Sharing Showers with Frogs

by Nicky Carter

Chapter 3 – The Vampires of Castile

“Do you have any idea where we are?” Derek shouted as he brought the motor home to a skidding halt in a lay-by.

“Well, erm, sort of,” I responded meekly, idly tracing my finger around the map, which was spread out on my knee.

“Give it here,” he demanded, snatching the atlas from my grasp in a fit of anger. “You know you’ve got to keep you eyes open. I’ve told you time and time again how to navigate. Look for clues – you know rivers, railway lines, a bloody signpost – if you get lost off,” he ranted.

I’d been looking out for clues for over half an hour. I’d seen a railway line, a river and signposts; they just didn’t match anything on the map.

“What do you want me to do, navigate as well as drive?” he continued, staring at the same page I had.

I let him bluster. I’d heard it all before. We’d been away for three weeks and it wasn’t the first time I’d inadvertently managed to loose track of exactly where we were on the map. After five minutes he couldn’t pin point our location either and I smiled smugly.

“See it’s not as easy at it looks is it?”

“Well it would be . . . if you were using the right map. We’re in Spain. Did you not see the bloody big sign post a few kilometres back saying, err, Welcome to Spain?”

“Oh,” was the best I could manage. It was close to no, which was what I actually meant to say. No, I hadn’t noticed the sign I was too busy looking out of the window for clues to our location.

“This is,” Derek snapped stabbing the Spanish road map with his finger. “Where we are.”

We were a few kilometres from the French border in a town called Irun. The scenery had changed a bit I had to admit. Steep roofed blocks of soulless apartments replaced quaint steep roofed cottages. Ugly factories with corrugated tin roofs and tall chimneys, which coughed out clouds of grey smoke, coated trees, cars and the road in a film of dust and everything looked just that bit more industrial.

“With a bit of luck we can be in San Sebastian before lunch,” Derek said handing the map over.

Against all the odds I managed successfully to navigate us the 20 kilometres west to San Sebastian or Donastia, as it is known in Basque. During the summer it’s a haven for thousands of Spanish tourists, who descend en masse to lounge on the town’s three horseshoe beaches. But it was October and the only tourists Derek and I spotted as we wound our way around the one-way system were a couple of backpackers, who were lugging overstuffed rucksacks along the pavement.

We parked the motor home on an exposed promenade, the only place we found large enough to accommodate our motor home. Derek huffed and puffed as his shunted it back and forth getting as close to the cliff to lessen the chances of other motorists inadvertently bumping into it.

The loud grumbling Derek’s stomach began making determined it was lunchtime, not the digital clock in the cab.

Normally I would have rustled up a few sandwiches in the kitchen – that was one of the beauties of travelling in the motor home. Whenever we parked up we didn’t have to go searching for a café, restaurant or bistro for sustenance. We were never caught short like many of the car drivers we’d passed giving the verge a watering. But, there was a town to explore, a new language to crucify and making sandwiches was the last thing I wanted to be doing.

The sky was blue, palm trees were swaying in the breeze and the sun glinted off the sea turning from green to aquamarine in the blink of an eye. Closeted inside the motor home it looked wonderfully inviting.

Despite his gastric gurgling Derek was just as keen to see the sights. We stowed the cameras in my already laden handbag and headed off. We were back in the motor home in a few seconds. The sun may have been bright, but the wind was bitterly cold.

Derek stashed the Rough Guide to Spain in his ample pockets and after a cursory glance at the grid map for the town, we ventured forth. We meandered along the wide promenade, which gleamed in the autumnal sunshine, donned our sunglasses and tried to avoid the oncoming traffic of Lycra clad joggers.

It wasn’t long before growls of hunger turned into hunger pains. There was only one course of action – find a bar. There were plenty about. While a few stony-faced sophisticates braved the bitterly cold wind in the name of fashionable café society, Derek and I opted to find a warmer alternative. It was simply too cold to sit at one of the many pavement cafes, sipping luke-warm coffee.

The back street bar, we finally agreed on entering, didn’t look much from the outside. Years of traffic fumes had blackened the façade. The windows were desperately in need of a clean. Inside it was a different matter.

The tiled ceramic floors, the large wooden bar, which stretched the entire length of the narrow establishment, the optics mounted in front of a wall of mirrors and even the top of the rotund barman’s head appeared to have been polished to an inch of their life.

A blast of welcome warm air hit us as we swung open the dirty glass door, as did the noise of the two-dozen or so well dressed customers who were busy trying to talk over one another.

Their lively chatter meant nothing to me. I’d only managed to scrape through exams for French and German at school and couldn’t ‘hablo Espanol’ - well aside from the few phrases picked up from Hollywood movies but I didn’t think ‘asta la vista babe’ would get us very far.

“Go on then,” I urged Derek. “Order some drinks.”

There was an entire cupboard on the motor home devoted to language books, cassettes and cds, he’d purchased in an attempt to learn Spanish. He responded abruptly with a sharp prod in the back. Before I knew it I was at the bar, looking into the beady eyes of the barman, Manuel, resplendent in a black and white uniform from a bygone age.

“K’ermm,” I cleared my throat and cast Derek, who had shuffled back a few feet, a wilting glare.

“Doce café con leche,” I said slowly and quietly reading the translation for two white coffees from the Rough Guide’s handy language section.

Manuel, for that was the name on the shiny brass badge pinned to his lapel, leant closer shaking his head. Derek slunk off towards the feast of mouth-watering food on display at the end of the bar.

“Oh, erm, doce cartado, then, por favour” I replied pointing to the phrase in the book.

“CARTADO?” he blasted back, scrunching up his face to emphasise his displeasure that a couple of tourists had managed to stumble upon his establishment and were insulting him further by crucifying his native tongue.

“Oui, si, yes, ja,” I stuttered, trying not to fall over backwards from the force of his words.

“DOCE CAFÉ CARTADO,” he shouted down the bar to no one in particular, slinging his glass cleaning cloth over his shoulder. A number of customers turned, stared and got a measure of me and then Manuel proceeded to rev the enormous chrome coffee machine into life and prepare the drinks himself.

We had wanted two simple white coffees, but it appeared we weren’t getting them. After a lot of whirring and spluttering Manuel placed two child size cups in front of me, which looked distinctly like espressos with a dash of milk. I paid up and joined Derek at the table he’d secured closest to the bar.

He was gazing longingly at the plates of battered prawns, rolled, stuffed ham, olives, anchovies, octopus and a number of other edible delights I couldn’t name.

“You wouldn’t get that in Britain,” Derek salivated.

“No, health and safety would be right on it,” I answered completely missing the point. “It’s my birthday today,” I said trying to change the subject.

“Mmm, is it? That’s nice. Happy birthday,” he said not taking his eyes off the bar.

When we got up that morning I wasn’t under the illusion Derek would produce a carefully wrapped present. He never did when we lived in Britain. It was unusual if I received a card. After the first two years of seeing one another he did buy them. However when I pointed out my birthday was not in March, he gave up. So I wasn’t expecting anything different just because we were away. I did however expect some sort of affectionate commiserations on turning 30, a kiss perhaps or a hug. I’d commented on the date, but the closest I got to a birthday wish was ‘cheers’ in return for the mug of coffee I’d made him.

“Go and order a couple more drinks,” he said, delving into his jacket’s inside pocket. “Oh, and try and get some of that Tapas,”

I would normally have refused, but I had a sneaking suspicion I was about to receive a present. I made inane gestures to Manuel. And while I didn’t manage to get any Tapas, I did however receive an impromptu Spanish lesson.

“CARTADO,” Manuel shouted.

“Si, doce,” I replied with growing confidence.

“Non, CARTADO,” he repeated, rolling his r’s.

“Cartado,” I feebly coughed, aware everyone in the bar was now focusing on me. They soon lost interest and went back to their own conversations. My throat was sore by the time I had satisfied Manuel I had mastered his language sufficiently. I smiled sweetly and made a mental note to just shout orders for coffee in future while in Spain.

The object Derek had been delving into his pocket for was laid on the table on my return. It was not, as I had suspected, a thoughtful present to easy the passage into the wilderness of my thirties, but a campsite guide.

He’d been studying it intently and declared the only available site was at the top of Mount Igeldo, one of the peaks which tower over San Sebastian. There was only one road up, he said as we got back in the motor home, so it wouldn’t stretch my navigation skills too much.

We drove up and round and round the twisting road for seven kilometres. The view was magnificent if you are not afraid of heights. Had we been in a car I’m sure I’d have been fine, but in the motor home, with it’s elevated seating position I was not. I felt sick. The road was narrow. There was no hard shoulder only a sharp drop, where a few hardy plants clung precariously to the shale.

It was a welcome relief reaching the campsite. There was a bar and restaurant and a relatively new shower block. Pitches were terraced, with trees for shade in the summer.

“Terrific,” Derek gasped as we gazed at the view across the Bay of Biscay. Cloud was descending, as was the temperature. “How do you fancy going out for a meal?”

We showered and dressed, donning hats and gloves and headed towards the brightly lit bar on site. All thoughts of a tasty three-course meal evaporated when we ordered our luke-warm lager. The only foodstuffs served on the premises came wrapped in foil bags and I was adamant the celebratory meal would not be confined to several flavours of crisps.

The two slurps of lager in our glasses were downed sharpish and we headed out into the night to locate a more suitable eating establishment for a birthday bash.

“There was a sign for a restaurant down here somewhere,” I wheezed to Derek taking in a painfully cold lungful of air, as we made our way slowly down the pitch-black road. “I noticed it as we drove up.”

A couple of kilometres down the road the sign appeared. The four-foot long ceramic tile freeze embedded in a pile of stone taller than both Derek and I and expensively lit with a multitude of accent lighting, directed us off the main road and down lane in better repair than the national route.

We hastened down the slope in search of fine wines, food and warmth. We found all three, but the dust free bodies of BMWS, Porsches and Mercedes in the car park alerted us the establishment was perhaps beyond our purse.

A low mist of channel Number 5 hung in the air and clung to the back of our throats. A couple of businessmen swathed in thousands of pounds worth of Armani strode passed us as we huddled in the foyer among a herd of leather sofas slowly perusing the menu and allowing the powerful heating system to warm us slightly. As the model like hostess approached we quickly stepped outside before she could whisk us to a table.

Although we were out to celebrate, we weren’t out to celebrate bankruptcy. The cheapest thing on the menu was the tap water and that still cost an amazing £2.50. The menu prices read like the national debt for the developing world.

We stumbled on through the darkness and literally fell upon a ‘comedor’ or (dining room) a little further down the road. From the outside the building looked like a rickety shed with the addition of several steamed up windows and a badly rusted Coca Cola sign half attached.

Inside it was hot. The 20 square foot of space was filled with sweaty bodies, either crowded in front of the bar or gathered around tables. Cigarette smoke hung in a low cloud around head height. Despite the crush everyone looked relaxed, except the overwrought barmaid.

Stepping on toes, elbowing stomachs and inadvertently feeling old men’s bottoms we finally reached the bar, abandoned any thoughts of trying to speak Spanish and be understood over the noise and ordered a couple of beers in English.

We sipped the cokes we were given in a relatively roomy corner next to the men’s toilets and chatted about whether we should call a halt to our food search.

Then we began to smell food. It may have been our imagination or perhaps the generous use of scented toilet cleaner. We looked around for the source of the smells, but no one was eating. There was no evidence of tasty morsels and we began to wonder whether we were experiencing nasal hallucinations.

A welcome blast of cold air hit us as part of the adjacent wall miraculously opened. Derek with his height advantage (well the extra half inch) craned his neck sufficiently to ogle at what lay beyond. He narrowly escaped decapitation from the spring loaded disguised door, but managed to ascertain what secrets were being held.

“Food. There’s food here and it looks great,” he jabbered.

I gulped down the remainder of my now tepid black syrup in my glass and only gagged slightly and then we both pushed open the door.

The room was double the size of the bar and had a quarter the amount of people inside who were whispering in quiet tones. Walls were painted white and were devoid of any scenic pictures. The furniture was functional rather than ascetically pleasing. Tables were of the chunky wooden circular variety with matching chunky, heavy to pull out, chairs. The table settings were sparse. Tablecloths in off white verging on grey covered three quarters of the wood surfaces. Old wine bottles made rudimentary candleholders and only two of the three usual eating utensils were laid out.

While we took in the surroundings a waiter magically appeared at our side. Ushered us to a seat of his choosing in the middle of the room, thrust menus in our open palms and them magically disappeared.

As with the furniture and decoration the menu was basic, well the sections we could translate. I’d forgotten to stash our Spanish to English dictionary in my handbag and we had to rely on Derek’s inept translations. After many minutes of agonising guess work and a quick scan of what other diners were eating, we picked out three courses each.

The waiter named Huelo duly reappeared and we pointed out our selection of pate, chicken breast and chips followed by a cake for me and soup, half a chicken and chips with a piece of the same cake for Derek.

We opted to purchase a bottle of the best house red. It was duly uncorked and plonked on the table by Huelo, who then vanished.

We assumed he went off in search of wine glasses, however after five minutes he still had not reappeared. Derek and I aren’t wine connoisseurs, unlike my sister who swigs and spits with the best of them. We didn’t wish to appear rude or uncouth but weren’t sure what etiquette demanded in such a situation. Did you swig straight from the bottle? Wait for the waiter to return with finely cut glass receptacles? Or share the whole bottle out equally into the pint glasses already on the table?

Every drink consumed on the motor home whether it’s wine, lager, orange juice or water, is sipped from plastic, unbreakable beakers. When all four are stuck in a bucket waiting for washing up we’ll use whatever other containers are available including mugs, jugs and sometimes straight from the bottle or carton.

Therefore it didn’t shock us to find the protocol was to divide the contents of the bottle, equally into the pint glasses already on the table. Everyone else partaking of wine was swigging merrily from the large glass containers without care of embarrassment.

The only problem we incurred was the rate at which we supped the wine. We drank the wine as if it were lager, taking large gulps between mouthfuls of pate, chicken and chips. We ordered a second bottle when Huelo took our empty starter plates, then another during our main course and yet another to wash down dessert. When it came time to settle our tab, we were not just squiffy but darn right drunk.

Somehow we managed to stumble our way back to the campsite and into the motor home without falling down the mountain or getting run down by passing Armani clad motorists.

Morning was heralded by the familiar sound of rain bouncing off the top of the van. Not a faint pit a pat but a Heavy Metal band kind of relentless drumming. Forced out of our beds by the noise we made an early start and hoped to outrun the rain.

After negotiating the twisty narrow roads down Mount Igeldo we headed west towards Bilboa and the home of one of the four Guggenheim Museums.

We managed to out run the rain after an hour of so however the windscreen wipers had to remain on as we got stuck behind a truck laden down with cement, which kept billowing off onto our windscreen for about 30 kilometres.

As we entered the outskirts of Bilboa the scene was of an apocalyptical nightmare, something out of a Mad Max film. Grey uninhabited looking concrete tower blocks backed onto a sea of factories belching out huge clouds of black smoke.

Eventually we spied the titanium edifice of the Guggenheim. It’s shiny dome glinting in the hazy sunshine. Unlike the outskirts of the city the centre was undergoing a major redevelopment plan. Scaffolding covered many of the buildings and numerous new ones were in the process of being erected.

The vast makeover did cause us a few problems navigating our way to the museum. We followed the liberal amount of signposts directing us this way and that to the museum. On more than one occasion we had to back track due to an unannounced street closure. During the course of an hour we zoomed up and down access roads and finally made it to the official car park to find it was closed for development purposes too.

It was only after Derek deftly performed a very illegal u-turn that we managed to pull the motor home into the temporary car park for the attraction next to the Rio Nervion.

Tall concrete walls surrounded the car park and although there were a number of other motor homes in situ, Derek was dubious about leaving ours.

The motor home wasn’t just our mode of transport. It was our home. Our lives were onboard. We had been very careful up to that point, ensuring no valuable possessions were ever left on show when we went off exploring. Passports and important documents were always stowed away under lock and key in a nifty bolthole. Blinds were always left down so any passing opportunist burglars could see for themselves there was nothing on offer. And we trusted our instincts.

The car park was, Derek declared, a thief’s paradise. His suspicions were confirmed when we stepped from the motor home.

A distressed middle-aged German woman approached us, waving her arms in the air.

“Did you see? They broke in. They have been in everything. We sint disgusted.”

I was about to correct her on her incorrect use of the royal we when her husband, lover or son - not quite sure, it could have been all three – appeared, looking equally forlorn.

“We were only in for a couple of hours and they have broken into our home. We don’t know what is gone,” she went on, and then broke down in tears.

The couple, it transpired, had stopped off on their way north, spent a few happy hours in the museum and had returned to their motor home to find it ransacked. They had backed their motor home against one of the concrete walls and closed all their blinds. Thieves had gained entry through the flimsy Perspex bathroom window and had been able to rifle, unnoticed, through all of the couple’s belongings. They’d left such a mess the couple weren’t sure what was taken.

Other concerned motor homers gathered to hear to the woman wail at the injustice. They commiserated and cast worried looks at their own vehicles. The police had been called and there was little we could do, aside from locate the nearest campsite.

Even with the help of the Dutch, Italian and Spanish motor homers the nearest site we could find was 20 kilometres away. So we did the only thing you can in a situation like that – leg it.

As the suns rays cast their last light on the day we finally found the place. Initial reactions were good. There were hand drawn maps for the train station and bank and the warden was friendly and helpful. But then our passports had not been handed over and our van was still outside the razor wire perimeter.

While we were not robbed at the Guggenheim, we felt we were at the campsite. Our pitch, a stretch of the imagination, was a grass verge; a sloping verge beside a ten-foot drop. Our electricity hook up was thanks to an affable Dutch couple that had elected to take a cheap holiday and were residing in the static caravan next to us.

Derek with all his motoring knowledge endeavoured to keep two of the vans wheels on tarmac to ensure grip the next morning. The campsite warden however, who had driven down in his top of the range Audi, to oversee our parking, insisted Derek move the van over fully onto the grass. He declared with a dismissive wave of his hand that our motor home would be an obstruction to his regular traffic. Unhappily, Derek complied.

Later in the evening we understood what the warden had meant by his regular traffic - two hundred or so drunken youths arriving and departing to the disco on site. The thrum of the base drowned out all other noise, so it was not until morning were we aware of the torrential downpour which had occurred during the night.

The drains overflowed, unable to cope with the vast amount of rain. Water cascaded through the narrow verge we’d been forced to park and was on the verge of collapse. The motor home wheels were embedded in mud. Each time Derek attempted to manoeuvre off it slipped closer to the edge of the six-foot drop.

I tracked down the warden but after observing our predicament he simply reminded us to pay our 20 euros before we left, then climbed back into his car and drove off.

Derek and I tried to create traction, heaving and shoving wood, straw and hardcore under the wheels, but it was fruitless. The only things that moved were the motor home as it slipped further towards the abyss and mud which sprayed up in plumes as the wheels span. Cold, wet and covered in brown streaks, Derek went off in search of help.

Our saviour was an English gentleman with a Ford Explorer. He too had been ‘short changed’ by the warden and was, until Derek arrived, been wondering how he was going to escape his own muddy prison.

An agreement was made. In exchange for his assistance pulling us off our downward slope, we would aide in manoeuvring his caravan out of his pitch the size of an A4 envelope.

Evacuated from the abyss and hearty thanks all round Derek and I set out decided not to return to Bilboa forfeit seeing the Guggenheim on the inside and rack up some miles.

The deluge unfortunately made driving difficult. Visibility was reduced to three foot in front of the van and rivers were flowing down the asphalt. In the interests of our safety we sought off road refuge as soon as possible.

At Noja, only a few kilometres east of Santander, we managed to find a campsite that was actually still open thankfully for the length of our stay, 24 hours.

The beachside site catered mostly for static caravans with decked out patios and permanent brick barbecues and whose owners probably only visited in the height of season when it doesn’t rain and isn’t cold.

A day and a half to closing for the winter and no one was about; save for the gnarled old grounds man who insisted we park on a soggy rectangle of grass. Derek tried desperately to insist we should just park on the gravel road, but the little man would not hear of it and so with sinking hearts drove on to it and sank up to our axles in mud.

We tried to console ourselves with a coffee, however the inadequate electric supply kept tripping and by the third trip out in the rain we decided enough was enough donned our sodden waterproofs and headed into town.

Our plan was simple. Find a bar, warm up, dry off and drown our sorrows. All thoughts of excavating the van from it’s muddy grave were to be put on hold until the morning.

The strange thing about the small seaside town of Noja is no one appears to walk to destinations. All the signposts we found and followed were for those using motorised transport and circumnavigated the centre for two kilometres and ended at a large car park.

We battled against the onslaught of the rain and finally found an establishment that sold lager, had its heating turned up full blast and had spare stools to sit on, heaven.

After a couple of drinks we concluded the small establishment, whose customers seemed to consist solely of fat cigar smoking middle-aged men playing cards, did not offer Tapas. The rain was now reduced to a fine drizzle so Derek and I stepped out to find a more amenable bar with food.

In fact we found quite a few, sampled a few Tapas, downed a lot of lagers and somehow staggered back to the motor home to sleep off the excess.

Extracting the motor home from mud was no less of a problem the next morning. Actually it was more. Saddled with throbbing hangovers Derek and I surveyed the situation cautiously. After a few frantic attempts at driving out achieved nothing apart from dousing me head to toe in brown sludge and creating huge ruts in the underwater grass.

We turned our attentions to the static caravan’s nicely laid out patios and barbecues and began pilfering. In an A-Team type manoeuvre concrete paving slabs were ripped up and laid out to form two tracks. Charcoal was scooped up and scattered around these. Once all the ingredients were in place Derek started the van again, with me pushing at the back. Five minutes of skidding and the van finally lurched onto the road. At reception we were charged 20 Euros (about £15) for the experience.

Our chosen route meant we bypassed Santander and turned south on the 623 national road to Burgos. On the map the 197 Kilometre journey didn’t look that daunting, but then I have no ability to read maps and didn’t realise the white areas and use of the word Sierra, which there were a lot of, denoted mountains.

We drove and climbed and drove and climbed. The temperature plummeted as the van crawled its way up and up and up the twisting road. As we rounded each hairpin we thought we had reached the top of the plateau, yet more tarmac spread out in front of us taking us higher.

Informative signposts occasionally denoted the height we had reached and when we entered cloud level I stopped looking out for them and kept my eyes trained on the road, well eyes trained looking for the road.

Eventually the road planed out and the Derek was able to put the van into second gear for the first time for around 60 kilometres.

The Sierra De Urbion is a vast plain 1,150 metres above sea level. However due to the low cloud cover we were only able to make out the road in front of us.

At a convenient widening of the road we stopped to make a coffee to warm me up and revive Derek into full alertness. The heating had been going full belt and the cosiness of the cab had begun to affect his driving abilities.

While the kettle gurgled, Derek stepped outside to investigate and photograph our barren surroundings. As far as the eye could see, and that wasn’t very far, was white gravel like shingle and few almost dead leafless bushes.

Shivering, but excited, he insisted I join him in the sub zero temperature to examine his find. The shingle wasn’t shingle, but shells. Millions of perfectly formed crustaceans created the gravel illusion.

Now what they were doing there over 1,000 metres above any sea I don’t know but it was an interesting subject and we discussed all the possibilities on the way to Burgos.

Thankfully on our approached to the city, we descended out of the clouds and the atmosphere warmed up enough to allow us to turn off the heater.

Vast wide avenues greeted us at Burgos. The three and in some places four lane thoroughfares were a sharp contrast to the narrow ‘calles’ we had encountered up until this point. However despite the ample tarmac provided the traffic was moving at an incredibly slow rate through the city.

As we crawled into the centre all became apparent. The residents of Burgos have adopted a rather strange and lazy parking system. Motorists simply dumped their battered Seats, Fiats and Fords on the roads without a care or thought to search out a designated parking space. Other drivers appeared totally unconcerned about this arrangement even when the abandoned vehicles parked two and three abreast, reducing the amount of road available for forward movement down to three or four inches.

The Spanish drivers apathy at locating an off road parking spot and the Spanish police’s apathy towards moving on illegally parked cars created chaos.

We waited as patiently as we could, hemmed in on all sides by bumper-to-bumper traffic. Finally the rather large orange bus in front of us, which was belching out huge clouds of black smoke, moved forward. We took it as a sign the traffic lights had changed, or the owner of the Seat Ibiza, who had nipped into the adjacent bar, had finished his swift Café Cartado and was ready to go back to work.

Derek had only just released the handbrake when he had to apply it again. The orange bus stopped sharply and a hoard of disgruntled passengers disembarked, then the engine was cut and the driver wandered off.

It took us a fully 20 minutes of arm waving and indicating to inch our way around the orange obstacle and rejoined a flow of semi-moving traffic to find a suitable spot to abandon our motor home.

Having completed the seventh circuit of the cities streets, at a snail’s pace, we gave up. A decision was made to retrace we our tyre tracks out of town, head north and find the campsite we had seen a sign for earlier in the day.

Although we were down hearted at missing out on exploring the many sights of the city, which was once home to the legendary warrior El Cid, we were glad to be driving at more than two kilometres per hour.

We drove for 30 minutes and only by luck stumbled upon the deserted looking campsite as the sun was setting. Pulling off the road, we sat for a long time trying to ascertain whether the site was a) open and b) inhabited.

The shutters on the reception building were firmly shut. There were some caravans and motor homes in situ, however the wealth of vines and ivy covering them gave the impression they had been vacated and forgotten about years ago.

Both of us were stiff from five hours sitting. We were tired and hungry so we set off to investigate. The motor home was left at the side of the road and we waded through the low-lying cloud cover, which gave the isolated site an eerie feel, towards reception.

As we approached the door opened and a pale looking lady beckoned us inside enthusiastically. She disappeared behind a large, shell-encrusted counter and insisted we partake of a drink with her while she completed the booking in process.

From under the counter she produced a bottle and proceeded to pour the thick red, syrupy liquid into two glass tumblers. They didn’t look very appetising but our pale hostess insisted we gulp it down. It was sweet and judging by the immediate warm sensation I felt as it slid down my throat a high alcohol content.

Derek pushed his aside feinting interest in the rather unusual counter. It was, our hostess enthusiastically informed us, the handiwork of her husband.

“Es an artist,” she beamed revealing a set of brilliant white molars. “In the campings you will see his work.”

Just what kind of artist Derek and I weren’t sure as we manoeuvred the motor home through the strange plasterwork gates into the site moments later. Our temporary home for the evening resembled a B Movie horror film set.

There was a full moon and the low-lying clouds swirled around the ground. Weird supernatural figures were erected at various locations around the half-acre grounds and it looked more of a graveyard than a tourist stop off. The faceless, sometimes armless forms, the work of our eccentric host, gave us the feeling of being watched and I kept expecting a blood-curdling scream to pierce the night or see a monster from the swamp to lurch out of murkiness.

Finally we found an area of gravel devoid of boulders and spooky statues that would host our oversized motor home without the sound of ripping aluminium. The electric was plugged in, the heater turned up full blast and we discussed our dining arrangements for the evening.

We were in the middle of nowhere; there was hardly anything in our cupboards and I didn’t feel inclined to spend hours in the kitchen trying to make something edible. So we decided to take up the offer of our hostess and join her and her family for dinner in the restaurant.

Trudging through the undergrowth back towards reception, Derek and I didn’t think the offer odd. She was probably lonely and in need of company. By the look of the campsite it didn’t look like many visitors passed through at this time of year.

The restaurant cum reception cum living room looked lived in. The wall behind the bar was covered in holiday photographs. The coat rack was on the point of collapse from the combined weight of jackets, cagoules and fleeces thrown upon it. Children, we presumed had sprung from the loins of our hostess, were busy scribbling at a nearby table. The two girls and boy, all equally as pale as their mother, stole glance and then whispered conspiratorially behind their small hands.

We seated ourselves at one of the many rustic oak dining tables while our hostess busied herself. She quickly supplied us with menus, cutlery, of the plastic variety and a litre bottle of red wine.

While Derek and I perused the menu more and more family members gathered around the bar. They nodded in our direction and smiled broadly. A constant train of people furtively tramped in and out to purchase jars filled with a strange red substance.

Meal choices were made and Senora Vena appeared soundlessly at our side to note them down. I had opted for the Vegetarian Surprise and Derek for a straightforward half chicken with chips. Yet when I attempted to translate our order in Spanish our hostess flinched at my strangling of the language.

“You no need to spake Spanish,” she declared in a rather angry tone. “I spake English.”

Frightened at the sudden outburst Derek and I dropped our heads subserviently, gulped down our red wine and waited for the temperamental lady to continue.

“I will choose for you,” she said eventually. “Good hearty Spanish food.”

A rippled of laughter emanated from the crowd of family members gathered at the bar as if they were privy to some private joke.

The wine was delicious and flowed rather too easily from the bottle and into my gullet. When our meals eventually arrived, Derek and I had managed to demolish two litres of the fruity refreshment. Usually I like my meat well cremated. The steak, which was put down in front of me, was still pumping blood. It swilled around the plate like a watery sauce, soaking into the chunky, hand cut chips.

“Just try and eat it,” Derek hissed through his teeth, aware our hostess was waiting for a verdict on her home-‘cooked’ fare.

I pushed the meat around the plate for some time, gulping down more wine, plucking up the courage to try the nearly raw flesh. Only when I couldn’t cut the steak into any smaller pieces did I attempt to ingest it. The first piece went in and I chewed and chewed trying to overcome the need to retch. All the while every family member watched intently.

I tried to smile, thinking they would lose interest once I’d started into the steak. But after four mouthfuls their attention was still focussed on us. They didn’t appear to blink they just stared longingly.

“It’s quite unnerving,” I whispered to Derek taking another sip of wine to help wash down the underdone steak.

“I know,” Derek said with all seriousness. “By the way they’re salivating you’d think we were eating their dinner.”

My wine fuddled brain ran through all the clues – remote location, pale looking people with gleaming white teeth, red liquid and two unsuspecting tourists. Then my over active imagination clicked into gear and I put two and two together and by way of a little ingenious algebra I came up with an answer.

“Oh no, we’re not eating their dinner,” I said dramatically. “We are their dinner.”

Derek gave me an incredulous look, slid the wine bottle out of my reach and continued tucking into his meal.

“You may scoff but I know these things,” I said as things became clearer and indicated my glass needed refilling. “I bet their waiting until we’re off guard to make their move. Think about it. What happened to the owners of all those caravans and motor homes out there? Do those photos on the wall look like anyone here? And what about all those people coming in for that stuff in jars? It all adds up. They’re vampires, just like in From Dust Til Dawn.”

I laid my plastic cutlery on the empty plate – I’d only managed to swallow ten mouthfuls, the rest was hidden inside my napkin – and picked up my wine glass and concentrated.

I’d regularly chilled out on an evening watching the pulp American serial Buffy the Vampire Slayer and tried desperately to remember the methods she used when fending off bloodsuckers. She had a cornucopia of weapons – wooden stakes, Holy Water, crucifixes and a good supply of Garlic - stored in a large wooden chest at the end of her bed.

I racked my brains trying to think of what weaponry we had on the motor home. The deck chairs we had would be no use - they were made of aluminium.

“We’re not going to get much sleep tonight,” I said seriously to Derek.

“Great,” he said suggestively running his foot up my leg and pouring more wine into my glass.

“That’s not what I meant,” knocking his foot back onto the floor. “Daylight. We’re going to have to stay alert until dawn, then we can make a quick getaway,”

“What about silver bullets,” Derek suggested, with a smile on his face. “You could always throw your rings at them.”

“Nawh they only work on Werewolves,” I said as if he were the stupidest person on the planet. “We’re going to have to make a run for the motor home. You go and pay the bill and we’ll finished this,” tapping the half full bottle of wine. “So we can try and slip out when they’re not watching.”

I don’t actually remember leaving the restaurant or how we got to the motor home or even when I went to sleep, but when I woke it was with a start. I’d been dreaming a vampire, complete with long black cape, was lunging in for my neck. At the point his razor sharp incisors began digging into my neck I’d woken.

“Oh you’re awake.” Derek said loudly giving me a shock. “I’m surprised you can sleep like that curled over the table. Why didn’t you come to bed?”

I didn’t answer. It took several minutes for my heart rate to return to normal and when it did I realised the pain in my neck was real. It wasn’t a dull ache. The kind you get from sleeping in an awkward position, but a stabbing, throbbing one and matched the pounding, which was going on in my head.

“And I’ve been dying to ask you what all this is about?”

“Huh. I don’t know,” I said blankly. And honestly I didn’t know why the motor home was such a mess.

The contents of our cutlery drawer – knives, forks, spoons and a few teaspoons - had been fashioned into makeshift crucifixes using elastic bands. Bowls of liquid were on the sofa underneath the window and the table was covered in a white creamy substance, which I took from the smell to be garlic-flavoured cheese spread.

It looked like Buffy and her Vampire killing crew had been let loose during the night creating an armoury for an assault on the living dead.

“What’s that on your neck?” Derek asked peering at me as he deposited a cup of coffee on the table.

“What,” I said nervously. “What’s wrong?” Had a sneaky vamp gained entry during the few hours I had actually been asleep, bitten me and stolen off into the night after a good drink on my blood? Were there two large gaping holes where his incisors had bitten into my tender neck?

“Hold still. Mmmn. Ohh. Urgh.”

“What is it?” I tentatively asked hoping against hope there weren’t two large gaping holes where the incisors of a vampire had bitten into my tender neck.

“In future,” he said pointing with the cocktail stick - a black olive skewered half way down - he’d just pulled from my neck. “If you’re gonna have a midnight snack, can you for God’s sake clear up after yourself?”

There weren’t any vampires in Castille, but there was a lot of rain. Everywhere we drove Derek and I seemed to be under a cloud. It seemed like weeks since we’d seen blue skies never mind sunshine.

We made a cursory stop off at Salamanca, before abandoning plans to visit Madrid, turned west and headed towards Portugal and the sun.