Our route north took us through Santiago de Compostela, the ultimate destination of all those Camino pilgrims we had passed a couple of weeks earlier. We actually drove straight through the city and, somewhat unexpectedly, right past the famous cathedral. For a few minutes we contemplated stopping and having a look, but the traffic was heavy, the streets were crowded and there were people everywhere. We decided the cathedral had managed for several centuries without us and would probably manage a little longer, so we kept going.

We were heading for Foz on the northern coast of Galicia, and the drive there turned out to be one of the loveliest stretches of the trip. The road took us through the green hills of northern Galicia, around Mondoñedo and the Serra do Xistral, past forests, farmland and little villages of stone houses with churches that seemed quite ludicrously large for the number of houses surrounding them.

It was lush, green and beautiful and certainly not what most people picture when they imagine Spain. There was none of the dry, dusty countryside we had been driving through earlier in the trip. This was all rolling green hills, forests, valleys and small villages tucked into the landscape. At times it looked more like Ireland or western France than Spain.

We arrived in Foz and found both a hotel and somewhere to park the Kangoo, which pleased us more than it probably should have. By this stage of the trip our requirements had become fairly modest: somewhere to sleep, somewhere to leave the car and preferably neither of them involving too much effort.

Having achieved all three, we went for a walk, explored a little of the town, found some dinner and headed back to the hotel for the night.

The next morning we continued east with no real plan of where we would stay. We knew roughly where we were going, which had worked reasonably well so far, so there seemed little reason to become organised at this late stage.

By lunchtime we had reached Santillana del Mar and decided to stop for something to eat. Santillana is quite touristy, but despite that we liked it almost immediately. The old town is a lovely collection of cobbled streets, old stone houses, wooden balconies and little squares, and once you wandered away from the busiest part it still had plenty of character.

We had stopped for lunch. We were not, at this point, planning to stay.

Then AP spotted a small sign in a shop window advertising rooms. In we went. Yes, they had a room. It was in the building next door. We went over to have a look and that, more or less, was the end of our onward travel plans for the day.

The room was fabulous. It was in an ancient building where nothing was square, the floor sloped noticeably and the walls appeared to have settled into positions of their own choosing several hundred years earlier. It was decorated with handmade quilts, rustic rugs and old furniture and had far more character than anything we could have found by deliberately searching for somewhere to stay.

We had intended to stay somewhere for one night. We booked two.

The Kangoo was moved to a long-term car park, we collected what we needed for the next couple of days and settled ourselves into our accidental little find.

That evening we had dinner at El Pasaje de los Nobles, where we chose the set menu, which included wine. This already seemed promising. The food turned out to be superb and everything that arrived was delicious. It was one of those places you stumble across by chance and immediately realise you have done rather well.

The following day we explored Santillana properly. We wandered the streets, stopped for coffee, looked around the shops and generally did very little. We even returned to the room for an afternoon nap, something that becomes increasingly attractive when there is absolutely no reason not to.

When dinner time came around, we considered our options for roughly thirty seconds and went straight back to El Pasaje de los Nobles. There seemed little point in conducting further research when the research had already produced such good results.

Early the next morning we packed the Kangoo and headed off again. This time we had a long drive ahead of us and needed to get back into France. We headed inland, eventually retracing our route towards Jaca and the Pyrenees before climbing once again through the mountains towards the Somport Tunnel.

A few kilometres inside a mountain later, we emerged in France.

From there we continued north to Pardies-Piétat, where we had booked an Airbnb for the final few days of the trip. The accommodation was perfectly nice and the village itself was pleasant enough, but it was another example of something we had noticed more and more in rural France.

At one time the village had apparently had a bakery, a café-bar and several other small shops. Now it had none of them. For bread, groceries or almost anything else, we had to drive about five kilometres to a large supermarket. The village still had houses, a church and streets, but the things that once made it a functioning little community had gradually disappeared.

It is something we have seen repeatedly in France. The bakery closes, then the café, then the shop, and eventually everyone gets into the car and drives to the supermarket outside the nearest larger town. Convenient, perhaps, but rather less interesting.

For us, Pardies-Piétat was simply somewhere quiet to stop for a few days, and after weeks on the road that was no bad thing. We caught up on washing, emails, admin and all the other deeply exciting things that travelling eventually produces.

Then it was back into the Kangoo for the final drive to our house in Sarlat, where we needed to pack everything away for winter before heading back to Australia.

The road trip was over. The washing, unfortunately, was not.