Tarifa, Conil and Sanlucar de Bring a gas mask!

On Thursday, after bacon butties (thanks Mr Morrison!) and a quick walk with Powell in the rain, we emptied the grey, paid our €12 overnight fee and set off to find some LPG en route to our next destination; Tarifa.

San Roque welcomed us to our cheapest LPG yet – just 62 cents a litre!  Pete manoeuvred almost perfectly into place at the filling station, except that neither of us had seen the dodgy overhead shelter above the LPG tank!  Thankfully he wasn’t moving very fast when he dinked Dora’s forehead on it and she has come away unscathed a far as we can tell.  The pump attendant didn’t look too impressed; although to be fair, he looked just as impressed beforehand, so it was obviously nothing personal.  A grand total of €8.40 later and we were refuelled with LPG and ready to go.  We were pretty impressed that we only started using our second tank on Monday, so the first one had lasted a little over 6 weeks and in the last couple of days, we’d used very little of the second tank.  Admittedly, we only really used it for cooking while we were staying in Ronda, but as I cook every day, often using the oven and the hob and we frequently  boil water for hot drinks during the day, it was still good going.

We had initially planned to go and investigate a free spot we’d read about, 9km from the centre of Tarifa.  However, about 5km from our original destination, we were lured in by a campsite.  We decided to stay one night only as the nightly rate is steep compared to what we’ve been used to.  But the views were lovely.

I really need to loosen up and try these tolerated spots, but in all honesty, I’m struggling.  I know they’d save us a fortune, but I just don’t like the idea of (no matter how unlikely it is) being woken by the police at stupid o’clock and being moved on.  I’m also a little uncomfortable with staying in places that aren’t official stopovers.  Call me boring...but I just don’t find it considerate.  I know on the two occasions we have stayed in a tolerated place, we haven’t actually been moved on and we’ve been very discreet, well as much as you can be in a 7 metre long, white metal box!  However, some people aren’t so discreet and I suppose I just wouldn’t want to be tarred with the same brush.  There’s also the matter of security.  Ultimately, anywhere you park, you are, however, slightly always going to be at risk, but on a campsite, the perceived security risk feels lower.  Obviously the same can’t be said for aires, but at least you can sleep fairly easily knowing you’re not going to be moved on because you’re in an official stopover.

Each to their own I guess and maybe I’ll start to warm to the idea a little more...I know Pete is probably cursing me right now for not just jumping in as we’d have saved so much!

We had a lovely walk along the beach with Powell once we’d got settled.  The way he was running up and down, I’m pretty sure he missed the sea as much as we have!!  He was so happy, he even brought us half a cuttlefish – he doesn’t normally fetch things unprompted, so it was a delight to see him sprinting towards us with something in his mouth!  I think he had planned to present it to us and then eat it, but we managed to prevent him from ingesting any of it by swapping it for a dog treat...the same can’t be said for a great deal many other objects on the beach though...he tends to try and eat as much as he can when he’s out of reach, so we have to let him off little and often to stop him eating ABSOLUTELY everything!  So far he isn’t showing any signs of ill health so I think he must have a very sturdy stomach; we think that maybe he was used to eating whatever he could in his past life.

On Friday, we were blessed with beautiful weather (something that seems to be a bit of a rarity of late) and decided to stay another night in Tarifa so that we could make the most of the day.  We walked into town and stood at the southernmost point on mainland Europe, the point where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Mediterranean.  The campsite we stayed at has given itself the southernmost campsite in Europe crown...but I think they missed out the ‘mainland’ bit as I’m pretty sure that most of the Greek islands and Sicily are further south!

On Saturday, we bade farewell to Tarifa and headed north to Conil de la Frontera, to pick up some much needed motorhome supplies.  Several weeks ago, en route from Casares to Olvera, before the accident, we stopped off to empty our grey and top up on water.  Unfortunately, Pete left the water tank cap on the bike rack and forgot to replace it...we didn’t actually realise until we got flashed by a passing biker as we were losing water from the fill up point!  Since then, we’ve been using a piece of plastic bag and a hair bobble to keep the muck out of the water tank (my idea, of which I am rather proud – as a temporary measure, while we were still in transit, Pete had initially just shoved a scrunched up bag in to block the hole – this worked too, but mine was better!).  We did try to order a cap from Amazon while we were on the campsite, but none of the suppliers would deliver to Spain.  We even retraced our steps when we finally left Ronda last week, in the hope that it might be at the side of the road...but to no avail.  Luckily though, an online search for camping shops brought us to the one at Conil and an end to the hair bobble solution; we now have a fully functioning water cap, at much less then it would have cost if Amazon had delivered!  We topped up on loo chemicals while we were there too and picked up a handy window mountable airer...motorhome supply shops seem to be in short supply over here, so we made the most of this one!  We’re really turning into proper ‘homers - the only thing we’re missing is an extra 25 years as that seems to be the average age gap between us and the majority of others we’ve encountered (only 4 other couples so far being the exception)!!!

Once we’d stocked up on the necessities, we retreated to find the beach front and a possible overnight location.  Unfortunately, although there were a few other vans parked there, it appeared to only be a tolerated spot and not an official aire.  There also appeared to be an orchestra rehearsing in a huge tent a few metres from the parking area.  We had a wander on the beach with Powell and talked about our next move.  Although Conil appeared pleasant enough, having decided that the orchestra were likely to be playing that night (and would be very loud!) and to put my mind at ease and prevent me from worrying (probably unnecessarily) about being moved on, I consulted our guides and located a free, official aire 80 kms up the road in Sanlucar de Barrameda and just over an hour later, we parked up in a very busy aire.

After being politely asked to move as we were unknowingly blocking another Brit van in, we took Powell for a wander on the beach.  We had intended to let him off for a run around but one look at the beach told us it wasn’t a good idea.  It would appear that the beach area, as well as being host to horse racing in August, is also host to huge jellyfish and untreated sewage all year round!  As a result, it’s littered with bits of plastic that used to be cotton wool buds, along with other, less savoury sanitary items (I’m sure you can imagine) and the accompanying smell when you walk past the sewage outlet pipe is not exactly fragrant.  On the plus side, thankfully, you can barely smell anything from the aire as the pipe is a little walk away and if it’s windy, which it is a lot of the time, you can’t smell it at all (or maybe we've just got used to it now!).  The town centre is also, thankfully, stench free and has a reasonable selection of bars, restaurants and shops.  Sanlucar was once the gateway to the New World and both Columbus and Magellan commenced their third and first voyages respectively from here.  I haven’t yet found the plaques commemorating them, but they are here somewhere...  On the other side of the estuary is the Doñana Natural park.  It's meant to be one of Spain’s last real untouched areas, with an ongoing Lynx breeding programme, so we’re quite interested to see what it’s about.  There’s a ferry that takes people across, but we haven’t actually seen it running yet and we’ve yet to find out if dogs are allowed on , but if not, we can access it from Matalascañas after we’ve been back to Ronda, en route to Portugal.

It does still feel like a bit of a waiting game even though we’ve moved on from Ronda, as we’re unable to go very far because of Pete’s final appointment on 25 Feb.  However, we’re now in a free aire, so it’s not costing us anything other than food and alcohol!!  Tonight is our 4^th night in Sanlucar and we’re trying to make it a full week before we pay for another overnight stop; something we haven’t managed since France.  We have a couple of other free places in mind for the weekend and early next week en route back to Ronda, so we’ll see how we go.

In the meantime, Sanlucar’s carnival begins on Thursday.  We had intended to head back to Tarifa tomorrow, but we’re now thinking as we’re already here, we may as well hang around and see what the carnival has to offer!  We’ve also discovered that there’s an Ikea in Jerez, which is only 25 kms away....and we could do with a new rug for Dora...