Thursday 18 February – Sanlúcar de Barrameda

Where’s Colin? Exactly where he was on the 17th.

A delayed post for yesterday, as I was too busy finishing Robert Galbraith’s Career of Evil last night. I could also blame the book for yesterday’s lie-in, but I think that was more to do with waiting for the rain to pass, as a few showers were still passing through after some quite heavy pre-dawn rain.

With the skies brightening, we did eventually make tracks and this time we took ourselves up to the old town, passing, on our way, very close behind a council worker cutting up a substantial tree. I’m sure the UK Health & Safety brigade wouldn’t have allowed anyone without appropriate eyewear as close behind a man with a chainsaw as we (and many other pedestrians) were passing.

Once in the old town we could easily have unknowingly walked straight past what proved to be the most interesting (to us) feature. A small information sign outside explained the history of the place as being the old Orleans-Barbon Palace (summer residence of the Dukes of Montpensier), and said that the building is now used as the town hall and public library. I figured that if it’s a public building then we could walk into the walled garden for a closer look (it’s an impressive building for a town hall!) and in so doing we found another information sign which suggested that if we walked around the block we would find another entrance, giving access to its gardens. They were definitely worth a look – it’s just unfortunate that there was no good vantage point for a piccie of either the building or the gardens:

Back out on the streets, our heads (and the rest of our bodies, actually) were popped into the courtyard of the substantial castle, but we weren’t minded to spend €7 (or was it 8?) each to look around the rest of it, so back down to the new town we headed, getting distracted by a cake shop on the way, where the choices all looked so good that we failed to choose just one goodie apiece:

An afternoon stroll along the promenade, lying alongside the golden sandy beach which lines the estuary again put me very much in mind of Barmouth (“Almost identical” said Mick “Apart from the number of palm trees and the temperature”). As Mick had started his day with a run, I did an extra turn along the prom to bring my step count up, then the pull of my book was too great and, save for a brief interlude when I researched the night-stop options in Seville, the rest of the day was spent finding out what was going on with Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacot.

 

Wednesday 17 February – Sanlúcar de Barrameda

Where’s Colin? He’s at a free Municipal Aire in Sanlúcar, at N36°47.037’, W6°21.563’. There’s a service point here with one of those underground water taps, so I hope that a) one of our hose connectors fits it (as we will need more water any time now); and b) our short length of hose is long enough to fill bottles from it, or it’s going to be a faff carrying our long length over there, or to have to drive Colin round.

I’ll start today with an electrical update. The cab fan, which mysteriously burst into life again about a week ago, after four weeks of not working, ceased to function again a day and a half later (after rain, but that may be a red-herring). Yesterday morning it started working again and that has persisted into today. So, it was time for something else to break and that something was our only remaining 12v cigarette-lighter plug, used for charging phones from the leisure battery (or indeed the vehicle battery if we’re moving). Having had the spare break a few months back, I knew I should have bought another before we set off, and even gave passing thought to the subject when I saw all of the electrical goods shops in Gibraltar. Happily, Sanlúcar turned out to be an easy place in which to buy a new one and we even splashed out on one which looks to be of a decent quality.

After looking at Google Maps this morning and establishing that we were a 45 minute walk from Rota’s town centre, and not knowing that there was anything there worth seeing, we didn’t hang around. We’d visited the beach yesterday, so the first thing we did this morning (after finally dragging ourselves out of bed; we can be awfully lazy some days!) was to head 19km up the road to Sanlucar de Barrameda. Following the SatNav directions up a long cobbled street (Colin has endured many such shake-rattle-and-roll tests on this trip) a pit-stop was had at Lidl before we redirected ourselves to the Aire.

With a stated capacity of 100, we knew it was going to be a big place, but that hadn’t prepared me for quite what a motorhome-city it is. At a glance it looked full…

That’s a lot of motorhomes!

…but once we’d driven three sides of it to find the entrance, there were a few spaces. The one we selected gives us a bit of a sea view (albeit the length of the car park and the width of a road and a prom away), but at the expense of being backed onto the busiest of the adjacent roads. We plan to be here for two nights, so if it turns out to be too noisy overnight, we’ll move further towards the middle tomorrow, at the expense of the view.

With baked goodies and cups of tea consumed, off we went to take a look around the town, soon realising that the startling blue sky was deceptive as to the outside temperature – that wind had a distinct chill to it (it had only been 5 degrees inside Colin when we woke up this morning):

Aside from aimless wandering (and perusing a couple of phone shops until we found a suitable 12v plug), we didn’t do much on this tour of the town, aside from sticking our heads into one of the churches, which boasted some incredible wood-carved alterpieces, of which this was the principal:

Now armed with a map from the Tourist Office, we’ll head back into the town tomorrow with a little more purpose. We should probably make an effort to visit one of the sherry producers for which this area is famed … but that doesn’t necessarily mean that we will.

Of more interest to me about this location is that we’re just across the estuary from the Parque Nacional Coto de Doñana, which sounds a fascinating place of marshlands brimming with wildlife. Unfortunately, it seems only possible to visit via an organised boat and/or Jeep tour, neither of which sound like my cup of tea, but during an afternoon stroll along the promenade, we did take a look around the Visitor Centre, which sits on this side of the estuary. It was a sorry place, which was part-funded by the EU and, it seems, has had not a penny put into it since.

It’s now Boules-o’clock amongst the French representatives in this very multi-national gathering of motorhomes, which means for Mick & myself, it must be approaching tea time.

Tuesday 16 February – Gibraltar, Palmones and Rota

Where’s Colin? He’s at a free Municipal Aire somewhere in the vicinity of Rota, at N36º38.315, W6º23.495. Having not arrived until gone 6pm, taking a walk along the beach was more important than working out exactly where we are in relation to the town.

The plan for this morning was that I would leave Mick drinking coffee in MacDonalds, situated immediately opposite the border between Spain and Gibraltar, whilst I dashed into Gib to a post box, it being cheaper to send the latest batch of postcards from there (not to mention that my language skills are much better suited to procuring stamps in Gib). Failing to find the entrance to MacD’s car park, Mick missed out on his coffee and wifi, and I had myself a longer walk than intended (longer in duration too as, with poor timing, the access across the runway was closed for a plane to come in when I was just a few paces away).

A mild fret that I would look awfully suspicious to have speed-walked into a country and then speed-walked back out within a quarter of an hour was unfounded (or, at least, no-one in Border Control batted an eyelid at me). My slightly less mild fret that I had posted my passport along with the postcards was equally needless.

Back into Spain a trip to Decathlon and Lidl preceded our re-arrival at Palmones, for attempt 2 at lunch at friend Juan’s cousin’s restaurant. It was every bit as busy this lunchtime as it was on Sunday, but we had a reservation this time and enjoyed some very well-cooked prawns, fish and squid.

Last night’s planning session resulted in me coming up with a list of towns we could visit during the remainder of this trip and had us conclude that we just about have time left to visit all of them, if we so choose, but our destination for tonight was left in the air. The main options were to go to a €13 campsite west of Tarifa, or to stop off at a €1 service point right by Tarifa, then find a car park for the night anywhere we fancied. With the campsite being so cheap, that was my favoured option, the SatNav was set and off we went.

Based on the Costa Blanca and the Costa del Sol, I’ve become used to campsites being open all year, so it didn’t occur to me to check, and it wasn’t until we were sitting outside its closed gates that we found that we were 2 weeks early for this site's season. Every cloud and all that, because if we hadn’t aimed for this campsite, we wouldn’t have subsequently driven through this sand dune (the road surface just after this photo was ‘interesting’ too, having been severely corrugated by tree roots – a bit of a surprise when you hit it at an inappropriate speed in a vehicle with crockery in the cupboards!):

__Don’t know where those clouds came from. Everywhere else we’ve been today has had clear blue skies._

All of the resources were consulted, we rued not having visited the service point on our way past Tarifa (the toilet was the cause of the critical need for services), and a revised destination was set. Then I changed my mind. Then I changed my mind again. We ended up, after a long drive (130km?) at Rota, with an hour spare before sunset (which was at 1905 tonight), so with only a pause for a cup of tea (we were severely under-teaed today) off we went for a stroll along the beach:

Situated right next door to a naval base, it’s a good location for a plane-spotter – five or six different aircraft passed over whilst we were out.

With the mission accomplished of witnessing sunset (and having seen a good variety of birdlife, almost none of which I could identify), back through the car park adjacent to the Aire we wandered, for a nosey at the motorhomes parked there. Two of our neighbours from La Linea are amongst them (maybe more – the two we spotted are particularly distinctive vehicles).


(Random statistic: Number of full drinks knocked over onto Colin’s floor in the 4.3 years of ownership up to last week: 0; Number of full drinks knocked over onto Colin’s floor in the last week: 2 (one each).)

Monday 15 February – La Linea and Gibraltar

Where’s Colin? His tyres have not rolled an inch in the last 24 hours.We’ve paid our €3 to the man with the notebook for another night.

A banging woke me at 6.30 this morning, which was followed by the sound of various items of rubbish being blown through the car park. It was the last hurrah of the windy spell. By getting-up-time we had a fine day with only moderate breeziness.

Gibraltar was our plan again for today; more specifically: the Rock. I wouldn’t have opted for the cable car, even if it had been running; we were going on foot. I’d expected to see plenty of other people walking too, but whilst lots of tour mini-buses and taxis passed us, we only saw one other person on foot as we made our way up.

The going was relentlessly upwards, but being entirely on road until the last twenty metres, it was easy going, and the views were superb on this blue-skied day, with both Spain and Morrocco clearly visible. The photo below wasn’t taken quite at the highest point we reached (which was just behind me in this snap) because there was a family of monkeys just there, including a very wee baby, so we left them in peace and took the photo a short distance away:

Another high point was visited a while later where we achieved a passable selfie of the two of us. Alas, the one with the Atlas Mountains in shot wasn’t a good one; this one has Algeciras behind us:

And then I got photobombed by a monkey!

It wasn’t me it was interested in, though. As we made our way off the gun emplacement that innocent looking thing took a leap onto Mick’s backpack, quickly slipping its hands into the pockets in search of snacks. Fortunately, Mick had eaten his banana (which had been in the side pocket) just before we got into monkey territory (feeding the Macaques being a criminal offence).

A different route was taken back down and it turns out that if we’d gone up that way then we wouldn’t have had to pay the entrance fee into the nature reserve (a whole 50p each!). Quite why they charge pedestrians who walk up the road, but not ones who walk up the path, I know not.

A detour was taken from our walk back through town to visit the large Morrisons supermarket, which was quite a bizarre experience, making us feel even more like we’d been teletransported back to the UK. There was a MacDonalds next door which provided us with cups of tea and internet – my mobile internet hasn’t been working most of the day, even though I’ve got the Movistar network selected (I’m becoming suspicious that Movistar operates in Gibraltar too, and that I’m connected to that mast, which would explain the non-functioning, as Gibraltar isn’t included in Three’s ‘Feel at Home’.

Back at Colin another decision point has been reached. The basic plan for this trip was ‘head to Alicante, then down to Gibraltar, then look how long that’s taken us and make an onwards plan from there’. We’ll examine the map once I’ve finished typing this.

I’ll finish with a photo of where we’re currently parked. From that angle it looks quite an unattractive place to spend a couple of nights – the reality isn’t so bad, with the beach and sea being just a road-width away (in any case, I always maintain that when a place is fundamentally just for sleeping then it doesn’t much matter what it looks like; everywhere looks the same once it’s dark out anyway).

(Incidentally, over 10 miles were walked today - not bad for a place as small as Gib!)

Sunday 14 February – Palmone, La Linea and Gibraltar

Where’s Colin? He’s in the car park of the football ground at La Linea, with quite a few other motorhomes of various nationalities (but mainly British registered), at N36º9’30”, W5º20’20”. There are no facilities (except for a rumoured sewer manhole cover that can be lifted), but then it only costs €3 for a day and a night.

It was, once again, to rain that we awoke this morning. Not the sort of weather that made walking around Gibraltar appealing, so the plan was formulated to overshoot Gibraltar and head to Palmone, where we could spend a chunk of time reading our books and drinking tea, before having a nice lunch at a friend’s cousin’s restaurant, Casa Mané.

The first part of the plan went well. The restaurant was located and with a nice sea view we parked up and made inroads into our books. The sun even came out every now and again and we snatched one such opportunity for a walk along the beach (two British people stopped by our pitch on the campsite this morning to chat about the weather and both informed us that it was going to be very windy today; they were right - we got thoroughly sandblasted during our shoreline stroll).

At quarter to two we decided it was a reasonable hour to go for lunch, which coincided with three other cars simultaneously arriving, their occupants going to the restuarant and then immediately returning to their cars. This didn’t look good, and it wasn’t. We were met at the door with the news that the place was booked out. What we’d forgotten at some point between waking up and formulating our plan was that it wasn’t just a Sunday (a day when we assume restaurants are busier than they are during the week), but it’s also Valentine’s Day.

Momentarily thrown, we soon had a new plan: back a little way we would go, to Gibraltar.

There’s Gibraltar, just over the water from Palmone. It’s a little further to drive around by road.

Until yesterday’s campsite, our previous 13 night’s accommodation costs had come in at a whopping total of €15 and, thinking that the €12 Aire at La Linea would be our home for the next couple of nights, it was looking like we were about to enter a comparatively expensive period. However, one of the British-bearers-of-gloomy-weather-forecasts this morning mentioned to us the parking at the football stadium and that rang a bell in my mind. I checked the Park4Night app, and as we don’t currently need any facilities, we thought we may as well go for the €3 option rather than the €12 one. In fact, we could have parked out on the road for free, but even though this place has no security, €3 seemed like a reasonable price to be in amongst plenty of other vans, at least some of which are likely to be occupied when we’re out.


Getting closer…  Note the palm tree and the wind-sock – it was a tad breezy!

It was late afternoon by the time we walked the half kilometre (into the wind; it was still blowing some) back to the border, where only passing glances were given to our UK passports. Once across the runway, the first things encountered are two petrol stations. Fifty-nine pence per litre for Diesel. Pity Colin’s not got a lot of capacity at the moment – I’d take the trouble to drive over the border for that price!

We didn’t progress an awful lot further, as we happened to pass a pub door which was immediately opposite one a TV screen and, having established that they were showing the England rugby game, in we went. Finding that they had the Liverpool game on too made Mick a very happy chap:

We did manage to fit in a stroll up the main street (where almost everything looks so very British) before the time of day caused us to turn back for the border. We’ll be back to explore the place further tomorrow.

Saturday 13 February – Casares and Estepona

Where’s Colin? He’s at an ACSI campsite just to the east of Estepona, at N36º27’15”, W5º4’51”.

Yesterday afternoon, as the rain drummed down, I planned for this morning. After downloading the Tourist Office’s booklet of walks in the area, I loaded the local map tile onto ViewRanger and then added to that the GPX files of three walks I’d selected. Those three files gave us options for a 1-hour, a 2-hour or a 3-hour circular walk, with the decision as to which to take to be based on the reality of the weather when we arose.

The reality of the weather was such that we took none of those options. Instead we walked a whole 100 yards to the nearby viewpoint, looked across at the village…

vaguely thought of walking over to it, got put off by the next shower coming in, had a brief chat with a gaggle of Brits who had met up in our car park (a walk had been their intention, but they too ditched that plan in favour of the indoor activity of coffee drinking) and made haste towards the coast.

It did feel a bit like all of those miles of sub-quality road* had been a waste, just to spend the night being battered by the wind and lashed with rain in a car park in Casares!

It didn’t take long to drop back below the cloud and what should we then see ahead of us, but a sunny coastline. Sunshine! Finally!

It was debatable whether we needed a campsite today (all of this driving around, combined with a low demand on Colin’s leisure battery, means that we’re not needing a campsite to plug into the mains as often as we would in the UK), but to maintain flexibility for the next few days we decided to divert to the nearest ACSI site, even though it was a 19km detour from our route to Gibraltar (where we’re heading next). Thirteen kilometres into that detour, a failure of navigation occurred (“Ignore the SatNav” I said “that’s not right at all!”) which not only put us on a toll road, but also sent us straight past our destination before we reached the next junction. Another 24km ensued.

The site, when we eventually got here, isn’t one at which I would want to spend more than an afternoon (and then I’d only want to be here in order to make use of the facilities, as we are). It seems a bit cut off and the pitches are very slender. Still, we’ve charged all the gadgets, got some laundry done, had long, hot showers and have had a haircut apiece (sorry, very dodgy photo – the camera focussed on the tail-light of the caravan next door and I couldn’t be doing with running back and forth to set up multiple attempts mid haircut):

We don’t have any outside chairs with us, but Mick rummaged in the skip on the pitch next to ours and found an old set of caravan steps which proved to be a perfect substitute for a barber’s chair.

Our afternoon stroll was brief indeed. As I said, this site is rather cut off, and having walked down to the beach (via a very small ‘public prohibited’ tunnel under the motorway) we couldn’t see anywhere else to go, so we came back. In the morning, we’ll head off somewhere more interesting.

that's a very big, droopy flower!

(*All those brand new motorways, with barely a car between them, are quite a contrast to the little roads which have suffered extensively from episodes of subsidence, giving an ‘interesting’ driving surface. This little road was the worst yet.)

Friday 12 February – Benarraba and Casares

Where’s Colin? He’s in a Municipal Aire, in a quite exposed location, just outside of the village of Casares, at N36º 26.775’, W5º16.710'.


View from Colin, when the cloud isn’t hanging right down into the valley

Whilst today didn’t dawn fine, it was dry and with a higher cloud base than the last couple of days, so after I’d presented Mick with a postcard and sung Happy Birthday to him, off we headed to walk route SL-A 175.

Due to the location of the village of Benarrabas, this circular walk starts with the downhill and ends with the up. As much as I’d rather have things the other way around, this was the only circular trail in the area, so off we went – steeply down.

I commented a couple of days ago about how green and forested is the area in which we’re now travelling and today we learned that we’re in a cork oak area. It was these trees, just a few minutes into our walk, which initially gave it away:

and a while later (just as we were wondering how long it takes for the bark to regrow) we came across an information sign telling us that the valley side on which we were standing is split up into ninths, with one being harvested each year on a 9-year cycle.

very green!

The down went on violently for some time until, after crossing a stream and ascending a little way the other side, I began to get suspicious that we weren’t on the right path. In fact, it seemed to me that we were on the wrong side of the valley. I’d not been able to find a gpx file for this route (and I now believe that’s probably because no-one has been able to follow it in order to record a track!), and the map on the official leaflet was so lacking in detail as to make it only of marginally more value than that on the information sign at the start point (which was a line on an aerial photo). However, the map on the leaflet (which I had downloaded onto my phone) did have some contour lines, telling us that we shouldn’t have dropped below 350m. We were now at 280m…

Back we went, huffing and puffing up the steepest section, to get to a multi-way junction we’d passed a while before and we duly explored all possible other tracks. All options were explored, without a single waymark being found, before we conceded defeat and headed back the way we had come.

By then a light mizzly rain was falling, so any passing thoughts of trying the circuit from the other direction were pushed firmly out of my mind, and via the village shop (for the poorest imaginable excuse for a birthday cake) we headed back to Colin.

Having moved on to Casares (along the worst quality of road yet encountered in Spain), where there are plentiful walk options, Mick vetoed the notion of going out again, pointing at the rain being lashed at Colin’s windward window:

So, once again we hope for better tomorrow (only two more days before the forecast turns good again, but we’ll be back on the coast by then).

The eventfulness of the afternoon has therefore been witnessing a driverless car (and not in the manner of modern technology) roll backwards across the car park, coming to rest on a kerb and against some road signs. Mick managed to locate the owners in the Tourist Office – a couple from Basingstoke. They were quite relaxed about what had happened “At least it’s ony a hire car!” they said.

(For anyone reading both this and my walking blog over at gayleybird.blogspot.com, I've saved you some reading as I've lazily duplicated this post in both places today.)