Segovia, Portugal, Galicia and Northern Spain

After Cordoba we had a rather long, boring trip on the autovia, which skirted Madrid, to get to Turégano for our next night. We are constantly amazed at the network of excellent roads all over Spain. There are motorways in the most out of the way places. We think this must be contributing partly to Spain’s debt; they must have had huge borrowings which have now to be paid back. On the other hand there is a tremendous amount of road building going on which must help with the >20% unemployment.
Turégano is near Segovia, which we visited in 1973 and we had to go back to Meson de Candido for their famous Roast suckling pig (1/2 between 2). It was as delicious as we remembered but our livers are 37 years older and Arthur felt it for a day or so—lost his appetite completely for a while.
The Posada El Zaguan in Turégano was another special find. Opened our shutters and there in front of us … the castle! We are skyping Kristina almost every day and I am sure Andrea must think we now have at least a swimming pool, and a cas-tle in our back yard. While there we enjoyed a few hours visiting the nearby Palacio La Granja and its gardens—very reminiscent of Peterhof in St Petersburg but without the foundations playing.
The castle in Turégano was well worth a visit if only to see all the storks on their nests on every tower (a feature in this part of Spain we have noticed).
Our 3 nights in Portugal passed very quickly; the Guest House Douro in Porto is so lovely, a boutique place on the quay opposite the Port lodges run by an effervescent French Canadian and her Portuguese husband, and down stream of the historic bridge designed by one of Eiffel’s associates. It is now a road bridge on the lower level, and carries the metro line and pedestrians on the top level. However, it is just one of several bridges along the Douro in Porto.
On the way to Porto we drove via the Port wine route through a landscape of steep terraced hill-sides covered in vines and twisting roads. Just before the end of the route we passed the small village of Mateus and what do you think was there—the beautiful Casa Mateus and its lovely gardens. This is where the family who run the winery and vineyards have lived for several centuries. The infamous Mateus rosé was a marketing exercise by someone in the 1960s—they sold the licence to the name years ago, as they are known in Portugal for their fine wines. We tried some excellent reds and their most recent—a Sauvignon blanc. The young wine maker took us through the tastings and she really appreciated our interest.
Our stay in Portugal was too short but we were in for a real treat, again near Carballo in Galicia (N-W Spain) where we stayed one night in the Pazo del Souto (a pazo is a country house, not a castle which was owned by a noble). It is a smaller version of the Parador accommodation in Spain. Again, early booking online produced excellent rates and we had the pick of the rooms, because, sadly tourists are just not coming in their numbers to Europe, at least this part.
The weather up to now had been holding up but we were told by the owner that rain was forecast. He was not wrong—since then we have had rain in bucket loads, with the occasional break in the sky—and this in the most mountainous and scenic part of Spain.
I am finishing this after we have been in Picos de Europa (rain and fog), Burgos (rain and pilgrims on the Santiago de Compestela road), the Rioja wine area (rain, and one day fine when we went to a mediaeval festival), Bilbao (rain, and now flooding after we left) and now San Sebastian where we have had one day sunny in the four we have spent here. The sky is now lifting and maybe tomorrow will be better. But then we return to France and the other side of the Pyrenees and the forecast does not look good! To be continued …