We left the far-flung Kerry Mountains – a.k.a. the Sierra de Urbasa – at an unspeakably early hour on Monday morning. We were all convinced that we weren’t cut out for 100% rural life for longer than two nights. In fact, the children tellingly got dressed and brushed their teeth without even so much as a whimper: a sure sign of their camping fatigue. This has been truly noted. I packed the car to within an inch of its life (we won’t be buying too many large souvenirs on this road trip, that’s for sure) and we set off on the spectacular road that runs from Navarra to the port city of San Sebastian.
Valencia, with its wide boulevards and spacious motorways, is a perfect city for those who like to thrash their cars. I was completely bamboozled many times by Valencian drivers: they’ll overtake you at a traffic light if it means they’ll get in front. I have been raced through the streets many times – more so when I was still in a German car. I remember one geezer looking at me with a huge smile on his face waiting for the traffic lights to turn green so he could leave me for dust. He forgot I was in a Toyota Prius Plus Hybrid and I could go 0-60 in about 3 seconds – never try to instigate a drag race with a battery-operated car: you will lose. I have been tailgated by old grandmas in 30-year-old Peugeot 305s, overtaken on the wrong side by huge truck drivers, and been outmanoeuvred by a driving instructor going 40 km/h above the speed limit.
So it came as an enormous shock to me to find that Basques drive like utter lunatics. The breathtaking, winding motorway that cuts through the dramatic landscape here, chicaning in and out of valleys, running parallel to hillside meadows and cutting through the limestone rock, is a perilous yet utterly beguiling route from Pamplona to the coast and on along into Cantabria and Asturias. We could have been in Switzerland or subalpine Italy if it were not for the numerous crash scenes. It reminded me of the high summer insect slaughter in my kitchen: random vehicles strewn along the highway as if some colossal child ogre with a massive flyswat had splatted them. So you would think that the blessed locals would learn from this and slow down.
Not a bit of it.
In fact, I had to perform some pretty scary manoeuvres of my own just to keep up. There were articulated trucks overtaking in the fast lane; there were Dacia Dokker drivers hurtling round bends as if they were expecting a chequered flag to appear; there were motorcyclists dodging in and out of the traffic like some Star Wars-Grand Theft Auto mashup. And in amongst all this were we. I mean, I’m not a squeamish driver; I can truly handle myself on the road. But I was just pretty badly shocked by it all. In Valencia, they drive competitively. Here, they drive aggressively, or even with hostility.
Using my phone as the GPS, I noticed an email coming in from the Valencian Education Ministry. This was serious. This would be the day we found out about our children’s fate in the coming year. Where would they be placed? Previously, we had to go through what I can only describe as the world’s least efficient school application process. In fact, it was so unwieldy and unmanageable, I asked the secretary of our preferred school to do it for us. About a month ago, the online applications opened up for schools in the Valencian Community. You have to go to a particular website and get yourself an ID. Fair enough. But to do that, you need to scan and send every single piece of paperwork you have ever received, and woe betide anyone who is applying with the wrong type of document.
The Spanish NIE is a piece of paper you get to prove you are a resident in Spain. To get this, we had to jump through hoops of fire. And when we got it, we soon realised it was only the preliminary one. To get the full version, you have to train a set of gibbons to make a Black Forest gâteau and serve it with steaming hot coffee to a group of top German chefs. So as we don’t have that particular skillset, we gave up in a blind panic and pleaded with Isabel, a truly kind and patient woman who runs the school’s secretariat along with her sister, to do it for us. The fact that she offered to do it for us says a lot about the type of application process. Some larger schools even provide appointments for anxious parents to come along and have their applications handled.
You choose between five and ten schools you would like your kids to end up in, and through a points-based system, they allocate you to various schools. The points are loosely based on the following criteria: number of siblings, location close to home or work, recently moved there, and then a few other factors. As this one is a four-minute walk from our office, we have three kids, and we recently arrived, we were more or less nailed on for our first choice. So when I pulled off the motorway into a service station area and went to the database to check, I was astonished and frustrated (but hardly surprised) to find that I was unable to connect. I called the ministry immediately, and after a long wait, some person told me that if the school did your application, then the school would dispense the decision.
But when I called the school’s secretary, she wasn’t there. We had to wait until the day after to discover the results.
I tried to block it out of my mind and just enjoy the scenery, even if it was raining and cold. The weather evoked memories of Belgium in March – it is a wonder of our rich planet that the climate in the Basque Country is so temperate, and yet further north round the Bay of Biscay in Bordeaux, Royan or Arcachon it’s about 10 to 15 degrees warmer.
We arrived in a rather gloomy San Sebastian a little after 10 in the morning. I had always wanted to walk along the Kontxa promenade there, with its ornate architecture and imaginative ironclad ornaments, but being here at the beginning of July in weather that the Scots would describe as dreich, I was rather underwhelmed. The city behind the seafront was also fairly generic. This could be any middling European market city: a little bit of Antwerp in the street accessories, a dash of Mannheim in the atmosphere, a sprinkling of Leicester in the shops, and a dose of the unexciting Zürich social scene. There were grid streets, tree-lined avenues, the same chain shops as everywhere else, and very utilitarian amenities. Nothing really screamed that it was special or unique. I think humdrum sets the scene perfectly.
And that was the moment that it hit me: Valencia is unique. Diverse. Multifaceted. Exciting. Playful. Impish. Subversive. Truculent. And I missed it so desperately. In under a year, Valencia had shown itself to me and awoken so many of my feelings that had remained dormant during the previous fifteen long wilderness years.
Such a powerful epiphany. For the ten months we had spent there, I had been constantly questioning whether we had made the right decision, and it took a walk in the Basque rain for me to realise it. I had had my misgivings about the whole scheme: why would we want to put down our roots in such a vastly different place? Why didn’t Bonny Bee want to settle for something less adventurous, like Belgium or Czechia? But now I saw the method in the madness: and I can now say that I have a much clearer picture of the situation and as soon as we return to Valencia in September, I will get the ball rolling on our definitive settling in the area.
The further westward we went, the cheerier the weather. When the huge sign appeared welcoming us to Cantabria, the skies suddenly brightened up. I didn’t, though. I was feeling sleepy from all the early-morning packing, the driving and the burden of not knowing where my kids were going to school in September. Having them in El Cabanyal, a few hundred metres from our office, would be a huge relief to us, and make our lives much easier.
But that would have to wait, as I was determined to enjoy the inspirational landscape that had announced itself in front of us. If the Basque Country had been a southern mashup of Ireland and Germany, Cantabria has echoes of Devon, Cornwall, the Scottish Lowlands, and Lake Como.
The picturesque fishing port of San Vicente de la Barquera lies in an inlet at the mouth of the river Escudo and other tributaries. The squeal of seagulls, the chugging of fishing boats, the buzzing waterside houses and hostelries, the ubiquity of seafood, all have echoes of Devon and Cornwall – this could be St Ives, Polperro, Dartmouth or Padstow. The squares, with their social heart, the florid character of the buildings, and the serenity of the water lapping at the shores all draw parallels with Lake Como villages such as Bellagio. And the imposing, undulating dark hills with their wild and shadowy forests and wide-open meadows immediately reminds me of Loch Lomond and the Trossachs. However, the immense, white-clouded skies with their penetrating light, tell me I am much further south. And indeed I am. But also much further north than Valencia.
San Vicente de la Barquera, and Cantabria as a whole, is one of Europe’s best-kept secrets; and I will elaborate in the next instalment.
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