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?)

 

Saturday 7 February - Castets

Where's Bertie? He's at a Camping-Car Park Aire at Castets, at a cost of €14.72 including electricity. 

Weather: Mainly warm and sunny. 15 degrees outside for much of the afternoon and absolutely roasting inside Bertie. 

We were away from Villedômer at ten past eight, and opted for the same route as last year, taking the toll road from Tours to the S side of Poitiers. The price on entry to the Péage remains 90c, but the price on exit has increased to €22. Mick was driving and I'm sure he would say that it was worth it for the mindless sitting with cruise control engaged and not having traffic lights, roundabouts and endlessly varying speed limits to worry about. 

In another repetition of our last two such journeys south, we stopped at Reignac at lunchtime, where there's a car park next to a Voie Verte ex-railway leisure route. We timed our arrival well; it's only a small car park and it was full, but as we sat for a moment contemplating our options, two women strode back to their car and promptly drove away. Mick walked east along the route; I trotted off west, and we reconvened at Erica an hour later, where Mick had lunch on the table. 

It was then just a two hour drive to our night-stop. We stayed here on our dash north last year, and decided that we would use it again. It's not as interesting a location as Capbreton, which has been our chosen staging point for years, but it has the merit of being immediately next to the motorway. 

I'm not sure where we're headed tomorrow. We're aiming for the east coast of Spain on Monday, but that gives us a lot of options for tomorrow. I'd best look at a map after tea, the making of which is what's next on my agenda.  

Friday 6 February - to Villedômer

Where's Bertie? He's in the Aire at Villedômer, where he's been several times before.

Weather: Some sunshine, some overcast, some showers. 11-14 degrees.

Last summer, Bertie's windscreen wiper motor twice ceased to function. The first time, I cleaned migrated grease from the internal contacts and revived it. The second time we were on the road without all the tools needed and an auto-electrician sorted out a corroded earth for us. It has worked faultlessly ever since - at least until we were about two minutes into our journey yesterday, when Mick turned the windscreen wipers to intermittent, and they parked themselves half way up the windscreen. 

It didn't take long to establish that they were working fine, save for the park position, which in turn meant that it would be in our favour if it rained for the entire journey and thus we could just leave them running. It rained most of the time, so the time they spent in an inconvenient position was minimal. 

By the time we stopped for tea in Tesco's car park in Ashford, I'd concluded that this couldn't be a repeat of the grease migration issue that caused the first failure (and that I know can also cause a park issue), but had to be that the wiper mechanism had slipped on the motor spindle. As we sat at the Chunnel terminal, I offered to sort it out, but given that it was both dark and raining, Mick suggested that it could wait until this morning. 

So, the first task in our leisurely start today was to disconnect the wiper linkage from the motor and reposition it. It was a relief to find that the securing nut wasn't even hand tight, confirming the diagnosis, and thanks to having taken it apart so many times last year, I could immediately see that it wasn't in the correct position. It can't have taken more than five minutes to sort it out.   

The wipers were called into use a few times during the day, but the more notable features of the weather were the warm (relatively) temperature and the periods of sunshine. It has been so grey and miserable at home for all bar a scant few days thus far this winter, that it was a pleasant change to see the sun and feel such heat through Bertie's panoramic windscreen. 

There's nothing else to say about today's journey. Each year I check my handwritten notes in our road atlas, and read my blog to see what we did on the previous year's journey. I don't need to make any notes about the route choice this year, as we did exactly the same as last year. The one toll road section we used had gone up by just 20c. The only stops (save for a driver-swap micro-pause) were at a supermarket at lunchtime (groceries first, then lunch in the car park), and a petrol station just before our destination. We arrived in Villedômer at quarter past five, which didn't feel too bad considering we didn't hit the road until a few minutes before 10am. 

Straight out for a brisk, but brief, leg-stretch we went, ending at the patisserie to sort ourselves out with something for pudding tonight:

 

The stream next to the Aire in Villedômer is running high

Bit soggy on the fields too

From the local patisserie (sorry - too much effort to rotate it now I've uploaded it)

 

Thursday 5 February: Wissant

Where’s Bertie? He’s in the Aire at Wissant (France), at a cost of €11 (including 50c tourist tax each).

Weather: Rain

What a hectic 36 hours! At 11am yesterday we were sitting having coffee and a crossword in town, on our way to the supermarket, with no expectation that we would be in France by the end of today. Indeed, we’d just about given up on our Jan/Feb trip to Spain this year.

I’d originally booked our Chunnel tickets back in November, to cross on 10 January. The spanner that got thrown in that works was that I found a lump in my breast when we were in Wales at the end of December. I wasn’t overly concerned, sure by its traits that it was a cyst, but thought I’d best let the doctor confirm that.

The doctor wasn’t particularly reassuring, and referred me to the breast clinic on a 2 week wait basis. This still gave time to get my appointment through, get the all-clear and be off to Spain on our 10 January booking ... except that the appointment finally came through for 3.5 weeks later. So, the booking was moved, such that I would attend my appointment, they’d confirm it was a cyst, either drain it or not, immediately discharge me, and we’d be on our way three days later.

The fly in that ointment was that they found an atypical cyst, and thus it required a biopsy. The consultant’s opinion was that it would be unwise to remove myself to Spain whilst awaiting the result. So, we moved our outbound ticket to August, figuring that would give us flexibility to either move it forward again, or use it in the summer (but completely forgetting that I’ve entered a race one week after the date that I moved it to – doh!).

When I received a phone call just before lunch yesterday, confirming that the biopsy had come back clear, we quickly looked at a calendar. Was there still time to make a trip to Spain a reasonable thing to do, considering that our return date was fixed and unmoveable? Yes, we decided, there was.

A frantic afternoon ensued, firstly sorting out travel insurance, then moving our Chunnel ticket once again, then packing in such a disorganised fashion that you’d think we’d never packed for a trip before in our lives. An equally frantic morning ensued today - a stark contrast to our usual take-a-few-days-about-it approach to packing. Half an hour ahead of schedule we jumped into Bertie and were off. We are yet to discover what we have forgotten, but I’ll be surprised if we managed to remember everything*. 

We arrived at the Eurotunnel terminal early enough to be offered a crossing 2 hours before the one we’d booked, at 1916 but half an hour later, the departure boards told us it was moved to 2016  (the App confirmed the rescheduling whilst simultaneously saying there were no delays, so apparently moving the time of a crossing doesn’t count as a delay). At 1915 our crossing suddenly changed back from 2016 to 1916 with the status ‘Boarding Closed’! We finally set out under the sea at around 2040, so still earlier than we had been booked, but an annoying set of circumstances, given that if we’d ignored the information on the board and just proceeded to the departure lanes, we would have crossed so much earlier.

With the time difference, it will be a late arrival in Wissant, but less painful than the alternative option we considered, which was the 0320 crossing tomorrow morning.  

(*yes, we do have a comprehensive checklist, but it wouldn’t be possible to cover everything. By way of an example, Mick picked up our Euro notes yesterday, but it was only in the middle of the night that I suddenly thought that our ‘float’ bag of Euro coins was probably no longer in Bertie, and whilst going without it wouldn’t have been disaster, but as we don’t tend to use cash on a day-to-day basis to accumulate change, it’s good to hold onto a stash of coins for things like the laundrette.)