Campervan Therapy

We blast through rain-sodden France, the van battered by wind, filled with the smell of sodden trainers, windows misting from waterproofs hanging up to dry. We’d be forgiven for thinking it’s November not July. But we relax when we turn inland on Spain’s A8 motorway from San Sebastian.

The village of Ameyugo sits just off the AP1 Motorway to Burgos, on the N1. The only reason we stop is because there’s a camping sign on my book map. The sun is shining on the Obarenes mountain range. Camping Monumento al Pastor sits outside the village.

A peaceful place, it is full of privately owned little chalets attached to the local bar and restaurant. We’re the only camper here and we’re invited to choose our pitch. And what a bucolic pitch it is. The only sounds are the birds as we gaze out on forested slopes and hay fields.

Our first stop has to be the giant limestone monument of a shepherd beside the campsite, a memorial to all those in the area.

The rugged figure soars above us, a lamb under his arm. In a cave there’s Mary and Joseph, an angel flying just above them.

We walk through fields of sunflowers, their faces turned to the ruined San Cosme Chapel on an outcrop above the hamlet of Encio. The field is alive with sparrows dipping and feeding on the sunflower seeds. The track is lined with wild chicory, the last few remaining poppies, wild carrot and teasel heads – a feast for insects.

Two young girls play basket-ball in Encio’s playground and Seán says they’re probably the only children in the isolated hamlet. We climb up 0.5 kilometres through sweet scented hay and scrub to San Cosme’s Romanesque ruins.

Its honeyed stone is carved into arresting heads under the eaves. A stern man’s face, a pained looking woman with her arms crossed and what looks like a female fertility symbol stare down at us. The Mountains range away to the distance.

We follow the walking trail to Montemayor, through the limestone gorge, with its cream and russet jagged teeth above us. The track takes us through the woodland, with its mixture of Mediterranean and Atlantic trees.

Wild fennel’s cheerful yellow edges the path and I crush a few seeds between my fingers for Himself, who has a less-than-perfect olfactory system, but this time, yes, he can smell the wonderful aniseed scent.

The air flutters with butterfly wings. It’s full of their colours: gold, blue, white, purple, amber and yellow. A sand martin flits high above and it takes us a while to realise that it can’t go into its nest until we move on. Suddenly aware of us humans as intruders, we leave it in peace.

Two kilometres up the slope and we picnic at the limestone tables, surrounded by swaying grasses with only the sound of the breeze in the leaves. A small Dutch camper pulls up and a woman and man set up their wooden picnic table, complete with jam-jar of flowers. We recognise fellow camper-souls across the meadow and salute each other.

The evening ends in the bar beside the campsite, watching the locals read their newspapers and a group of elderly women playing cards with the massive television playing to no-one, a reassuringly familiar scene in Spain.