Snaking to Salamanca

In Bilbao we felt properly in Spain after the horrors of the ferry. We spotted a full page story in the El Correo newspaper about the crossing, it was clearly a major local event (big news days obviously few and far between in Bilbao!). We munched oranges in the sun on the river bank opposite the wildly glinting curves and coils of the Guggenheim. To paraphrase the advert for a well known chocolate bar the Guggenheim was ‘shiny on the outside, empty on the inside’ (they were in the middle of a major rehang so there wasn’t much to see). We ate tapas of every description; garlicky bocquerones, tortilla, ‘mini-breakfasts’ (a fried quail’s egg, on a slice of mushroom, on a slice of Serrano ham, on a piece of bread…hmmmm), plump gambas on a stick and various fried fish and ‘lingua’ (which we suspect was tongue) all delicious and washed down with our first Cruzcampos and Crianzas of the trip.

Beyond the classic Casco Viejo (Old Town) Bilbao is a handsome if workaday sort of place. We stumbled on the old market though and met a very entertaining stall-holder. “Where you from?’ he asked. “Scotland” Fi replied. He then became very animated “yes, Scotland, very nice, very nice, I Scotland last year, look!” and he was thrusting two fridge magnets at us, a saltire and a tacky tourist one of William Wallace. “Glasgow, Edinborg?” he continued. “Edinburgh” said Fi. “Yes, Edinborg, very nice, very nice, Castille, Princes Street, I like Scotland very much”. He was now clasping his hand to his heart with pride. “Er, I’m English” I thought I’d better clarify rather than just ride on the back of my latent wannabe Scottishness. “English? Liverpool, Chelsea!” he shot back. Ah, the international language of football, donchaluvvit? “Norwich City?” I tentatively suggested, being the somewhat laidback and lapsed Canaries fan that I am. “Yes, Nor-wich, I know Nor-wich. I Atletico Bilbao!” the hand was on the chest once more and he was grinning away like a Chesire cat.

The lesson is clearly that if you want to fundamentally change the perceptions of your nationality, pretend to be Scottish! Everyone loves Scotland and there must be some Catalan: Celtic connection or Basque country: Scotland solidarity thing whereby small, nascent nations and cultures stand up to their over-bearing neighbours.

We caught the train to Salamanca in the afternoon, which for the first leg of the journey was just a huge engine and only one carriage, giving it a strangely impotent look. The route wound it’s way up the river valley of Bilbao into the mountains, the valley floor a hive of industrial activity; scores of vast great sheds and steel works (Arcelor?) jammed onto every spare inch of the land adjacent to the river. Then suddenly we were in countryside that resembled the Yorkshire Dales. It helped that we were shrouded in mist (or mizzle as they say in Norfolk…Fi’s folks in Scotland would call it the ‘haar’) but it was weird; dry stone walls and bridges, patches of woodland, craggy hills and lush green meadows with sheep a-grazing. You half expected to see Foggy, Compo and Clegg fooling around in a field with the last of the summer Rioja.

The train was extended to a more, ahem, impressive length at Miranda de Ebro where a stag party dressed as Snow White and the Seven Dwarves also boarded having been caught peeing in the planters next to the station. From there the landscape changed again to acres of scrubby evergreen tree plantation around Valladolid, the strange, bushy trees looking like those the Lorax spoke for in Dr Seuss’s classic book. Then we were on the vast Castillian agricultural plains, almost perfectly flat and featureless with the occasional small fortified town breaking the fertile monotony.

As the sun set fiery red on the horizon the topography began to undulate a little into gentle hills once more and we arrived in Salamanca. Typically we had managed to coincide our visit with a major concert, and the first Pension we tried (opposite the station as we’re leaving at 4.50am for Porto on Sunday) assured us that accommodation wise there was the option of her nasty, tiny room at premium rate or nothing! We took our chances (she also reminded me oddly of my lovely but rather eccentric aunt) and headed into town. Several full Pensions later the youth hostel seemed a good idea. We worked our way through the stunning Plaza Mayor where a huge classical concert was playing and not having a map we asked a group of wizened old dudes the way to ‘Calle Escutto’. One of them then offered to escort us and chatted away constantly in thickly accented and entirely incomprehensible Spanish to us all the way there.

The hostel of course was full, but they put us in a Habitacione just round the corner. We’re the guests of a sweet old lady in her flat, complete with religious weeping Madonna images on the wall and a crazy 70’s light fitting on the ceiling. Why would you want to stay anywhere else?!