Thursday 14 August - Spain, France

This morning I had a quick look around Bilbao, a cosmopolitan major Spanish city which includes the Guggenheim museum and a train station with a massive stained glass piece of artwork. I have been here before – and there’s been grey skies all day today – so I stayed to have some morning tapas and coffee, walked around by the river and got back into the car.

Crossing back into France, I could see that they’re currently building a massive customs / border control plaza on the border. Who said free movement?

 

Driving across a number of countries is much more straightforward than you might expect. Yes, the sat nav helps, but even if you didn’t have one, there is a network of E routes: pan-European routes, which keep their E number for the whole trip. Major roads in most countries in Europe have their own national number as well, but now include their E number on signs and maps.

 

For example, from Bilbao to Bordeaux (the area I’m in now), I took the A-8 (Spain), the A63 (France), the N10 (France) and the A63 again (France). But this, being an important route in Europe, is all the E05. It’s also the E70, but later on that goes elsewhere.

 

We actually have E routes in the UK, but do we use them? Of course not, we’re special. We’re British. Like using miles for the roads and kilograms for the spuds, we’re showing that we like Europe but we’re not quite as European as the rest…. Yet?

 

So – as a perfect example, the E05, actually starts in Scotland. The entire route is  2960km long and goes like this: Greenock – Glasgow – Preston – Birmingham – Southampton - [ferry] - Le Havre – Paris – Orléans – Bordeaux – San Sebastián – Madrid – Sevilla – Algeciras.

 

The E70 goes the other way though: A hefty 4550km : takes it from A Coruña through Bilbao – San Sebastián – Bordeaux – Clermont-Ferrand – Lyon – Chambéry – Susa – Turin – Alessandria – Tortona – Brescia – Verona – Mestre – Palmanova – Trieste – Postojna – Ljubljana – Zagreb – Slavonski Brod – Belgrade – Vršac – Timiºoara – Drobeta-Turnu Severin – Craiova – Alexandria – Bucharest – Giurgiu – Rousse – Razgrad – Shumen – Varna … Samsun – Ordu – Giresun – Trabzon – Batumi and finally Poti.

 

To recover from yesterday (and as the weather was awful) I decided to check into the hotel and eat at the restaurant there in Bordeaux. Now, which red wine to have with my steak here…..?

 

left and right: One of the main junctions in Bilbao

left: Amazing artwork in the train station (yes, it really was 12pm)    right: View along the river to (probably) their Millenium bridge

left: View from one of the road bridges in Bilbao    right: Sculpture by the river

left: View of the Guggenheim museum from the Millenium bridge