Where's Bertie? He's in an Aire at the marina at La Línea de la Concepción, where it costs €12.50/24 hours. Exact location: just on the border between Spain and Gibraltar.
Weather: Mainly overcast and breezy. Warm when the sun's out and you're out of the wind.
Six years ago, on a tour of Southern Spain, we skipped the Costa del Sol between Almeria and Estepona, opting to venture inland instead. Had we stayed on the coast then, we probably would have had an easier/better time of it, as we've had to conclude on this trip that the west end of the Costa del Sol (from Malaga) is no longer good for touring by motorhome. There are no coastal Aires, commercial or otherwise, and campsites are just too expensive to be using them on a daily basis (indeed, even on an occasional basis it's too painful to fork out €25-€35 when all we need is somewhere to park). With motorhome travel (not to mention #Vanlife) now so prevalent, resulting in a constantly increasing number of bans on overnight parking, there are too few places that one can legitimately stay.
Not wanting a knock on the door from the police in the middle of the night (which is exactly what we thought we were experiencing at just gone 10 last night, but it turned out to be some hilarious ignoramus* who thought it would be fun to knock on our windscreen on the way past.) (*Feel free to insert a more colourful term; we certainly did.)
View from Bertie's front bumper this morning
Because of the lack of legitimate/desirable parking places and with a continuing need, until the end of this week, for flat running places for Mick, it was a longer-than-normal drive for us today (an hour and a half), bypassing Marbella and Estepona on the busy coastal highway, to arrive here on the border of Gibraltar.
View of Gibraltar from our run. Bertie has a closer view, but with a chain-link fence in the way
There's no good reason for us to be here in La Línea. Surely the only reason tourists come here is to visit Gibraltar, and that's something we'll likely not do on this visit, unless I can be sure that there's not going to be any Covid restrictions in either direction on the border crossing*. Moreover, we've been here before (although not to this Aire; six years ago one could park at the football stadium for €3 per night). We've only returned as it was an easy and reliable option for somewhere to stay for a couple of days.
New running shoes. I brought two pairs each of road and trail shoes with me, but regretted not bringing a certain other pair. These were one of the Decathlon purchases the other day, to fill that gap.
Having not ventured into the town of La Línea last time we were here, when Gibraltar was our focus, that's where we headed this afternoon. In his RAF days, Mick visited both Gib and La Línea and he described the latter as a dive. My opinion: whilst it does have a couple of nice-enough squares, it's not otherwise visually appealing. Even so, we intend to stick around tomorrow.
Mick bought me a present! No idea where we're going to keep it, but it will get plenty of use.
Mick declined to imitate art today using the excuse that he didn't have a book with him.
(*It'd be tempting to nip into Gibraltar in Bertie just to fill up with cheap fuel, but to do that we'd need to leave and then re-enter the EU, and legally we couldn't bring back into Spain the food in Bertie's fridge, even though we bought in Spain in the first place.)
Weather: Mainly overcast and breezy. Warm when the sun's out and you're out of the wind.
Six years ago, on a tour of Southern Spain, we skipped the Costa del Sol between Almeria and Estepona, opting to venture inland instead. Had we stayed on the coast then, we probably would have had an easier/better time of it, as we've had to conclude on this trip that the west end of the Costa del Sol (from Malaga) is no longer good for touring by motorhome. There are no coastal Aires, commercial or otherwise, and campsites are just too expensive to be using them on a daily basis (indeed, even on an occasional basis it's too painful to fork out €25-€35 when all we need is somewhere to park). With motorhome travel (not to mention #Vanlife) now so prevalent, resulting in a constantly increasing number of bans on overnight parking, there are too few places that one can legitimately stay.
Not wanting a knock on the door from the police in the middle of the night (which is exactly what we thought we were experiencing at just gone 10 last night, but it turned out to be some hilarious ignoramus* who thought it would be fun to knock on our windscreen on the way past.) (*Feel free to insert a more colourful term; we certainly did.)
Because of the lack of legitimate/desirable parking places and with a continuing need, until the end of this week, for flat running places for Mick, it was a longer-than-normal drive for us today (an hour and a half), bypassing Marbella and Estepona on the busy coastal highway, to arrive here on the border of Gibraltar.
There's no good reason for us to be here in La Línea. Surely the only reason tourists come here is to visit Gibraltar, and that's something we'll likely not do on this visit, unless I can be sure that there's not going to be any Covid restrictions in either direction on the border crossing*. Moreover, we've been here before (although not to this Aire; six years ago one could park at the football stadium for €3 per night). We've only returned as it was an easy and reliable option for somewhere to stay for a couple of days.
Having not ventured into the town of La Línea last time we were here, when Gibraltar was our focus, that's where we headed this afternoon. In his RAF days, Mick visited both Gib and La Línea and he described the latter as a dive. My opinion: whilst it does have a couple of nice-enough squares, it's not otherwise visually appealing. Even so, we intend to stick around tomorrow.
(*It'd be tempting to nip into Gibraltar in Bertie just to fill up with cheap fuel, but to do that we'd need to leave and then re-enter the EU, and legally we couldn't bring back into Spain the food in Bertie's fridge, even though we bought in Spain in the first place.)
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