Day 56 - Markadia

Marla‘s body clock is still not quite on the same time zone as us, so it was another slightly earlier than hoped morning but it’s moving on day today so it’s never a bad thing to be up and about early.

We had a relaxed couple of hours of getting up, having breakfast and packing away the van. We didn’t have much to pack away because the weather has not been brilliant, so no outside things like chairs to put away. We took Marla for a mini walk so she could go to the bathroom, said goodbye to the donkeys and then we headed off.

Our first stop of the day was an Aldi just outside a small town, however due to a slight navigational error by me, we ended up driving right through the old medieval town. It was very pretty, there were lots of old and new churches and castles, it’s just a shame our route through it all was pretty narrow and a bit scary at times!

After a not hugely successful shop, it was back on the road, and it was all pretty straightforward.

We did make one more stop at a pet shop that just happened to be next to the road, and I don’t like to pass up the opportunity to find more food for Marla.
After that stop, I was stuck behind a lorry for most of the trip as it was basically the same road until the camp site turn off - so we just chilled out and enjoyed the scenery.

We arrived at camp mid afternoon. It’s a very big camp where you can pitch wherever you like, as long as you are at least 10m away from anyone else. It’s all along the shore of a reservoir. We initially picked a little spot that was all tucked away, but after taking Marla for a walk and coming back to the van, we could see we had made a mistake in stopping there as it was actually really gloomy as we were all hidden by trees. So we moved a bit further round the site into the open a bit more, and we can’t even see our closest neighbour.

Dinner tonight was some vegan burgers we’d picked up a while ago, and I’d bought a selection of vegetarian sides to go with them from Aldi this morning. We went for the ons that looked like empanadas, unfortunately they turned out to be absolutely inedible. They tasted like fish cakes that had gone off…..

Addendum - things I forgot to mention.
Strangest thing happened in the night, about 3am Marla got up and left our bed and went back to her own. She’s not done that before - it didn’t last too long, but strange nonetheless.
Also - there are Hoopoe birds here around camp, they are beautiful. I’ll try and get a photo tomorrow.Read more