Confusion reigned in Basil this morning when SatNav said 141 miles to Pamplona would take 4 hours. All is now clear as we sit in an aire in Pamplona (42.820945, -1.655988 €10 with services and electricity) with over five hours of driving behind us!

Once again opting to avoid toll roads, we started off driving through southern France negotiating endless small towns and villages, each of which had a 30 mph speed limit.

Matters got worse in one sense and better in another as we reached Spain. Well, we assume it was Spain because as usual in the modern day EU there was no way of telling where France stopped and Spain began, except Sarah suddenly noticed that Diesel was €0.10 cheaper.

Worse because our route took us through the extensive foothills of the Pyrenees, on a tortuous road and better because the mountains, rushing rivers and lush pastures made much more pleasant viewing than the flat, featureless pine forest of southwest France.

We stopped high up in the mountains for lunch and as I sat munching my traditional baguette and tapenade, I saw out of the window a large bird of prey land not far from us. Then another and another and so on until 10 or more of the large birds had crossed the skyline and landed just out of view. I hadn’t expected to get the birding lens out this early in the trip, but it was soon affixed to my camera and off I went in search of the mysterious birds.

It didn’t take long to find them as one by one they took off not far in front of me and soared upwards on mountain thermals. They were enormous and when I spied them through my binoculars they were clearly Vultures. Reading up in my field guide it is clear they were Griffon Vultures, of which there are apparently 20,000 in Spain and they often live in small groups, which is why I had seen so many. I stayed and watched as upwards of 10 circled above me until they disappeared from view.

Griffon Vulture

The remainder of our journey was made even slower by the closure of a long tunnel which meant we had to creep over a Pyrenean pass at 15 mph following numerous HGVs.

We have eventually made it to Pamplona where we have set up on a very convenient city centre aire.

The blog is early today because at 4.30 pm we are going to set off to explore the city in the cooler part of the day and so I will write about what we find in Pamplona tomorrow.