Sunday 6 January – Beausoleil to San Sebastian

Beausoleil to San Sebastion - 141 miles

Cold grey morning and on taking Jamie out was asked by a young Swedish guy who'd come in late last night and was on the next bay if I had a tyre compressor. He had what turned out to be a slow puncture and it had gone down overnight. Fortunately we do carry such an item and we spent a pleasant half hour chatting whilst re-inflating his tyre, suggesting that he get to a garage and get it seen to. It was an old, but very serviceable Hymer, typical of what younger folk use to travel the world – he was on his way home to Sweden.

That sorted, being Sunday we enjoyed our first Full English Breakfast of our trip which, as well as the tyre interlude, made us very late getting under way after a proper service on the van. We had considered routing through the Pyrenees via the Somport tunnel but the weather forecast showed probable snow showers so rather than tempt the weather gods we chose the coastal route via Irun. We also decided to use the A63, despite it having sections of toll road. It is possible to avoid these bits but we didn't think it worth the trouble so had a fast run towards the Spanish border.

Approaching Bayonne we remembered we hadn't planned any further than the border so stopped at a service area and had a bite of lunch whilst reviewing the books. We eventually thought we'd give the main aire near the university at San Sebastion a try, but had a problem trying to get the new (did I mention we've got a new super duper all singin' all dancin' TomTom?) satnav to accept the directions. We did manage to input the address and sorted out the other problems later and after an initial disagreement about trying to route us through Biarritz we eventually found our way. To our surprise there was plenty of room, our experience of this particular aire is that it is always very busy, so we found a spot and settled, after a fight with the ticket machine!

A nice cuppa and apple turnovers which we'd been carrying for a few days went down well. Later after tea we reviewed the weather forecast to find it generally dry for the next ten days with the best temperatures being on the Spanish Mediterranean coast, so we'll head south east for somewhere like Peniscola or Benicassim.

It's been grey and cold all day and the forecast is still showing possible snow showers in our area so we'll wrap up warm and see what tomorrow brings.