English Listening Practice: Our Camping Trip in Spain 🇪🇸 - Learn New Phrases!

- Hello, this is Jack from tofluency.com.

Welcome to this English lesson where I'm going to tell

you the story of our camping trip to Spain so that

you can learn new words and phrases

in a fun way hopefully, and also so that you can get

some good listening practice.

(upbeat music)

So in 2010, my wife and I decided to move to America

and we had been living in Spain for two years.

So we decided to say goodbye to Spain by taking

this amazing camping trip.

So we packed up all of our things, including our dog,

into this blue rental car and drove

from Valencia to Salamanca.

We had never been there before.

We had heard great things.

So we spent the night there and part of the next day.

Now one thing is this, the tent that we had was tiny

and I didn't really fit into it, so that was uncomfortable

and it also got really cold at night.

And if you've been camping without a good sleeping bag

when it gets cold, you'll know how miserable

this can be.

So we didn't sleep much on this trip, but we had

so much fun, and you don't really remember the bad parts

of a trip anyway.

The first morning in Salamanca was great.

It was very relaxing and we used our camping stove

to make some tea.

We really enjoyed using this throughout our trip,

but we had some tea.

We went to the main plaza, got some coffee.

Then we had a walk around the old town

and the cathedral.

Salamanca is beautiful and it was really quiet

that morning, so we had the streets to ourselves

and we took our dog with us too.

He really enjoyed it.

There were a lot of things to sniff.

Anyway, after lunch we made our way to Asturias.

Now this is where we stayed in a beautiful valley

and we took this amazing hike which I'm going to talk

about in a second, but we had a bit

of a problem getting there.

I took a right turn onto a very narrow road

and Kate said, "I don't think this I the right road,"

but I'm quite stubborn, so I said, "Well, let's go

"a little bit more and see what happens."

Well, what happened was this road wasn't a road.

It was just this farm track

and the stone walls got closer

and closer together until I thought the car was going

to get stuck.

We couldn't go any further, so I had to reverse backwards

and reversing backwards downhill

when you are very close

to two stone walls is very difficult.

I think it took me about half an hour in total

to get out of that mess.

But luckily I did it without scratching the car

ad we found the campsite.

Like I said, this campsite was in this beautiful valley

and the next day, we took a long hike

to one of the lakes and along the hike, you saw

all these different huts and these are the huts

that farmers use when they bring their cattle

from their farms to graze the fields up in the mountains.

The campsite also told us to watch out for bears,

but fortunately or unfortunately, we didn't see any.

We then spent some time swimming in the lake.

We made some lunch, we hiked back to our tent.

We then packed up our tent and went to the next stop,

which, again, was in Asturias.

And we had heard about this hike because we were actually

using this guidebook for most of the recommendations

and it talked about this hike and it said what you can do

is this, you can hike one way, get to the village

on the other side, and then get a taxi back

to the camping site or back to the start of the hike.

So that's what we decided to do and along the hike,

we saw these mountain goats and I took this great picture

of a goat inside this tunnel looking at people

like he's going to pounce on them.

There was beautiful scenery along the hike too

and then we got to the end and ordered some beers

at this pub, sat out on the patio and thought

this is so relaxing.

I'm glad we're taking a taxi home because we can just

enjoy this moment

for a little while longer.

Then we asked about taxis and they quoted us 130 euros

to get back to the campsite.

And the reason why it was so expensive

is because they have to drive

all the way around the mountain.

You can't just go directly back along that hike.

And the road that takes you back to the campsite

is a long way, it takes a long time to get there.

So I said to Kate, "We have to just go back now.

"We have to hike it because we can't spend

"that amount of money on a taxi."

So we quickly finished our beers, we got our dog,

our poor dog, and we hike back as quickly as possible.

We managed to get there just before sunset, but our dog

was exhausted after hiking that long.

And the next day it took him a little while

to get up and out of the tent, but he soon

got moving again.

We then moved on to Cantabria and found a beach,

spent a little bit of time there.

We got a menu of the day where (laughs)

I've never eaten so much in my life.

And then we stumbled upon this festival

and in Spain, they have festivals all the time,

especially in the summer.

And each festival seems to be quite unique

and this one was no exception.

It was a lot of fun and we spent a few hours

enjoying this festival.

We then drove to Bilbao.

Now Bilbao is a place where we lived

the first year in Spain.

And we had missed it.

Although we enjoyed the weather in Valencia,

we still had missed Bilbao because we had so much fun there

and we went back to some great places that we always

went to, things like The Cider House where you get

amazing meat and you can drink cider there.

And we met up with some friends too, people that we knew

from our time in Bilbao.

And then we went to meet my parents on the border

of Spain and France.

We dropped off the rental car, moved all of our things

into their car, including Lyle, and then drove

to their house in France.

And that's where we spent the next two or three months

before flying to America.

So that is the story of our camping trip in Spain.

I hope you have enjoyed this and I hope you have learned

some new words and phrases too.

I'll leave all the key phrases in the description

and what I want to know is when was the last time

you went camping and where did you go?

When was the last time you went camping

and where did you go?

And maybe tell us a little bit about this too.

Again, my name is Jack from tofluency.com.

It's been a pleasure having you here today

and if you have found this useful,

please share it with your friends.

Speak to you all soon.

Bye for now.

(upbeat music)