In accordance with our "integration" policy (family trips and explorer trips come out of the same air miles), we're doing a bit of European travel.

Nigel had a yen for Portugal, a land where neither Tern has ever set bright red foot, and if you're travelling overland, then you can't neglect Portugal's sibling, Spain, which we last visited an astonishing 26 years ago...

This journey -- and, truly, this is the story of my life -- is a cut-down version of a more ambitious itinerary that would have taken us a goodly way round the Mediterranean.

But a look at the prices for the sleeper from Hendaye to Lisbon spooked us into changing our plans. Let's just stick to the Iberian peninsula, we said. Less ground covered means slower, more Tern-appropriate travel, and translates into less of a footprint.

We've called the circuit the Lisbon Loop, and it's going to occupy us for five weeks. Certainly, loops are less satisfying than point-to-point journeys that help to eat up the miles home. Even so, it will be fun.

So, on Monday morning, after one of my mother-in-law's awesome cooked breakfasts, we caught the train to London.


The next little while was spent at The Barrel Vault at St Pancras station, because to find a seat out of the cold wind you need to buy something...

What I decided to buy was a Tanqueray Flor de Sevilla from the "Gin Palace" selection. What could be more appropriate on departure day than a good British gin, with a delicate orange inflection that is predictive of a future destination? A real pleasure.


You can follow that up with a bottomless mug of tea or coffee for a very reasonable GBP 1.80. And if you're a little discreet, you can supplement your beverage with some super-nice, 72%-cocoa Ecuadorian chocolate from the M&S right next door...

I complained about the prices at St Pancras last time, but The Barrel Vault is really not too bad, so I would definitely put it down as an OK place to hang out while you wait for your Eurostar experience (which, for us, was as smooth and comfortable as ever).

We decided to walk the 6 km from the Gare du Nord to the Hotel Ibis that is closest to the Gare Montparnasse (the station we were due to leave from the next day).

It was a great walk, right through the Paris of memories... Past the Louvre, across the Seine (roiled and heaving on this windy night), past the famed cafe terrace of Les Deux Magots, taking in views of the Tour Eiffel and the Pont Neuf, and many other worthy places that you know you know from one or other of your five previous visits, but can't quite name.



When you're itinerary-planning, you get cross with Paris because you're kind of forced into breaking your journey here, and even a simple room costs a lot of money.

So you decide that one night is quite enough.

Then you arrive, and you're entranced by it all over again, and wish you were staying longer.

The little round tables at the ubiquitous pavement cafes; the monumental stone entrances with the massive wooden doors; the brightly lit shop windows with displays that somehow seem prettier than they do in other places; the snatches of conversation in that incomparably beautiful, gliding, sparkling tongue...

Not so flash are the overflowing bins... The guys working three key incinerators are taking industrial action in protest against pension reform (similar action on the railways in recent weeks had given us no little cause for concern, but for the minute there's a truce).

You don't get much for your Hotel-Ibis-buying ringgit in Paris. But the bar does a very decent Calvados, and the brekkie is awesome. (Nigel was rapt to discover that petits pains au chocolat seem to fall into the "fat bread" roti category, and cause none of the blood-sugar catastrophes that standard bread does.)

After that, a short walk through the Paris morning drizzle brought us to the Gare Montparnasse.


While you wait for your platform to be announced, you can distract yourself by checking out the trains, or taking in a little exhibition of work by Brecht Evens and Charles Burns.




And here we are, on our first-ever real TGV (high-speed train), cantering along over the gentle French countryside at around 300 kph. This one is a double-decker, and it's actually two trains, which divide in Dax. The lot at the back are heading east to Lourdes and Tarbes. We at the front will press on down to Bayonne, Biarritz, and St Jean de Luz (all stars in a really wonderful Christmas holiday back in 1988...), and then on to Hendaye, on the border with Spain.

It's just two hours to Bordeaux. After that, you slow down quite a bit, but even so, the entire journey to Hendaye takes only four and a half hours.





And it's a comfortable ride. You get plenty of leg-room, a big, fold-down table, free internet, and a pair of charging points. We brought our own lunch, but there is a functioning buffet car.

Once at Hendaye, you walk a short way down the road to the little Euskotren station. There are signs pointing to "Spain". I love that...

Every 30 minutes a busy little train (pictured at the top) runs to Irun and beyond. We went four stops, to Bentak, because that's closer to tonight's Ibis.


Of course, we're now in the Basque country. So the signage is in Spanish and Basque. This confused the hell out of us back in 1988, when we made our very first foray into Spain. We had a really inadequate road atlas at the best of times (and no internet, of course), and with many of the Spanish place names obliterated and replaced with Basque ones, we were pretty much permanently lost.


Having dumped our bags, we walked back into Irun, which is a low-key but pleasant town, ringed with mountains. Sitting right on the frontier, it was probably destined to have a turbulent history, and endured many battles (most famously in the Napoleonic wars, and most recently in the Spanish Civil War).







You get a little more for your Hotel-Ibis-buying ringgit in Irun. And the bar does a very decent Rioja.

Best of all, the breakfast is plentiful. (This is always a worry in Spain. On that first trip, when we came over the Pyrenees in our gallant little Panda, we spent our first night in Jaca. The boarding house didn't supply breakfast, but recommended Casa Paco across the road. "What do Spanish people eat for breakfast?" I asked the bartender. "Coffee and magdalenas," he said. "OK," I said, "We'll have that for two." Along came two terribly tiny coffees and two terribly tiny cakes. We consumed them, looked at each other, and ordered another round. Of course, Spaniards don't generally want a big breakfast because they're likely to have eaten a really late dinner. Our body clocks just don't serve us well here...)

It was about 4 degrees when we set out for the station this morning. A good temperature for walking uphill with a backpack. Irun is obviously warmer than the British midlands, however. There are oranges on the trees. The magnolia are in flower, and the daffodils have already emerged.

It's always good to be reminded of people who are not travelling voluntarily:


Spain is fairly tolerant towards migrants and asylum-seekers, although that, of course, could always change.

At the station we had time for a fortifying cafe con leche, before boarding our fifth train...