Unforseen circumstances

After visiting Casares on Saturday, we headed to Olvera on Sunday, to another free overnight stop.  There also happens to be another Via Verde there, part of which we intended to ride with Powell before heading to the other end of it at Puerto Serrano and doing the same.  Unfortunately fate intervened.

Leaving Marbella for the mountains

It’s Saturday 27 December and we left the campsite in Marbella this morning.

On Boxing Day, Ash and Mand came over for a final supper and Pete made us a scrummy casserole, which went down well with everyone.  Ash and Mand provided the dessert, Christmas pudding and custard; even in Spain we managed not to miss out on those little British Christmas foibles!  As we were all departing the next day, we managed to not make too late a night of it and were all in bed by midnight....a first all week I think!

New friends and Christmas on the beach!

Christmas has been and gone and we’re still in Marbella.  Well, when I say we’re in Marbella, we’re actually about 5 miles from the centre, but we’re still in the same campsite we were in on Monday!

I'm (not) dreaming of a white Christmas

Following the interesting sights in Orgiva, we made the decision to stick to the countryside for our second day in the area.  We had initially planned to ride out to Lanjaron, around 11km from the campsite we were staying at.  However, I had second thoughts after realising how much uphill cycling was involved so we stuck to the valley instead!

Bikes, booze and bohemians

We finally left Almerimar on Monday, with slightly heavy hearts, but good memories to treasure.  Having eventually spent just over a week there, it was our longest stopover by far.  We’d have been happy to stay for longer, but had decided we needed to move on soon before the restlessness kicked in.  We were also on a mission (well, Pete was...).  After he discovered that his bike is starting to fall apart, he worked out that it would make far more sense to replace the bike than upgrade his exisiting bike and during his internet search, had seen a bargain in a shop in Malaga.  Conscious that it wouldn’t stick around forever and having already spent extensive hours looking for THE perfect bike, he convinced me that it was enough of a bargain to warrant an excessively long drive to go and get it.  Although to be honest, even if I’d objected, I couldn’t have done much anyway as I’m not the driver!

We're Still Alive!

A lack of decent wifi access recently has caused me to neglect the blog a bit, hence the 13 day gap since my last update.

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 chains in Spain break mostly when the shop's shut

So, we're nearly at the end of our first week in Spain and haven't had much wifi access.  However, we currently have free wifi so I'm making the most of it...

Our last night in France (for now)

After giving the reigns to Pete for a couple of days, I’m back!

This morning, we woke to cold air, but clear blue skies.  As the weather had been kind to us, we set off to walk along the beautiful Caranca Gorge as we’d discussed the night before, taking the high path first, so as to catch the amazing views before any potential bad weather came and ruined it.  We needn’t have worried; the sky stayed blue the whole way round the approx 10km route.  The ascent was fairly steep, but with unsurprisingly impressive views of the valley below as it took us up and around the rocks.

Our spot on Saturday night

Driving in the Pyrenees

After breakfast we conferred and decided that Quillan should be La destination du jour. Leaving Carcassonne proved usual, with Hazel and me having words. It should have been around 50 Km for the day, leaving plenty of time to relax and read a bit. There might have been time for a little guitar practice too, had the place at Quillan not been overrun with a car-boot sale. I’ve been saying since we left UK how odd it is that there are no “booties” in France, then the first one we find is on our free over-night stop. Bum.

Carcassonne

I figured that after being on the road ‘properly’ for over a month and the blog existing for considerably longer, I’d better have a go at an entry other than a feeble stall for the “Tech” page and the budget bit (which Sue updated last night on my behalf, thanks honey). Here goes....

Well Albi, we're nearly in Spain!

Wednesday saw us heading to Cordes sur Ciel, another hilltop fortress, built in the 13^th century.  On arrival at the aire, the €3.50 fee our book had claimed, had inflated to €5, but as it included a jeton for 3 hours of electricity or 100 litres of water, we didn’t feel too hard done by.

Lot's a lovely view

On Monday, before leaving our parking spot in Domme, we went for a wander around the village.  We had to be back at Dora by 10 am and we discovered that was around the time that most of the shops opened, so we almost had the place to ourselves!  It’s a lovely little fortified town above the banks of the Dordogne, which dates from the 13^th century.

Change of direction

I’m not sure where the time’s gone, but it’s 4 weeks tomorrow since we arrived in Calais and started our Euro meanderings.

Our blog updating has become a little more intermittent as we settle into a slower and all together less organised existence!  Although we’re away, we’re technically not on holiday, so we don’t feel ourselves rushing around trying to take in every single sight for fear of running out of time.  Maybe a faux pas, as we won’t necessarily be visiting the same parts of countries twice, but if we played tourists every day for two years, we’d frankly be exhausted, so we’re just bumbling along.

Au revoir Brittany, bonjour Pays de Loire

After a lovely wine fuelled catch up with Francie in Carnac last night followed by a Powell walk / visit to the monoliths this morning, we said our farewells and made our way to St Nazaire, marking the end our our travels in Brittany and the start of another new page in our map book.

Lazy days

We’ve been a bit lax on the blog update front; partly because our internet connection has been rubbish recently but predominantly because we haven’t actually done a great deal since Friday.  We’re still moving around, but more often than not, we’ve been in living mode rather than holiday mode, having now settled into the reality of life on the road.

We headed to Huelgoat on Friday, the first stopover that hasn’t been a stone’s throw from the sea since we left the UK.

Huelgoat is a pleasant and very small village in the Arree mountains, although like the Harz mountains in Germany, they’re more like hills really.  While we were there, we took Powell for a wander in the Argent Valley, an ‘enchanting’ forest area, with unusual rock formations such as Le Champignon (the mushroom) and La Roche Tremblante (the trembling rock), to name but a few.  

Pete managed to get the trembling rock to ‘tremble’ after being shown where to push it by a passer by.

Le Champignon

Pete and Powell are in the pic to give an idea of the size of the boulders...they weren't small!

There are all sorts of legends attached to the area; our favourite was that Gargantua was less than happy with the hospitality that he’d received from the villagers so he threw giant rocks at them!

We managed not to get any trick or treaters that night, despite there being some kids in the village knocking on house doors.  They’d have been highly disappointed with our treats anyway as we only had beer and wine!

Saturday saw us leave Huelgoat behind and head back to the coast, this time to Plogoff (yes, it’s a real place!) and another free overnight stop with a bit of a sea view – it was slightly obscured by a house or two, but you could still hear the sea, so it still counts.  The weather started to turn while we were there and we spent the evening listening to the snare drum that is our roof when the heavens open.  It was a bit blowy too; luckily Dora is a good weight as we might have been blown around a lot more than we were.  Unfortunately the camera had a wobble and both of the pictures below are really blurred, but they're the best ones I have off Plogoff.

On Sunday we had planned to walk round to Pointe du Raz, approximately 4 miles from our stopover, but because the weather was so bad, we had a change of heart and moved on to another free beach stopover at Fouesnant.  Other than the obligatory Powell exercise, we didn’t get up to a great deal with the weather still being pretty dire, so much so that from Saturday eve to Sunday eve, I managed to start and finish a very good book by Ben Elton - Two Brothers - a really good read! Not sure that Pete was so happy though....I tend to get a bit antisocial when I read a good book!

Sunday night saw more snare drumming at bed time, leading to next to no sleep for me and only slightly more for Pete; that is definitely one of the down sides to rainy nights in here.  If it’s drizzling, the sound is quite relaxing but if it’s torrential, it’s just loud and annoying.

So, sleepless night done with, we woke to slightly better weather on Monday and decided that another laundry day was needed.  Having initially decided we’d go to Concarneau, we arrived to find the aire was out of service and couldn’t find anywhere else to park.  As a consolation prize, we went to Quimperle instead as I’d read that it was supposed to be fairly nice, but on arrival we were pretty disappointed.  However, we did manage to top up our water for free, so it wasn’t a completely wasted journey.  We also found a laundrette in the car park of the Carrefour there...well, I say laundrette but it’s not even in a building, just two washing machines and a dryer, boxed in and with a little shelter over the top, providing 24 hour access to do your laundry!  I forgot to take a pic, but you can see what I’m talking about here.  Can’t say either of us has ever seen anything like it before, but apparently another major supermarket, Super U, has them too – makes perfect sense – do your shopping and laundry at the same time!  Fantastic idea, but the dryer wasn’t very good, meaning that for most of Monday, Dora doubled as a Chinese laundry while we tried to dry out our clothes in the much lower than last week autumnal temperatures.  Having been unimpressed with the stopover at Quimperle, we ended up spending Monday night at Guidel Plage.  The weather improved marginally, meaning a much better nights’s sleep for us all.  We would happily have stayed another night but unfortunately there was a 24 hour limit; we’ve found that’s often the case with places we actually like.

So now it’s Tuesday, marking just over 3 weeks since our journey began and we’re in yet another free stopover, this time, in Carnac.  We’ve yet to see the main attraction; the megaliths that are strewn all around this area, but it’s on our ‘to do’list tomorrow morning before we leave.

Carnac Plage

After our first sighting of Francie in Avranches, then our actual meeting Hillion over a week ago, our paths have crossed again, as we’re at the same stopover again tonight.  We’ve already had a chat, but she’ll be joining us shortly for another catch up and a glass or two of the red stuff....after all, every day’s a Friday for us so it would be rude not to!

Still in Brittany; it's still beautiful!

On Wednesday, after handing Francie her phone back (we charged it for her as she doesn’t have the luxury of a leisure battery), we swapped numbers and bid farewell.  As we’ve already seen her twice, we imagine we’ll probably cross paths again before our paths diverge at the Spanish border.

Beautiful Brittany

This morning we left the Pleslin and headed west to our next overnight stop.  We had planned to stop off at Cape Frehel en route but our camperstop guide had misinformed us that parking was free.  Having already put back up coordinates in the GPS, (which we’ve taken to calling Hazel), we admired the beautiful views on our way to Hillion.

Leaving Normandy

After yesterdays’ beautifully sunny day, we woke up to another stunner today.

We slept ‘downstairs’ last night as it was pretty chilly and we’re trying not to use the heating until we really need to.  Powell was grateful of the company we think, although I don’t think he appreciated having to share his space again.

Next Stop, Powell's Homeland...

 After leaving Pointe du Hoc on Friday, we had intended to drive across to Utah Beach, but due to a mix up with parking (vehicles higher than 2.2 metres no longer allowed!), we ended up missing it.  Tired from an emotional few days, we made our way to the nearest free stopover at Saint Sauveur le Vicomte.