It’s a beautiful day here in Dülmen Germany as I write this final blog. Tomorrow morning we return this impressive “Burstner” motorhome to Dümo and hop a train for Amsterdam. Over these last few days we’ve occupied our time with dismantling the motorhome and packing our return travel bags. As we “wrap-up” this latest trip we find ourselves evaluating the success of the ten weeks and 12,000 kilometres of European backroads.

On this trip we decided to focus more on the rural countryside experience and less on specific tourist destinations and popular visitor sites. We therefore bypassed many very interesting places along the way but non that we haven’t seen and enjoyed before (with a few exceptions). So, the vast majority of roads we did travel really were the “back roads” and all new to us. One might think that you’d be hard pressed to find interesting things to see on the back roads, but that would be wrong. In fact we found all kinds of interesting places, way too many to explore, and all deserving much more attention. From beautiful castles and monuments, little towns and villages, to amazing drives in the countryside while meeting wonderful people all along the way. This trip was unique. In past trips, we really did love the experience of walking along the beautiful Champs-Élysées in Paris but, I can tell you this, slowly driving along the Northwest Coast of Spain is just as impressively magnificent.

So, with most of our serious trip evaluation now complete, we’re pleased to report that we really did enjoy this opportunity to see and experience a limited selection of beautiful Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Austrian, and German back roads… despite some occasional tight squeezes with the motorhome.

As we now prepare for our return home to Victoria we do so with the knowledge that we have been very privileged and blessed to have had all these years of international travel opportunities. But, without any doubt, the best part of all these experiences is the excitement we feel when it’s time to return home to our children, grand children, family and friends.

From Cadiz we zipped north right past Sevilla as we’ve experienced beautiful Sevilla on two other motorhome trips. We headed straight for Albufeira located in the Algarve District of Portugal. We found a fantastic stellplatz located next to a picture perfect beach and planted ourselves there for a few days. We reluctantly decided to pull ourselves off the Portuguese coastline and travel a bit of the interior through the cork producing countryside and that turned out to be a good decision for us. Almost as beautiful as the coast, the interior is lush green with rolling hills and it’s very attractive in it’s own way. We were fascinated with the countless miles of natural growing cork trees that live hundreds of years and produce a yield about every ten years on approximately twenty percent of the tree.

Again we zipped past Lisbon for the same reasons we passed Sevilla and zeroed in on Nazaré further up the “Silver Coast”. Famous for it’s gigantic surfing waves that attract the best extreme surfers in the world every January and February. As we left Nazaré we discovered the ocean waves this last winter were not the only natural occurring dramatic event. This area of the coast was also hit with the most extreme wind storm action ever recorded. The hurricane type wind storms lasted for weeks and did extreme damage to much of this coastline with estimated damage in the ten billion dollar range.

After leaving north Portugal our first stop was to Santiago de Compostela in northeastern Spain. Famous for it being the burial site of Apostle St. James in the “Cathedral de Santiago de Compostela”. Approximately 250,000 pilgrims every year walk “The Camino” from many different directions over great distances to end their walk at this beautiful and busy Cathedral.

Westward along the north coast of Spain to Pamplona on the edge of the Pyrenees. This is the location of the well known annual “Running of the Bulls” made famous in a book by Ernest Hemingway. We drove onward into France though the eight kilometre Pyrenees “Tunnel du Somport”. We had a beautiful drive along the French side of the Pyrenees. We then stopped for a good look at Toulouse before heading to the French Mediterranean for one last stop at the beach before driving inland to fascinating “Pont d’ Avignon” where I’m presently writing this Blog. From here we’ll be working our way into northern Italy and eastward to the Dolomites with our fingers crossed that all that snow has melted.

Hope all is well with everyone, we’ll keep moving and keep you posted!

The “Cathedral de Santiago de Compostela” in Santiago

The northwest coast of Spain is underdeveloped and beautiful