A week in the life...

Sunday 22 November saw us head inland again to a free stopover in Morella.  We were treated to some amazing views, along with some more hair raising bends and sheer drops en route and arrived to an almost empty aire.  It had capacity for at least 20 vans, but there were only 3 of us there and one of those vans left shortly after we arrived, leaving us and another Brit couple from Scotland.

The walled fortress town of Morella

You can just about see Dora, follow the road up to the hills and right a bit...

Views from Morella

After scoffing down some lunch, we took Powell for a wander up to the town, finding most of the shops shut, as our timing, as always, was such that we tend to arrive anywhere when things are closed.  Nevertheless, the views were pretty special and there were some restaurants open, which, had we not been with the pup, we’d have gladly stopped at.

After a couple of hours of wandering, we headed back to Dora, having decided to head back to the coast in the morning.

On Monday, having gone in search of a recreation area to walk Powell around, we ended up taking a route indirect back to the coast and ended up on the worst road yet, but with some of the best views so far.  We never did find the recreation area either!

 

We stopped off at a potential overnight stay en route back to the coast (San Raphael del Rio), but decided that although it looked nice enough, it was a bit out of the way, with no obvious dog walking areas, so we moved on and decided to have a look at the free aire in Benicassim.  On arrival, we dumped our grey and black and topped up our fresh water (it was free, so we’d have been crazy not to!), but decided against staying overnight as it was right on the main road.

Determined to find somewhere before resorting to a campsite, we headed to the beach and drove along the coastal road.  Fate must have been on our side that day, as just as I jumped out to check out a map on the other side of the road, a jogger stopped to ask me if we were looking for an overnight stop and proceeded to direct us to one just a km up the road!  It turned out he was a local policeman and had been directing motorhomers to this particular spot, which turned out to be right by the beach, for years.

Arriving at the spot, I used my reasonable command of German to ask another motorhomer if the police had been by recently; as it was a tolerated, rather than official spot, it wouldn’t have been unusual.  It turned out they’d, moved people on around a week ago but hadn’t bothered since –  the guy I spoke to had been there for a week and didn’t look like he was moving on any time soon!  Although I was a little apprehensive, by now it was late afternoon and it was such a lovely spot, we figured what the heck and parked up for the night.

Our free overnight stop

The view from the beach - you can just see Dora peeking through the trees

To make up for another afternoon of being cooped in the van, we took Powell for a run on the bikes, along the promenade into Benicassim.  There wasn’t a great deal to see; one seaside town looks much like the other, but the beaches are lovely, although all the signs say ‘Perros No’(Dogs – No) but most people tend to ignore them in winter.  It did the trick for Powell and a couple of hours later, he was ready for bed.

In the morning, we got ready to leave, firstly taking the chance to go for a walk and paddle with Powell on the beach.

Morning walk

It was on our return that we noticed one of our neighbours taking a shower outside his van, complete with shower gel, the suds from which were going straight onto the ground.  They and others also had buckets under their grey taps to catch their dirty water, no doubt in order to chuck it once full and most were sunbathing outside on their camping chairs and some had done their washing and hung it outside.  I personally think this is taking the biscuit a bit.  The whole point of an aire is to give you a chance to visit a place for a short period of time (usually up to 48 hrs / 72 hrs) and have some rest before you move on to somewhere else.  Camping is strictly prohibited, which basically means that nothing should be outside your van as you’re only allowed to park.  Ultimately, if you want to camp, you should go to a camp site, or a camper park.  When you’re in a tolerated place, you would expect the same thing to apply even more so; you park, you sleep, you don’t camp out and you leave the place in the same state as you found it and you don’t take the biscuit.

Unfortunately some people don’t see it that way and think it’s their right to park wherever they want to and to treat it like a camp site.  It’s more than a little irritating and we’re seeing it more and more as we move around.  More annoying is that most of the time, they dump their grey water on the road as they’re leaving, rather than waiting until they get to an official emptying point (and there are emptying points around), or leave buckets under their taps then dump the grey by the nearest tree.  We’ve seen people do it even at aires with emptying facilities; that just baffled us; there was no fathomable explanation in either case other than pure laziness as the servicing points were clearly signposted and literally within 100 meters!  Seeing the things that people do, it’s no wonder we’re seeing more and more signs prohibiting motorhomes here!

Anyway, that’s my rant over, for now at least.  I hasten to add, we didn’t camp out at the tolerated place and as soon as we were ready in the morning, we left with all of our rubbish and grey water on board!

After our free night, we headed down the coast to a camper park at El Saler.  Camper parks are somewhere between an aire and a campsite but they don’t accept tents.  The pitches tend to be smaller but they mostly include electricity, loos, showers and wifi for around 10-12 euros a night.  El Saler is around 10km from Valencia and is on the edge of the Albufera natural park; a haven for bird watchers and thanks to a reasonable network of cycle paths, a good place to run Powell for us.  Apparently, they have flamingos, but we didn’t see any!

Wednesday saw us try and fail again, to find a free spot for the night.  It would appear that the authorities aren’t as tolerant as they once were where unauthorised parking goes; I think one too many people have taken the biscuit and they seem to have had a clamp down.  Maybe it will improve as we head further south.  Or maybe we just need to get a bit cheekier...either way, we ended up at a not unpleasant campsite called Camping Rio Mar in Oliva, right on the beach.

 

Again, Oliva is a very bike friendly place so we took the pup for another leg stretch, finding a supermarket, aptly named ‘consum’, where we picked up some very aptly named ‘Soberano’ brandy and a packet of coffee called ‘bonka’....

It was in Oliva that we realised we’d entered ex pat territory; during our stay, we heard more British and other northern European voices than we did Spanish!  The estate agents around here advertise in at least 4 different languages, including German, English and Russian – oh and Spanish of course!  It was bizarre riding around the estates; there were some areas that looked like all of the groundwork had been done – street lighting, roads, paths etc, but no buildings yet; presumably they were either waiting on planning permission or the investment had dried up... it was quite eerie.

Powell was pooped again after another good run, so we left him at home and headed out for a quick stroll on the ‘perros no’ beach.  We weren’t there long though as the campsite is right next to a river, the place was teaming with mosquitoes.

Thursday was a special day – Pete’s official last day.  We headed to Javea north of Alicante and treated ourselves to a campsite for two nights.  At just under 20 euros a night, it was a splurge for us, but it was a lovely site, although it was a little further out of town than we’d have liked.

We took Powell for what’s now becoming the obligatory daily bike ride, to check out the area and more importantly, reccy for the best place to go for food and drink for that nights’ celebrations.  Decision made, we headed home with a weary dog, to open the bubbly!

Javea harbour

Our favourite signs - NOT

Having decided one bottle hadn’t lasted long enough, we opened the second bottle and at 8 o’clock, headed into town.  First stop was a beach side bar / restaurant called Black Beluga, where we had a couple of drinks and a tasty selection of tapas, then we headed, in the rain, to a cocktail bar, where we finished off the night before we got too drunk to find our way back!

Classy!

Happy retirement old man :-) x

Just for you, N.  The bottle was empty though of course!!x

Nom nom

PERRO NO!

Show me the way to go home....

Needless to say, Friday was a complete right off, which we’d expected, which is why we stayed for two nights.

After the nothing but sleep and bad heads that was Friday, we headed down the road once more today and are now in a 12 euro a night camper park in San Fulgencia (after 3 failed attempts at finding other official aires en route – (2 closed down, one on lock down with no way to get in), making the most of their washing machines.  We’ve half given up on free places, as they’re virtually nonexistent on the coast and by the time we’ve paid the fuel to get to the free ones inland, it’s hardly worth the time and effort...

We’re still hopeful though that the Almeria / Murcia region might offer us more in the way of tolerated places that are still actually tolerated.  Not too much after that, we’ll be heading inland anyway to avoid the monstrosity that is Torremolinos, before swinging back to the coast in the hope of finding that free parking on the beach in Tarifa is still tolerated!  There are always camper parks though...