Well, we’re back in Pontevedra, having returned via the ever-improving Autovia of Cantabria. Or the A8 as it’s more simply known. Though it’s the E70, the A67 and even the N634 at times.
Crossing the border at Hendaye this time, we eschewed the A8 initially and followed the coast road down past San Sebastian and towards Bilbao. The initial stretches of this are spectacular, both seawards and landwards, but all too soon you find yourself passing through one grim, industrial Basque town after another and so it’s an easy decision to get onto the A8 long before it passes the city of the Guggenheim.

A city the A8 doesn’t exactly pass is Santander. Here, the planning seems to have been every bit as bad as that for the M6 around Birmingham in the UK. With the same traffic snarl-ups as a result. If you elect to stay on the A8 instead of taking the turn for the A67 towards Burgos and Oviedo, you'll end up in the city centre. But here’s a little secret – If you turn round on the edge of the city and go back towards the A67, you will avoid the huge jams that build up at the A8/A67 junction. Which bit of inescapable serendipity rather soothed ruffled feathers in our case.

There’ll be more on the trip tomorrow but I’d like to leave any French reader with the question of what this means - seen on a sign for a disco, somewhere between Auch and Bayonne - Private club (Nonconformist). Is it perhaps barred to Catholics? Or, indeed, to conformists of any stamp? Or is it a very French version of Spain’s Pisos de Relax?

Finally, still no fixed line internet. And I can't even start the reconfiguration of my modem. Does any genius know what it means to get no data in response to IPCONFIG? And, more importantly, what to do next . . . . . ?