Bye bye blue sky, hello Ben

The upside to coming home: seeing friends and family (and our dog); and getting back into normal life, especially the run up to Christmas, which I love. The downside: the weather. It was cold this morning, down to 4 degrees outside; and once we'd set off, the cloud got lower (including a weird cloud/ sandstorm haze that affected visibility badly for a while), and the blue sky gradually turned grey. We had to turn the main heating on. The grey outside matched the landscape: a fairly dreary mixture of flat plains (presumably where it rains), and huge factories.

A little lunch stop (even the menu del dia at a service station is good), and then onwards. The landscape got more interesting: greener, and craggy; the weather got worse: low cloud, and then rain! Our first for a long time. But at least we had a rainbow too.

We got into a miserable drizzling Bilbao at 4-ish and found an Aire at the Bilbao Hostal that included use of their showers - it's got to that stage again, Jemima really needs a hair wash... Then, a real treat: Kevin's eldest, Ben, came to visit! We were planning to meet up in Bilbao tomorrow anyway, as he's here visiting a friend, but timings worked and he took a taxi to find us at our Aire this evening. It was lovely to see him - Jemima was very excited to show brother Ben all her toys - and we had a very good catch up over our standby dinner of bread, cheese, ham, and salad. Then Ben headed off to sample the Bilbao nightlife, with a plan to meet us again tomorrow. It may be miserable outside, but it's definitely heartwarming to see family - a good omen for returning home.

Our rainbow:

Reunion:

Salamanca to Bilbao:

Our journey in the last 4 days: