What a day. The TomTom came close to being jettisoned on a good six occasions today, to be closely followed by the French Aires book. Dead ends, roads barely the width of the van, non-existent aires, supermarkets advertising fuel that don't sell fuel - we've had it all. This aire isn't too bad although, apart from a huge park and leisure complex, there is very little else here. We'll be off early tomorrow.

A grey, wet start to the day but hot and sunny by early afternoon. A pleasant enough aire but nothing here - no cafés or shops apart from a boulangerie. We're nursing lots of bites now. D has at least 12 and I've 3 or 4. Before leaving St. Severs this morning we had a couple of allongés and used the café wifi to book the 09.50 ferry from Calais on the 5th June. More expensive now we're in a holiday month. £44 as compared with £34 in March. DFDS wanted ...

A nice little town and a pleasant bar providing free wifi. The aire is adjacent to a bullring and a large boules area. When we arrived, in hot sunshine, there was a match in progress - properly marked out pitches and loud-speaker commentary.

Quite a run today - by our standards. Spectacular scenery coming over the mountains. Mixed weather, of course, but better than we've been having. Two spaces left on the aire at Hendaye so we grabbed one. Five minutes later and the other had gone. Walked down to the seafront and stopped at a bar to re-acclimatise to French prices - €2.90 for a Cola Light and €2.50 for a glass of wine.

Our second visit to Lierganes. It's quite a handy stop but there's not much here. We had the €12 Menu del Dia at El Cantabrico. A spectacular salad starter, a hake dish for D which wasn't very nice - boiled fish, no veg and sloppy and steak "from a cow which has not had a calf" and chips for me which was very nice. We each ate half of our choice and then swapped plates. A Crème Brûlée to finish. Good value, as a bottle of the house red was included.