Winter is here

It’s December. The Christmas tunes are playing in the bars, the lights are up in towns across Spain and there’s a chill in the air.

Our aim, like swallows, is to follow the seasons and we’re (very) slowly making our way southwards. After spending a fantastic couple of weeks at the end of November with family on the Spanish/French border, we are starting to feel the temperature change with colder days and nights.

So far we have not suffered greatly with it being too cold. We have enough warm clothing and the tent and bedding combination has been plenty to keep us cosy. We opted for a double quilt which means we can use each other’s body heat to stay warm which has worked well. Our sleep mats are inflatable and we have individual/single ones of these which has the benefit of only one person suffering (not both) if there’s a puncture - or in our case the baffles on the mat have started to fail… but that’s another story.

One thing we have started to experience is condensation on the tent, not something we’ve really found up until now when the temperature drops to 5 degrees or so overnight. Our tent has good ventilation so this is only a bit of a problem on cold, damp, still nights. A bit of a breeze does wonders.

We’ve also been quite high in elevation and Spain appears to have huge plateaus where there are farms, villages and towns. The other morning we camped at around 1160 metres above sea level (about 75 metres higher than Snowdon) and quickly climbed to 1288 m.a.s.l. Greater elevation usually means lower temperatures, so the higher we are, the colder it’s likely to be.

This rule is obviously a guide and we experienced the exact opposite during this particular camp. We awoke to fog. Thick, thick fog which made everything damp, both inside and outside the tent, but looking directly up above us just a couple of metres we could see wispy clouds and some stars beyond.

Once packed up, we started the climb and emerged from the fog/cloud to be draped in golden sunshine. We warmed up and relished the sun on our backs for about 45 minutes of riding, looking out at the views stretching out below us.

Then we had to descend towards Soria and from the beautiful sunshine we dropped back down into the cloud and fog. The temperature immediately and noticeably dropped by several degrees and with no uphill to keep us warm, we got colder and colder! The air being so wet meant that we got damp too. The only thing keeping us going was that we knew food, hot tea and shelter awaited us on Soria. It was quite an experience.

Packing up a wet tent is the one thing that has been more unpleasant this season. Tent stuff is usually my ‘job’ and my golly when it’s below 5 degrees in the morning, the wind is blowing and the tent is wet, my hands feel like they’ve frozen off. It hurts. I’m loathed to put on my good gloves because my dexterity is reduced and I don’t want to get the gloves wet and cold for the day. Saying that, about 10 minutes after the tent is away and I’ve dried and warmed my hands, everything is alright again!

Looking ahead, we’re keeping an eye on the weather forecast and are also wary of the snow line as that would make our travelling a little more tricky. The cold we can probably handle but we’ve been making use of the multitude of off-road tracks which could be made impassable without snow tyres? I’ve currently estimated snow at around 2,000 metres so not a problem with the current forecast and route planning.

So, we must head south! The Mediterranean coast is looking more attractive every day…