Day 35 - we might get blown away!

I had one of the best nights sleeps of the trip so far last night. I fear I won’t be able to replicate this against tonight for reasons that will soon become clear….

We set an alarm again this morning (6:30) so we could head off at a reasonable hour - we aimed for somewhere between 9-10. I think we headed off about 9:15 so not bad at all. I had a small fight with a bollard as I was leaving the camp (Big Dave won - thankfully). We headed first to the petrol station to fill up away from the motorway, it was €1.54 a litre which I thought was pretty reasonable. I still can’t get my head around diesel being cheaper than petrol over here - madness!

The drive was pretty uneventful. We covered about 180 miles today and our tolls came to €40.40. This was all one road that we were on for over 100 miles, so not too bad. I don’t mind paying the tolls, the roads so far have been in excellent condition and there are plenty of free aires for stopping along the motorway (I’d only be happy to stop at these in the daytime - I’ve heard bad things about them at nighttime).
We stopped briefly so Charlie could grab a jumper from the back of the van (the heating is a bit broken at the moment and sometimes refuses to blow anything other than freezing cold air). And we stopped again at midday to each lunch, we’d made a cheese and coleslaw baguette before leaving camp to make it easier to just stop and eat. Marla is still not a fan of getting out the van when she knows we’re not at our final stop for the day. Yesterday when we tried to take her out, she just went and hid in the footwell.

It was just over an hours drive after lunch to our camp for the next three nights, Camping Les Criques de Porteils. Just as we were getting close, the wind really picked up and made driving the last few miles a bit hairy.

We arrived, checked in, filled up with water and were escorted to our pitch by a chap in a golf buggy. It’s a slightly shaded pitch, and a bit elevated. We have a Mountain View, as opposed to a sea view and so far so good. Apart from the wind…. Today has turned it quite a strange day weather wise. It got to about 26 degrees earlier, but the wind has been gusting about all over the place. We believe it’s been getting up to 40mph (the different weather apps all agree it’s around there) and it’s being pretty relentless. We have tried to keep most of the windows open in the van, but it’s rather scary and we keep getting sand and pieces of trees flying in the windows.

We did try and find the beach to cool everyone down, unfortunately the paths from the camp site have been closed off due to rock fall. We got talking to a couple from Tenby who told us how to get to the beach, so off we went but we managed to take a wrong turn and get ended up walking a coastal path that goes around the front of our camp, but is fenced off to stop the walkers from coming into camp, so we walked all the at round and then had to come back on ourselves. By this time it was pretty hot, so we had a little wander in the other direction, enough to see where we could get down into the sea, but for now that was enough exploring for our hot and bothered Marla - who had refused to drink anything since 8am and it was now 3pm….

Dinner tonight was a simple pasta in a vegetarian ragu we’d picked up in Italy, and some flageolet beans. Very tasty. I went and bought an ice cream from the shop for pudding, €7 for two Nuii lollies!

We’ve bought out the mini portable air con unit, and I’m pretty glad we have it. It does seem to be helping, but poor Marla is a bit uncomfortable. We are hoping tomorrow is a bit less warm and windy so we can go off exploring the beach.Read more