Road Trip - Northern Spain

September. The rain is falling, trenches dug turning into quagmires, water-logged soil sacks spilling over, and what am I doing? Not gardening, nor digging, but sitting on couch muddling over how best to blog about a three-week Spanish road trip taken in July whilst munching green cobnuts, which sadly are coming out of season. And how very good they are. Better green than gold.

On route to Fuenmayor, La Rioja

Where to start? With a glass of Rioja of course. It is 10am and imperative to get into the mood. [takes sip]

I travelled light, took ill-fitting bras, Michelin 'España' road maps 573 & 575, and the panama hat I purchased at the Chelsea Flower Show. And Husband. And books. Reading list went something like this: Laurie Lee, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning; Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon; The Essential Hemingway (Vintage Classics); Giles Tremlett, Ghosts of Spain; and The World Atlas of Wine, by Hugh Johnson and and Janice Robinson.

For your perusal is this rudimentary map of the route husband and I took in our hired Kia Picante, which had absolutely no power to accelerate uphill.

Note that if you too intend to travel with tomes, The World Atlas of Wine alone won't fit into the Picante boot because there is no boot. Just the pretence of one. But less of that. For ease I have organised our meanderings thus, posts dedicated to either city or wine region so as to spare you from having to trawl through the whole damned lot:

Bilbao: the pintxos of Bilbao & Frank Gehry's Guggenheim

Rioja: Haro & Batalla del Vino; Bodega Fernando Remirez de Ganuza & lunch at Restaurant Alameda; Bodega Abel Mendoza Monge & Casa Toni; HotelViura, Bodega Remeluri & lunch at Casa Arina; wine therapy at Gehry's Marques de Riscal Hotel, Elciego

Lerma: Parador Lerma, & Gregorian chanting at Santo Domingo de Silos

Riberra del Duero: Bodega Valdubon & Quintanilla de Onesimo; the penas and pintxos of Aranda del Duero; Roa, roast lamb & Bodega Haza; San Esteban de Gormaz

Pamplona: 20 hours in Pamplona & the running of the bulls

Donastia-San Sebastián: pintxos; Casa Julian, Tolosa; Woody Allen's hangout.

They are not all clickable yet - it will take some time before the posts, in their entirety, are up. Currently I have finished the posts on Bilbao & Rioja and am working on Lerma. I have a pile of receipts and illegible notes to decipher, plus something like 3,000 photographs to sift through. And Willow has chewed parts of map 573. But I am working on it and hope you enjoy.

If you are of the brave-hearted and want to do the whole lot, the first post is here.