was simple because the hotel was the newest building in the village and we were to find out that the place had only been open for two months.Hence our room is like new and everything worked well including the flat screen HD TV although there are no channels in English except MTV!!
We took a stroll through the village which dates back to 1359 although with so many newer apartment buildings it is hard to make out too much that is older than the last 30 or 40 years.The church does look old but like others we have tried to get inside over the past couple of days it too is under renovation with no access.
There is no apparent supermarket in the village so we headed off in the car towards Bilbao and although we passed through several larger towns on the way there was only one supermarket that we passed and it was still closed at 4pm in the afternoon for siesta and we expect it wouldn’t open until 5pm at the earliest.Finally we came to a supermarket on the outskirts of Bilbao,a city of over 300,000 people,and we bought our dinner supplies and drove back to our hotel in Areatza.
So we have driven over 600 kilometres and taken three days to do it travelling from Barcelona on the Mediterranean across a good chunk of the width of Spain to almost reaching Bilbao in The Bay of Biscay.It hasn't been a great trip from a sightseeing point of view rather we had a need to get from one side of Spain to the other and we have made it !!
Tomorrow we plan a day in Bilbao to take in the Guggenheim and the old city which has some sightseeing attractions worth seeing.

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Photos

Best Western hotel,Corella
The converted convent we spent last night in