Monday 23 February - Les Coves de Vinroma

Where’s Bertie? He’s in a municipal Aire on the edge of the small town of Les Coves de Vinroma. Exact location: 40.30679, 0.11893

Weather: sunny and warm (20 degrees max)

Our first mission this morning was to spend a little more money in Vilanova before we left, so we took a walk to the bakery. Had it not been for Google Maps, there’s not a chance that we would have found it, as although central, it’s down a little side street and the only thing that distinguishes it as a business, rather than just one of many almost identical houses on the street, is a little sign by the door. Even so, as I pushed back the chains of the fly curtain and opened the front door, I felt that I may be about to step into someone’s front room.

Despite going to the bakers, we had no need of bread, so we hoped to find they had some other wares for sale – some palmeras, perhaps. It turned out that bread was all they sold, so we bought a stick and enjoyed the sight, through a doorway into the back room, of a huge bread oven and a stack of logs used to fuel it. As we walked away I hypothesized that the baker (a woman who I would guess to be in her 70s) had been taken on as an apprentice by her father when she was in her teens, and nothing has changed about the shop or the manner or baking since (and I should clarify, that this is in no way a criticism).

On the way back to Bertie we passed the Cooperativa, which advertises olive oil for sale, so we swung by there too, but found it to be closed.

We soon had Bertie unplugged and ready to roll, discovering in the process that our French neighbours were actually Brits in a French-registered van.

With the toilet emptying point at the Aire blocked, our first stop along the road was la Torre d’en Doménec. The Aire there had plenty of space, and I’d originally earmarked it for our next stop, however, having run a circuit through the place a couple of days ago, and having already visited the bar, it didn’t feel like there was enough to see to warrant us staying, so with toilet emptied (insuring against the service point at our next destination being blocked, which is a common problem), onward we came another few minutes to Les Coves. We’ve moved a total of 15 minutes from where we spent the last three nights.

The Aire here was almost empty when we arrived, and is still largely empty now, with just two vans amongst its five spaces. However, there are a couple more outside of the designated area, understandably as outside is definitely nicer than inside.

With the morning rapidly reaching its conclusion, we wasted no time in making our way to the nearest bar for coffee, after which it was a turn around the town. All very quiet, with few obvious businesses, but pretty well-kept, with mainly smart houses. We had to venture down side-streets to find the typical derelict buildings with optimistic ‘Se vende’ signs in varying states of fadedness.

The river, its adjacent caves and the water wheels are the main features around here, and the plan is to take a walk along the river tomorrow. The slight fly in the ointment, as we discovered on a short pre-dinner stroll this afternoon, is that we can’t do the route I’d originally downloaded, because it involves walking along the dry river bed, and the river is currently far from dry. Nor can we easily cross the river at the nearest two crossing points, as they’re currently underwater. So, I think our aspirations for the morrow will need to be moderated.

(Blogger has decided to go with photos in reverse order today) 

View of the town from a few paces down the road from the Aire

Mick found Mick-sized bike next to the adult-sized one ;-)

Looking upstream towards the caves

A pretty, but not overly user-friendly map of the town

Possibly the worst view of the church I could have managed

Another day, another excellent decaf coffee. Comparatively expensive today (€5.50) but no complaints as the town has given us free parking. 
 

Sunday 22 February - Vilanova d'Alcolea

Where's Bertie? His wheels remain stationary in the Aire at Vilanova.

Weather: more wall-to-wall sunshine and pleasantly warm.

I did a much better job of being efficient and organised this morning, managing to get myself out the door by just gone 0830. Given the slowness of the terrain in these parts, I've translated my training plan from distance to time, giving me 4 hours as my objective today. I'd come up with two routes, one of which was 28km, which I thought might be a bit far, the other 20km, but with scope to throw in an extension. 

Once again, it had been a cool night, and as I descended from the village there were hints of frost on the greenery in the dips along the track. I was on the wrong side of the hill to get much sun at first, but once it did reach me, it warmed up quickly. By the time I was on my way up the biggest climb of the route, with the sun unimpeded, I was roasting. The sections through woodland were particularly nice thereafter.

At some point whilst I was gallivanting through the hills, our neighbour left and freed up an electric hook-up point and Mick wasted no time in nabbing it. He had already got Bertie ready to travel, but at that point it was decided that we would stay another night. A sensible choice given that it would have been mid-afternoon by the time I was ready to move on anyway. 

Back at Bertie, lunch was prioritised, followed by a shower and a few chores (like feeding the cat...), after which I thought it would be appropriate to go and give a bit of custom to the only bar in the village. Google told me it was open all day, through to 10pm, which seemed likely to be true on a Sunday. I expected there would be quite a few people there at lunchtime. 

We arrived to find it deserted save for the owner. He served us our beers, then told us he was closing at 3pm. I looked at my watch to see that it was five to! No problem though; we didn't have to slam-dunk the drinks, but rather just sit outside and leave the empties when we were done. Not really a successful attempt at giving custom by payment for a free Aire, given that the two beers came to a whopping €3.40!

We will be moving on tomorrow, by which time we will have maxed out on the (unwritten) 72-hour max stay. 

Just after I set out, on a shaded track with the sun still being low in the sky

There were waymarkers on lots of the paths and tracks I used, telling me I was stitching together various routes.

A nice shady interlude as the day got hotter

I can see the sea - with the sun reflecting off it. 

Lots and lots of scrub bushes, but all of the paths and tracks were wide enough for me not to get scratched legs today.

The processionary caterpillars are emerging, but I am yet to see any on the ground. 

I'd already taken a brief detour to visit a summit at 400m. I then dropped down to climb back up to this plateau, which was also at 400m. Even though the high points were modest, and I'd started at 350m, I clocked up over 600m of ascent. (total distance, with a couple of extensions added to the planned route, came in at 23.25km)

My sister has a feral cat who looks just like this - small and black. This one popped its head in and made it vocally known that it would very much appreciate a can of tuna, and who were we to deny such a polite request? 

Billy-no-mates, sitting outside a closed bar. 
 

Saturday 21 February - Vilanova d'Alcolea

Where's Bertie? He's still in the Aire at Vilanova.

Weather: Not a hint of a cloud seen all day. Cool overnight, but reaching 18 degrees this afternoon, although with a cool breeze.

We aren't very far inland here, but we are at an altitude of 350m where the nights are cooler than down on the coast. We certainly would have wanted the heating on first thing, if I hadn't had a loaf ready to go in the oven. The oven duly heated Bertie, and the loaf turned out to be a good one too.

The cool start caused us to be slower getting out the door than may otherwise have been the case, so it was ten to ten by the time we finally made it out of the car park (we'd exited Bertie for the first time a few minutes earlier, but one of us was proving to be disorganised ... and it wasn't Mick).

The route I'd downloaded led us mainly off-road, via an excavated Roman site, to the next village along. There we took a detour to the bar for coffee, only to see on our approach that the outside seats were empty and the door shut. Mick was just complaining that I'd lured him out under false promises of refreshment, when I tried the door to find it open. The seats inside were set out in the manner of a school canteen, and were also all empty. "Are you sure you fancy this?" I asked, and with Mick's nod, in we went. It turned out there was one set of customers, sitting on a terrace on the other side of the building, but we must have just preceded rush-hour, as more came in whilst we sat there. 

The coffee was excellent, but it didn't take us long to polish off both that and our toast, before we headed back out to the next point of interest. We'd already passed a large bicycle, and now we were to do a loop that would take us past a chair. A very steep and heavily washed out incline was involved in getting there.

Our route then took us back to the village and straight past the bar, but I maintain that, due to the time of day, we were right to have made the detour on the first pass. We were then on the (slightly longer) return leg back to Vilanova, via quite a few points of interest with information signs, although most were only in Valencian Spanish. I'm slow enough reading Castilian, and even though many of the words in Valencian are similar, there are enough differences to make them largely incomprehensible to me. Still, we got the gist that they had water management systems to assist with agriculture, including water wheels and donkey-driven pumps. Talking of water, the streams were all running well today, giving us a few obstacles to tackle in the form of fords, all of which (with some faffing) we managed to cross dryshod. 

A large group of walkers were met just before we got back to Vilanova, with many a ¡hola! exchanged, then it was time for us to peel off for the climb back up the hill to the village. The church, which doesn't look that imposing when you see it from the front (in a residential street, in between houses), looks massive when seen from the NW. Reaching it was the sign that we were nearly back at Bertie.   

It wasn't the best route I've done in this region, but it was inoffensive, with some mildly interesting history dotted along it. It came in at just over 13km with 250m-ish of ascent. 

Roman site - we only took a cursory look around.

Big bike, little Mick

Cafe y tostada

Big Chair, Little Mick

One of the POIs

For a considerable distance (over a kilometre), a path had been constructed using membrane and gravel, however, for most of its distance, the gravel has been washed away, leaving great swathes of membrane, either lying flat or bunched up as a trip hazard. A lot of time, effort and funds, but I don't think they quite got the engineering right. 

 

Shortly after we saw this mural... 

...we reached the next POI, where the info sign showed the original photo that had been replicated on the mural.

A surprisingly large church when seen from this side.

 

View looking back to where we'd just passed the group of ramblers (some of whom are in shot) 

 
  

 

 

 

Friday 20 February - Vilanova d'Alcolea

Where’s Bertie? He’s in a municipal Aire on the edge of the village of Vilanova d’Alcolea. Exact location: 40.23196, 0.07808

Weather: Sunny and warm

Our final few days in Peñíscola involved the usual activities of us pottering about, walking through the hills, running along the seafront promenade, topped off with some local eating and drinking.

We’d finally tried out ‘Hogar de Jubilado’. That translates as ‘Retirement Home’, which doesn’t sound like the obvious place to go for coffee, but contrary to its name, it’s just a café. I’d noted it to be heaving when I’d run past last year, and it’s very much a locals’ haunt, so we thought we’d give it a go. Good call! Aside from the wares being good (the apple cake was so good I was a bit sad to only have tried it on our final visit), I managed every order without receiving a response in German or English. Indeed, the second time we visited, the server correctly told us what coffee we wanted.

We would have gone back there on Wednesday, except that turns out to be their closing day, and also the closing day of the other place we had earmarked to try (the one by the market, where we nearly went last year but it was market day and too busy). We ended up at a rather more upmarket seafront café followed immediately by a menu del dia at Miguels (where they remain convinced that we are German). Mick would tell you that I complained for most of that entire outing – justifiable in that it was jolly cool in the seafog that was cloaking the town, but unjustifiable in that it was entirely my own fault that I’d under-dressed for the weather.

Normal service had been resumed on the weather front by yesterday (sunny and warm), when we returned to the Retirement Home for a final coffee date. I ran there, the long way around, whilst Mick set out some time later and walked the short way. Ordinarily, I’m pretty good at judging how long it will take me to get somewhere, but on this occasion I hadn’t factored in an accidental race*. Arriving to find Mick not there, I wondered if I'd been stood up, but no, it was just that I'd arrived unfashionably early.

This morning, after 11 nights at Camping los Pinos, it was time to leave town. Our Chunnel back to the UK is two weeks on Sunday, so it felt like time to go and look at some other places nearby. There are a number of municipal Aires just inland in the Castellón region, with the downside that many of them offer free or very cheap electric hook up, but this one has far more spaces than hook-up points, so I was optimistic about finding a free spot. My optimism was not misplaced; after a 35 minute drive** we arrived at around noon to find only the electrified spaces were taken (it's significantly busier as I type this just as the sky is glowing orange with the last dregs of sunset).

A wander around the town this afternoon showed it to have few points of interest and ‘interest’ was a loose description of those places that featured on the Tourist Information map and the audio tour. The audio tour would have been better if: a) it had been possible to play it on double speed; and b) there had been a way to access the recordings other than via QR code, in that we only found two of the codes and thus couldn’t learn about the other two POIs we visited. Maybe the remaining short section of town wall would have been more interesting than just being a nondescript wall of unknown age, if we could have learnt something about its history … or maybe not!

Tomorrow we shall venture a little further afield, on foot, on the locally advertised Petite Randonnée route.

Excellent apple cake

A day of sea fog kept temperatures down and hid the castle

One of the colourful sunsets snapped on the way back from the campsite dishwash. 

(*The accidental race was really quite annoying, all related to a man who wouldn’t be overtaken. He’d been moving so slowly as he passed the campsite, that as I walked along the road by way of a warm up, he wasn’t opening the gap between us. When I burst into a jog, I soon caught him up, but as I came into his sight, now on the opposite side of the road, he sped up. The two of us running at the same pace, on opposite sides of a pavementless road, was a problem for traffic, so I thought, given how slowly he’d been going, that I’d just put a bit of a spurt on and get past. So he sped up again. And repeat. Everytime I upped the pace, he upped his too. I couldn’t be doing with such ridiculousness on what was supposed to be an easy outing, so once it became clear that he wasn’t going to let me pass, I stopped dead, resisted calling him any offensive names, and then resumed once he was a good way past. He duly slowed down again.)

Tuesday 10 to Saturday 14 February – Peñíscola

Where’s Bertie? He remains at Camping Los Pinos.

Weather: warm and dry Tuesday to Thursday (20+ degrees daytime highs). Overcast and some rain Friday morning. Extreme wind today, but gloriously sunny.

There’s nothing much to report. We’re just pootling about, enjoying ourselves doing not very much.

We both headed out into the hills on Tuesday, with Mick turning back (as planned) at the signed junction to Vistahermosa, whereas I carried on with the Castello Pulpi being my intended objective. It was only when I got to a closed path and checked to see if it was a turn I was supposed to be taking, that I discovered that I’d gone awry about a kilometre earlier and was merrily walking off down the wrong side of the hill. Ooops. No matter – as long as I was moving over rough terrain with plenty of ascent for 3 hours, it didn’t much matter where I went, so it turned into an out-and-back with a few branches attached to it (the other two branches were intentional!). 

 This was not where I intended to be!

Embarrassingly, this is the junction where I'd gone wrong. 
 

On Wednesday we discovered that our favourite cafe y tostada bar has permanently closed – a surprise as it was always so busy last year. We went to another place that had looked popular when I’d passed previously, but found that they didn’t offer tostada, only ham sandwiches (perhaps the clue was in the  name: El Nuevo Jamón). It was a very good ham sandwich, but also not the bargain of tostada in a local bar. 

Thursday was a three-course lunch at Can Miguel, which featured the comedy of me speaking Spanish to the waiter and him replying in German, persistently, the whole time we were there. Having failed to disabuse him of his notion as to our nationality, there’s the danger, like going past the point of telling someone that they’ve got your name wrong, that he may remember us and we will now forever be German to him. That creates the bigger danger that at some point he will say something in German that we don’t understand, forcing us to come clean.

I would usually make a collage of these photos, but technology is conspiring against me.

Alas, the meal likely contained something that my body has now randomly and erroneously decided is Very Bad, and the ensuing migraine had me feeling sorry for myself overnight and into yesterday. That made most of yesterday a write-off, which was actually reasonably well-timed given the grey sky and showers. The furthest we went was to the supermarket (about a 3 minute walk away).

We were back in Bertie when suddenly sirens started sirening. We have four phones onboard, and three of them were connected to the network when the government issued an emergency alert for a red weather warning for hurricane-force winds in this area today. The other phone sirened when I turned it on at bedtime. This is interesting, as I didn’t receive the alerts sent out on either occasion when the UK system was tested.

Needless to say, it’s a bit blowy out today and as I type this it’s still 3 hours before the winds are due to peak, but it’s going to stay windy until the early hours of tomorrow.  

......

Later... just after I typed the above, another emergency alert came through, reminding everyone not to travel today. As it goes, we don't think the winds got anywhere near the forecast levels (140km/h), as there's no evident significant destruction from what we can see around us, although there were certainly some big gusts and staying indoors felt like the safest choice. By 6.30pm it was still remarkably blowy, but had settled down enough for us to think that venturing over to the dish washing area wasn't a foolhardy expedition. The way the roof was rattling over there was a bit alarming; a speed dish washing session was completed.  

Bonus snap #1. Forgot to mention that we also took a run down to, and along, the seafront on Thursday morning, except I had to walk most of it because my shins and ankles were protesting so much after Tuesday's outing.

Bonus snap #2: taken in the campsite toilets, mainly to marvel at the length of the single-word title. 
 

 

Monday 9 February - Peñíscola

Where's Bertie? He's at Camping Los Pinos on the edge of Peñíscola, at a cost of €15 per night including electricity, wifi and all campsite facilities. The price is up €2 on last year, but it's still a bit of a bargain for what you get here. 

Weather: Sunny and warm, after a cool night with some overnight rain. 

There was a feral cat feeding station next to last night's Aire, which was nice from the point of view of watching the cats, particularly at feeding time, but not so good when they started climbing into Bertie's engine bay - I'm sure they must do it in all vehicles, but in Bertie's A-class motorhome body, you really hear them moving around in there. Mick went out to scare one out at one point; on another occasion some sharp raps on the dashboard did the trick. 

The short period of dawn rain had abated by the time we were ready to leave, which was good for me as I ran a quick errand, nipping to the bakery just up the road. I've not made any bread since we left home, so a loaf of some description was what we needed, and an impulsive purchase of a large Palmera occurred too.

Less than two hours later, we arrived in Peñíscola, heading for the campsite where we spent 3 weeks last year, hoping they would have a pitch for us. We got an actual pitch this time (last year we spent all of our 3 weeks in the concrete car park area), although arguably the worst one on the site, being the only one outside of the entrance/exit barriers, and nearest to the road. However, it's also one of the few real pitches (grit surface, hedges on two sides, a wall on the other) where its orientation means that we could position Bertie's nose towards the sun for maximum solar gain. It doesn't matter if the general temperature at this time of year is mid-teens: as long as it's sunny, we are toasty warm inside. As it goes, it's forecast to be 20+ for the next couple of days.

After elevenses, a crossword and lunch, I headed out into the Sierra d'Irta hills, just for a 1.5hr out-and-back, rather than one of the many circuits I did through those hills last year (I considered a circuit but was wearing brand new cropped leggings and knew that if I ventured further I would encounter seriously spikey undergrowth that would likely snag the fabric. I'll wear shorts next time, so it's my legs that suffer rather than my clothes). It may be a tad unexciting to return to the same place as we visited last year, to do the same routes through the same hills, but for the next couple of weeks we will be happy with the repetition. Mick was mainly working whilst we were here last year, so can explore more of the hills, and for me I'll have the benefit of mainly knowing where I am and where I'm going. Hopefully our favourite bar (for coffee and tostada) and restaurant (for lunch) will remain largely unchanged too.

 

Snaps from the local hills

Sunday 8 February - Alcañiz

Where's Bertie? He spent the night at a municipal Aire in the town of Alcañiz. 

Weather: A grey, sometimes wet morning, but a sunny and warm finish. 

 

We've now spent a total of two nights at a Camping Car Park location (the same one, twice, a year apart), and this stay didn't go entirely smoothly, in that when we came to leave we keyed in our code, it acknowledged it and said 'Good Bye!', but the barrier failed to open. These locations are all unmanned, and I feared an unwelcome delay to our departure, but a very brief phone call to the displayed number had us released within a minute or two. Pretty good service, particularly considering that it was relatively early on a Sunday morning. 

It was a grey, dull morning as we drove south out of France, which became a remarkably wet morning as we passed into Spain. The border really did mark the change from merely grey to monsoonal rain. Quite unpleasant driving conditions. 

Bertie's fuel light had been on for a while by the time we entered Spain, so we knew we were going to have to stop at the first motorway fuel station, which we also knew would be cheaper than even the cheapest fuel stations in France (€1.549 vs €1.662). There we briefly contemplated: to fill up, or to just pop €20 in to fill up later, somewhere cheaper. We opted for the former, which probably wasn't the most sensible choice given how many places we passed at 25-30c less per litre between there and Pamplona (for my future reference: taking the free road around Pamplona passes a cheap fuel station without needing any diversion into the town).

With it being a Sunday, almost no lorries were on the roads so we opted for the free road to Pamplona then onward to Tudela, with Google telling me that the difference in time would be less than 10 minutes. We stopped for lunch somewhere along that section and had a brief chat about where we might spend the night, deciding to head to Alcañiz and decide on arrival if we wanted to stay there or continue all the way down to Peñiscola. 

It had been another long day of driving, and we'd had enough by the time we got to Alcañiz. Arriving at gone 4pm, we wasted no time in heading out for a quick walk around the town - we needed a leg-stretch anyway, and having seen the striking sight of a massive church atop the hill with a castle a short distance away, they enticed us for a quick, urban, pre-tea explore, rather than striding off along the river. Verdict: it's the sort of place that, if the weather was just a bit warmer, we might have stayed for a couple of days. 

Usually we manage to time our walks around Spanish towns when they're absolutely dead, but 1630 is the time of day when people are just emerging back onto the streets after Sunday lunch out, so whilst it wasn't busy on the streets, there were people around. 

With the locals having just finished their lunches, we were ready for tea, so back to Bertie it was.

These long driving days are disproportionately tiring, so it was another early night, ready for one more early-ish start, but this time just for a final 1.5hr hop to our destination.   

A striking church, the centre piece of the view as you drive into town, and the castle over on the nobble on the right. 
 

If I'd been abducted by aliens and dropped into this street I wouldn't have struggled to know I was in Spain. 

The front face of the church, but the more impressive view was from below, from where you could see the scale of the building. 

  

View from the castle

(Margaret B: if you're reading ... seeing that Alcañiz is on one of the camino routes, I'm guessing you've probably been there? If so, did you stay at the Parador?)