Day 25 - Cooler days
29 Eylül 2024, İtalya ⋅ ⛅ 12 °C
For the first time I almost forgot to do a write up of the day! I was just about to get into bed and I remembered, so now instead of reading Vera to help send me off to sleep, I’m blogging from bed.
I had the best nights sleep I’ve had so far of the trip last night, those Aperol spritz’s and bottle of wine knocked me right out.
We’d set an alarm for 6:30 this morning as Charlie wanted to get some exercise in early doors and I wanted to get a load of washing done early so we could hang it to dry during the day. It was forecast for 19 and sunny today, but the thing about being surrounded by mountains is that they block out a lot of sun. It might have been warm up one of those mountains, but down here it’s been rather windy and cool. Still not awful conditions for drying clothes.
So after breakfast had gone down, Charlie did a camp tabata workout, I gave moral support and coaching from the sidelines with a cup of tea. While he was cooling down and showering, I took Marla off for a wander around the place to see what we could see. We followed the footpaths and walkways through the nature reserve that follows the shore of the lake and watched some paragliders who were having fun over the lake, then landing in the lake (after watching the first person splash down, I realised they were doing their water landings on purpose!).
Back to camp and we decided to have a lunchtime main meal at the camp bar / restaurant. They are open for dinner, but not until 6:30 and that’s almost bedtime for us 😂
I had 4 cheese pizza and Charlie had a vegetable pizza (although he had tried to order the vegetarian burger, but that’s a different story altogether). Both our pizzas were delicious and even though we were sat in the shade and it was very cold, we couldn’t resist having an ice cream dessert each. Charlie had the fruit salad which came with five different scoops of ice cream, I had three different flavours, amaretto poured over, amaretti biscuits and round wafers - best ice cream ever!
Back to camp to digest all of that, then Charlie took Marla off for her afternoon walk and I hit the shower. Tea was a couple of rolls that I had bought this morning, they’d gone a bit stale by tea time though. We caught up on some Taskmaster this evening, put van WiFi isn’t working still but we bought a spare dongle to pop our SIM card in, just in case and that’s worked perfectly.
We’ve also mostly packed away everything ready for travelling tomorrow, it’s going to be another fairly busy day out on the road.Okumaya devam et
Day 26 - Tolls and Tunnels
30 Eylül 2024, İtalya ⋅ ☁️ 15 °C
Today is another moving on day. We’ve enjoyed a couple of nights at Camping Miralago, but it’s just a bit too chilly for us…: so it’s time to try and find warmer weather. We are moving on to Lake Maggiore, further west. Our new routine for moving day is to pack the van up and then take Marla off for a walk to stretch her legs before we head out. Just before we left, I spoke to our neighbours opposite, they have a black lab called Emmie and they were wondering how it works taking the Shuttle across the channel as they have some family near Bristol they want to visit. Emmie was very sweet to watch, she had a camping chair all to herself and quite offer was sat up with her family (see photo 😂). She’s 18 months and a tall dog - they were very surprised when I said that Marla is almost 4 (she’s 4 in December so I think we’ve moved away from being able to say 3.5 years old.
Anyway - back to today.
We set off at about 10:30, with a plan to stop at a supermarket a couple of hours away. The roads were slow going, very twisty and turny with lots of tunnels and mountain paths, so when we eventually arrived at the supermarket I was a bit hot, bothered and grumpy. We ate lunch and then Charlie headed off. It felt like he was gone for hours, he was probably about 45 mins but it was warm and I was stressing about which route to take for the final leg. Marla was getting a bit stressed out being on the move for so long, so I just wanted to get everything done with - so opted to take toll roads to get us to our camp site as quickly as possible. Well… we’ve certainly had an adventure! Our first toll road was exactly what I expected, we passed a gate where we had to take a ticket, we carried on driving and eventually got to a booth where we put the ticket in and we should be charged for what we used … that’s the theory. What happened in practice is that the machine kept coming up with an error about the ticket being unreadable (we think - it wasn’t in English!), then we heard a man’s voice in the machine. Then nothing ….. eventually we pressed the button for help and had a holding message that said we should stay in the car. Then a man came over, while on his phone, he didn’t say anything to us but just talking on his call. Eventually our toll flashed up and asked for payment, just as Charlie put his card to the machine I asked if it was saying €80.10 - turns out that’s exactly what it was charging us but it was too late and the fee was taken from Charlie’s account - a bit steep for a 24 minute drive! He then insisted googled how to challenge a wrong fee ….. we think we have been charged as if we got on where the toll road first started because it couldn’t figure out where we joined. Hopefully we’ll get our money back…. We carried on following the sat nav, knowing we had more tolls to come. They next was even more confusing as all of a sudden we approached a payment kiosk, I started to freak out because we hadn’t been through a ticket barrier. Thankfully there was a special lane just for tourists, and then it became clear that it didn’t matter where you got on the road, it was a flat fee - phew!
We came across the same again a few miles later, this time we had to pay at an automated cash kiosk, thankfully that was all plain sailing too!
Toll roads over, we started the final stretch to the camp site, although we’d been advised that vehicles over 2 meters can’t go through town but you need to over shoot and come back on yourself. Unfortunately both Garmin and Google Maps were very confused by this and wanted us to hop over the boarded into Switzerland before making our way to the site - thankfully the camp site had included pretty good instructions and we made it in relatively unscathed, although we did have a bit of an issue finding the right way into camp, and figuring out how to check in at reception when there was absolutely no where to stop. Anyhoo… we made it and it’s pretty and much warmer than we’ve had recently. Hopefully we will be brave and go into the lake one day …. I am sure Marla will be keen to have a paddle as soon as she can.
Dinner tonight was spinach and ricotta stuffed tortellini with a side of aubergine, covered with a smattering of Parmesan.
The rest of the evening was spent decompress and starting to think about where to stay after here as we don’t currently have anything booked.
The site here is busy but not noisy, it’s a little bit strange in some aspects. You can’t wear your shoes in the bathrooms, you have to leave them outside and put on a pair of communal sliders 🤢 there also doesn’t seem to be anywhere to dispose of a chemicals toilet - hopefully there is somewhere and we just haven’t found it yet.
That’s all for tonight, after a couple of beers and a glass of red wine, I’m very ready for my bed…..Okumaya devam et
Day 27 - missing knives and cannoli
1 Ekim 2024, İtalya ⋅ ☁️ 16 °C
Our first full day at the banks of Lake Maggiore at our campsite called The Camp by Maggiore Suites. It sounds very glamorous and the photos and reviews make this place look amazing, however 24 hours in and I’ve come to the realisation that they have used a lot of artistic licence with their photos and descriptions. Still - we’ve paid for 4 nights and it has super clean toilets and nice showers, so I’m not planning on cutting this stay short, it’s just very expensive for what it is.
We started off the day easy, no alarms so up just before 8am. Marla has got used to van life and no longer demands to get up at 6:30am everyday. We had a mid morning stroll into the village to find the local supermarket for fresh bread and cake shop for a little treat.
Lunch was lots of bread and cheese, followed by some very dainty cannoli. It was all a bit much and I had my first nap of the trip - although it’s not very easy to just lay down and fall asleep jn the van, I think I might have managed about 30 mins, then I was rudely awaken by our phones going off to let us know someone was ringing our doorbell… no idea who it was, looked like a salesman.
So to wake us all up we had a wander along the lake front, it warmed up a bit this afternoon so I braved the shorts and jumper combo which was perfect. We saw some interesting sites, some giant sheep garden ornaments, ceramic owls in a tree and ceramic colourful fish and birds along a wall.
Before dinner we popped across to the camp reception / bar to claim our welcome drinks. I opted for a Limoncello spritz, having never heard of this and it was amazingly tasty! I popped something onto Facebook and received loads of messages from people saying how they love it to - why had no one told me about this before?
We had planned to have a curry for dinner, but we were still pretty full from cheese and bread so went for a lighter pasta and veg option, with more bread 😂
The Italians have a very strange system for kitchen plugs - metal tubes. They really are the most impractical thing, it’s just annoying that the plug I picked up in Germany doesn’t fit these sinks and I had to give the metal tube a go. I’m not a fan.
This evening’s entertainment has come from watching a lot of new arrivals - for some reason people keep parking up across two pitches next to us, wandering off for a bit and then go and park somewhere completely different. The french lady with a caravan stuck on a van chassis won the day for us - she drove around the site at about 30MPH, almost taking a few people out at the same time…
The day did end on a sad note - we’ve managed to lose one of our knives…. Good job we hardly use both a knife and fork to eat with!Okumaya devam et
Day 28 - Lake Maggiore - getting busier
2 Ekim 2024, İtalya ⋅ ☀️ 18 °C
Today has been our first sunny day in a long time. Although this morning was still over cast and cloudy. Charlie went off for a run after breakfast while Marla and I chilled in the van (she slept and I did some crochet). We had some lunch and then the sun came out. We went for a wander up and down the lake shore and Marla finally had a good swim and some fun. She really loved swimming and bobbing for bits of driftwood (and there’s a lot around here), and we got to enjoy some lovely sunshine. But the campsite is really getting quite busy. There seems to be a lot of campers parked on the through road rather than spaces… no one else seems to mind but we are feeling a bit cramped. So we popped over to the camp bar for another limoncello spritz (maybe three….) just to have some space and relax. I popped up to the supermarket for a bit of fresh bread to have with some pasta for tea.
We have decided to move on from here a day early, it’s going to be awful weather tomorrow and it doesn’t feel like a great place to be so we’ve decided not to stick it out for no reason, so watch this space to see where we end up tomorrow!Okumaya devam et
Day 29 - change of plans
3 Ekim 2024, İtalya ⋅ 🌫 14 °C
We made a decision yesterday afternoon to leave our campsite a day early as it was not the place for us and we’d rather cut our losses and move on somewhere less overcrowded and overwhelming.
It seems the campsite won’t turn people away even if they are full, but will let them park up on any free space for the night until a pitch becomes free the next day. I counted four randoms at least, given how smushed in we already were, it actually felt unsafe.
So we found a site just outside Turin (Camping Bella Torino) that’s in the countryside, has big pitches separated by hedges and is in the right direction for us to get to the south of France. They are also part of the ACSI scheme so essentially the dog and electricity are for free.
So we had an easy morning, it was raining but I walked up to the supermarket to pick up lunch and dinner supplies. By the time I got back it was dry so we took Marla out for a wander up and down the lake shore for the last time. It’s not the nicest as there’s a lot of driftwood washed up and it’s a very stoney beach so you have to watch your footing. Marla really enjoyed sniffing absolutely everything though, so that’s good!
We headed back to the van for lunch and then did our pre-flight checks and headed off. For the first time in ages we decided to do the drive straight through and not look for a half way leg stretch. It was about 2.5 hours, the first hour going through villages with millions of roundabouts, then we hit the open road (toll roads). Thankfully we had a much better experience this time and we were charged the right amount at each toll! We’ve not heard back from our request for a refund, but the automated reply said that they aim to reply to 85% of requests within 10 days 😂
We arrived late afternoon and instantly knew we’d made the right decision in moving on early. We are surrounded by open fields, cows, clouds that look like T-Rex’s and everyone is a good distance away from each other!
We made a korma for dinner, finishing off the little bag of frozen Quorn we bought with us. For pudding we walked a few minutes up the road to La Fattoria del Gelato, where they make and sell their own gelato on site. I had Coffee and Tiramisu and Charlie had Fior di latte and caramelised almonds. They were absolutely delicious and worth the terrifying walk along the road to get there… for a small back road, it was very busy and Marla had a big freak out at one point and almost took Charlie down. And there were a few dogs in gardens that did not like us walking past and did not hold back in letting us know! Anyhoo… we got there and back in one piece and we might even stop in again tomorrow morning on the way out of town!Okumaya devam et
Day 30 - last full day in Italy
4 Ekim 2024, İtalya ⋅ ☁️ 15 °C
We woke this morning after a mostly peaceful night (I feel like I shouldn’t complain that the cows kept me awake 😂). There is no where to walk Marla from the campsite, so we decided to head off fairly early as we could arrive at our next location anytime we wanted (more on that in a moment). So we had a light breakfast of cereal first thing. Charlie had his with some of the milk he bought from the Gelato Farm last night. He said it’s delicious. We then did our normal faffing about for a bit, fed Marla, and then I went and collected our daily bread order. Two baguettes and two croissants. The croissants were the most interesting I’ve ever had…. not unpleasant but quite cakey, covered in icing sugar and Charlie says his tastes a bit lemony. We splashed out a whole €0.60 on a coffee from the vending machine to go with it, that was very tasty indeed!
After second breakfast, Charlie walked Marla around the campsite while I finished packing up the van and we headed straight to the closest supermarket for a few more supplies. Marla took the opportunity to catch up on more sleep and I did a bit of crochet. Our next overnight stop, Agriturismo Cascina Zanot, was just over an hour away, mostly on Toll roads (which we are now professionals at) and then a bit of scary mountain road at the end.
The site is a farm that makes its own wine and preserves with nuts and fruits it grows. It’s a beautiful location and the photos really aren’t doing it justice.
We have spent the afternoon mostly just sitting outside and enjoying the fresh air. We have made a new friend - I think his name is Rudy. He the farm dog and he seems to be allowed to go where he wants, whenever he wants. He is super friendly and very keen on Marla, and I think she is just as keen on him! And Charlie has been marked as his BFF - there were tummy rubs and then he wee’d on Charlie’s leg 🤣
The lady in charge (Romina) is super helpful and we were treated to a glass of wine each straight from her latest barrel. It was delicious! We were then offered a bottle of our choosing, we chose the 2022 Dolcetto and unfortunately this was a bit of a mistake - it was nowhere near as nice as the fresh wine. We were also treated to a platter of cheese, bread, legumes and honey which was hand delivered to the van. I sprinkled the honey all over my cheese - and then regretted it as it was not the nicest honey I’ve ever had.
We then settled in to have a simple dinner of pasta and tomato sauce.
After the washing up was done, we popped on a podcast and started to relax - I was then scared half to death by a knock at the window and Romina was back, this time offering us a nightcap of home made booze! Charlie chose the Grappa made with Honey and I went for the chocolate liqueur.
Charlie describes his grappa as tasting unique, like nothing he’s ever had before. I loved my chocolate, although I’m not sure I could call it a drink as it was so thick I ended up using a spoon to finish it. It was like Nutella with rum….
More people keep turning up here, I think we are now at 3 caravans and 4 campers / motorhomes so it’s certainly very popular. It’ll be interesting to know how much this is going to cost us, as it didn’t say on the website and we realised we’ve not been told still 🤣
I’ve just taken Marla out for her last wee of the night, she and Rudy had another quick meeting and sniffing of bits - I had to pull them apart or they would spend all night out there together. Young love …..
Tomorrow is a new day, and a new country so watch this space!Okumaya devam et
Day 31 - Hello France
5 Ekim 2024, Fransa ⋅ ⛅ 14 °C
What a day! We started off waking up surrounded by fields and fields of grapes, walnut and hazelnut trees with amazing mountains in the distance. It was absolutely beautiful 😍. We left mid morning, stopping quite soon at a pet food shop because we were running low on treatos for Marla and Charlie nipped into the supermarket next door for lunch and a few supplies.
On our way again and we soon had a dilemma - Garmin was suggesting a route that would take an hour longer than Google Maps was suggesting. Google was going to take us along the wiggly Maritime Mountain roads, Garmin wanted us to drive about 40 miles in the wrong direction and then end up on some wiggly roads anyway…. so we went the quickest but most wiggly way! It’s certainly not for the faint hearted. It was up, up and up for a long time. We stopped when we thought we were at the top for a break and to take some photos - turns out Big Dave really needed a break as his fans were going into overdrive! And we actually hadn’t even got to the top. Thankfully there wasn’t much traffic on the road at all. I had to overtake a few cyclists, and I pulled in a few times to let people go round me. I had just one moment of meeting oncoming traffic and having nowhere to go, so I just pulled over as much as I could without disappearing over the edge and let the cars squeeze past me - everyone made it safe and sound! The way back down the mountain was much easier, it was shorter and it just felt so much easier going downhill rather than up.
We arrived at our camp for the night around 3pm and we were all very glad the days driving was over with!
Tonight we are staying in a Camping Car aire, it’s a network of aires that need to sign up to join, are given a card that you load up with some pennies, then tap in and tap out with and it takes off however much you owe. It’s €15 for this one, and has toilets, water and waste disposal. There’s 50 spaces and only about 5 of us here for the night, so very peaceful. We can hear a very small bit of road noise, but mostly the river next to the site.
Tonight for dinner we had some pizza’s which I’d picked up a supermarket the other day. Turns out that adding some mozzarella balls to a pizza with a very thin base will mean it pretty much will fall apart in the oven 🤦♀️ and also that if anything is a bit too far back in the oven (and therefore close to the flames), it will set on fire 🤦♀️🤦♀️ still all perfectly edible thankfully 😂
After dinner we had a wander up and down the cycle path that runs next to the river and had a play on some fitness equipment, and got attacked by the local flies.
Back to the van for a nightcap of Limoncello (which was pretty unpleasant 🤣) and watch a couple of episodes of silent witness to relax.Okumaya devam et
Day 32 - France
6 Ekim 2024, Fransa ⋅ ☁️ 17 °C
Our first full day in France and it was a little bit stressful. We’d spent the night at an aire which was lovely and quiet, but there’s absolutely nothing around, so after a quick breakfast we were on the road by 9:30. Poor Marla was not so happy to be getting back in the van for another day of driving, she was shaking for the first few minutes but was happily taking treats so we knew she wasn’t that upset with us. We had a choice whether to take the toll roads or not. It would be a 2 hour trip with tolls, or 3 without so we thought we would see how scary the French toll system is.
Turns out it wasn’t that bad, it was a system where you just pay for the bit of road to have used rather than take a ticket and pay for the distance travelled (which is what ended up costing €80 for 20 mins the other day!). Our total cost by the end of the day was €10.70 on tolls - so not too bad.
Our initial destination wasn’t actually the campsite but a supermarket. As we are now in France we couldn’t resist stopping at the Carrefour on the way. This turned out to be a bit of a nightmare as Google maps wanted me to park in the multi story which had a height restriction, so we drove around in circles a bit until I found the outside car park - which also had a height restriction. Weirdly right next to the entrance was another entrance that said Camping Car on the floor, so I drove in there.
Charlie hopped out and raced off to find the shop entrance. Being Sunday it was only open until 12:30 and we were now at 11:45 - having lost time trying to find a way in…. I parked up and me and Marla went and found a patch of grass for a wee (her not me!). Charlie came back and we headed straight over to the campsite, excited as the email confirmation said we could check in from 12! We arrived to find a sign saying reception is shut from 12-2 for lunch…. Not very helpful.
There were other motorhomes and caravans that arrived, got out and wandered around then got back in their vehicles and drive into the site - so I thought maybe I’m missing something that says to go on in. So I got back out the van and wandered around and found the door to reception was actually open. I popped in and chatted to a man who said they would open at 2 but we were welcome to have a look and see which pitch we might like to have. As it was now lunchtime and it was raining, we went back in the van and had some cheese and bread for lunch.
When more people arrived and drove through to camp, we thought maybe it’s more of a ‘pitch up and tell them after’ place. So we wandered in, found an empty pitch we liked, filled with water and parked up. When 2pm came I wandered over to reception to find it absolutely heaving.
There were about six couples, and many dogs, all ahead of me with three people behind reception. But with language barriers and carnage of some people had already pitched up into others reserved spaces, it was quite a while before I got to the front. When I did, I was given a pitch number that was different to the one we took a fancy to, when I asked to change I was told no. So off I went to park up on my pitch, unfortunately a Dutch couple had decided to use it as a parking space for their car and caravan while they booked in, and then a car and caravan arrived to pitch up where I was parked. As I say … carnage.
We finally got onto our pitch and it’s ok, but all rather dusty and there’s a lot of mosquitoes about, but it looks clean and we have a dog beach and forest to explore.
First things first, I needed a shower. It’s been a while and I feel like I have cartoon stink lines emanating from me… and then I made Charlie have one too so we both smell fresh! Then onto laundry so we can have fresh PJs and bedding. It’s reasonably priced here so we have done a full wash and tumble.
We have tried, and failed, to recreate the delicious limoncello spritzes we had in Italy.
Somehow before dinner have finished a bottle of fizzy wine and the limoncello we opened last night is half gone! Eek.
Dinner tonight was a ready meal, that we didn’t set on fire (bonus). Charlie had a spinach and ricotta lasagne, mine was the same but with courgette. Charlie bought it as a bit of a joke because he keeps ending up ordering meals out with lots of courgette - which he hates but I love. Joke was on him as my meal was delicious!
We also had a bottle of Cote de Rhone on the side, it was delicious. It’s been a bit of a running joke between us about how strong wine is. I say a good bottle is 14% (as my favourite is about that strong), and he said he’s never seen a bottle that strong. Well… he came back from Carrefour with three bottles of Cote du Rhone, all at about 14% 😂 and absolutely delicious.
This evening we have listened to a few episodes of Just a Minute - old and new ones and all very funny.
I’ve been brave and gone and found the outdoor washing up area in the dark. There’s a lot of crickets about, it sounds super tropical outside and it’s lovely to be in shorts and tshirt all day and feel a good temperature!
Sorry for the lack of photos - it’s been one of those days!Okumaya devam et
Day 33 - we’re being eaten alive
7 Ekim 2024, Fransa ⋅ ☁️ 20 °C
There are mosquitoes everywhere here and poor Charlie is being eaten alive. But we only have one full day here so we made the most of it with lots of activities for Marla, even though the weather has been awful we braved the dog beach this morning so she could finally have a proper swim. Unfortunately there were a few things going against us. We didn’t think about checking tide times, there was only a very small area of beach and it was covered in driftwood, seaweed and dog poo and the sea was very rough…. but popped Marla’s life jacket on and let her have a splash as much as she wanted to - which turned out it wasn’t that long. So we headed back to hose her down to wash away all the salt and dry everyone off - I forgot to say it was also raining….
We hunkered down for a bit longer, then Charlie popped to the little shop next top camp for some bread to go with cheese for lunch.
The afternoon was forecast for more rain, but we thought we would brave it and head out into the forest which you can access from camp through a secure gate, to keep the wild boar from rampaging through the camp! There were a few footpaths on the AllTrails app so we picked a direction and headed out. The trail started out really good, nice and flat, good surface and just as I made a comment about what a lovely walk this was, the trail literally disappeared in front of us. We backtracked and Charlie noticed a different trail a bit further away, we could reach it if we scrambled over some wet, loose and slippery rocks. For some reason I agreed to give it a go. Spoiler alert - we should have just followed the same trail all the way back to camp.
We followed the new trail, which had a lot of wild boar activity all around it, it got narrower and became overgrown, but still passable. Until it wasn’t 😂 We could see that if we went just a bit more forwards that it will join up with the trail we started on, so we pulled our hoods up and put our heads down and ploughed on through. Turns out the path wasn’t really straight ahead of us, but up a steep bank. So it was pretty much a hands and feet job to climb up and out and on to the path. The good news was that we were pretty much back at camp - not sure how that happened!
Dinner tonight was an interesting mix of stuffed pasta, flageolet beans and these strange vegetarian escalope type things which was sort of like a fake chicken mixed with spinach. It was strangely solid….
We can’t sit out, so another night wrapped up in the van watching a couple more episodes of silent witness and doing a bit more crochet. We move in tomorrow and I really hope we find some sunshine!Okumaya devam et
Day 34 - out of the darkness ….
8 Ekim 2024, Fransa ⋅ ☀️ 22 °C
We set an alarm for this morning as we wanted to make quite an early get away from this camp site. There’s nothing massively wrong with it, but a series of things just really started to bug both of us so we just wanted to leave.
Our pitch was very shaded from some big trees, which meant we didn’t get any light into the van. Because it was raining outside and the place was full of mozzies, we couldn’t even sit outside for natural light. It was almost non stop raining and the pitch had a layer of glittery, sandy mud which was getting all over the van. And the trees were dropping their fruits / seeds regularly - right into the roof of the van, all through the night ….
Put all of that together and you get a slightly grumpy pair of McCoy’s.
We have a site booked from Wednesday down near the Spanish boarder, so we just need somewhere else to stop for tonight. Having looked at the weather forecast, for a dry day we need to head inland, so that’s what we’ve done. We are heading just south of Avignon to a campsite called Camping Les Micocouliers.
So we packed up and were off camp by 10am. But first we did have a cheeky second breakfast. Charlie nipped to the shop next to camp and came back with a croissant and a pain au chocolate, our first in France and they were both absolutely amazing! So buttery and light.
Then we were off … first stop was the supermarket (obviously!). Charlie went in with a brief of dinners, lunch for today and anything else he fancied.
He bought me the most delicious sushi, freshly made today by the sushi counter within the Carrefour. We noticed that most German supermarkets have a sushi counter in store - I think it’s great! He also picked us up some chocolate and coffee eclairs for dessert.
It was a 2 hour drive, using the toll roads cost us €27.70 but saved over an hour. The roads were pretty empty and straight. It’s a bit scary how many car and HGV drivers are more than happy to text and drive - you can spot them a mile off as they are generally going 20kph slower than everyone else and are swerving over at least two lanes! Bloody terrifying at times today….
We stopped for a very quick leg stretch at an aire on the motorway, it was absolutely covered in litter, but it gave Marla the chance to go to the toilet and then she was keen to get straight back in the van.
We arrived at our next camp exactly as reception opened, so it was perfect timing.
It’s perfectly clean and tidy here, a few puddles but not much mud and plenty of sunshine this afternoon.
We had dinner from the Italian Food truck that came to site, cheese arancini. It was tasty, we just were expecting a bit of a bigger portion. But it came with a whole box of salad each which we happily devoured, I’ve been missing a bit of greenery the last few weeks!
The toilets here are a bit odd, there aren’t any toilet seats but the bowl has been moulded so it’s almost seat shaped - but not quite.
I had a shower as well this afternoon (unrelated to the shape of the toilet!), not the greatest shower but it was clean and I wasn’t being eaten alive by any bugs.
We have a fairly heavy travel day again tomorrow, but then hopefully no more moving on until the weekend.Okumaya devam et
Day 35 - we might get blown away!
9 Ekim 2024, Fransa ⋅ 🌬 25 °C
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.Okumaya devam et
Day 36 - sea swimming and aquagym
10 Ekim 2024, Fransa ⋅ ⛅ 16 °C
We’ve had a pretty busy day today! We woke up this morning pretty early thanks to our hairy alarm clock. I heard her take a massive drink just before she snuck into our bed last night, so thought it might be an early start for everyone.
We survived the weather overnight, the wind woke me up just once, so that’s not too bad. We had the mini air con unit blowing all night which helped drown out the noise of everything blowing about outside.
We wanted to hit the beach early for a swim before there were many people about. So about 8:30 we headed out, hoping we were finally following the right footpath! After about 10 mins we were rewarded with a beautiful little beach almost all to ourselves. We arrived at exactly the same time as a lady on a bicycle. She hopped off, stripped to a bikini, jumped in the sea for about 2 mins and then she left again. We put Marla in her life jacket (safety first!) and before I knew it Charlie had stripped to his trunks and was off into the sea. It was a little bit rough, and Marla wasn’t too sure about the crashing waves so she followed him gently but was soon having fun jumping over the shallow waves and doing a bit of swimming. There was quite a sharp drop off, so it went from shallow to deep quite quickly. Marla wasn’t a massive fan and neither was I. I paddled up to my knees but because Marla kept running in and out of the sea, I didn’t want to go too far in to leave her on the beach alone.
We did a bit more splashing, but I could tell she wasn’t having the best time in the rough sea, so we came back to shore and played a bit of frisbee on the beach while no one else was around. Charlie carried on swimming for a bit longer, then we all headed back to camp.
Once back we decided that Charlie was going to do some exercises around the van and I was going to go to the Aquagym class at 11. Charlie was just getting changed into his workout gear and suddenly we heard a lot of clattering by his feet. Turns out he had a load of beach pebbles in his trunks and they’d stay put the walk back 😂 Aquagym was a lot of fun, there was seven of us in total and we had Swiss, French, German and I was the only English. The instructor did everything in French and English, throwing in the only German phrase she knew every now and again “schneller” which means faster!
Back to the van for showers and lunch. We also did a couple of loads of washing (we know how to have fun 😂) but with the beautiful weather, everything dried so quickly saving us €5 as we didn’t need to use the dryer!
We went for an afternoon walk along the beach front but in the other direction than this mornings beach walk. It was an interesting mix of good, wide footpath and then sketchy steps up and down cliffs and beaches. Everything was going well until I suddenly got a sharp pain in my foot and had to stop. Turns out the blister that appeared in between my big toe and ring toe last night after wearing my flip flops for a walk had popped. I didn’t want to make it worse so we headed back, nice and gently.
Dinner tonight was some gnocchi and pesto, leftover baguette and some more flageolet beans. The gnocchi and pesto isn’t a combination we would be in a hurry to do again, but it was different.Okumaya devam et
Day 37 - adventure hike
11 Ekim 2024, Fransa ⋅ ⛅ 19 °C
We started off today with a walk, heading out from our camp site in the direction of the next suggested town, Collioure. The path started off as a nice, flat cycle path which led us to the little beach where we went for a swim yesterday. Carrying on, the path then goes up, up and up along a cliff face. There’s been a lot of erosion to the path, so there were mini diversions but these were sign posted by little yellow spray paint X’s if the path was closed and a - if it was open. We missed a lot of these - unsurprisingly!
It reminded me of the South West Coastal path, lots of up and downs along cliff edges and slightly terrifying in places.
We didn’t have a plan of time or distance, in the end we carried on until the path pretty much ran out. It was very scenic, when I could be brave enough to look up and not down at the path.
At our turn around point, we came across a little ruin which a quick Google has confirmed that its Fort Carré. The route back didn’t seem as bad - maybe it’s because I knew what to expect, but it was a relief to get back to our little beach as I knew it would be flat from there!
We decided to have lunch at the camp restaurant, we would have liked to have had dinner there but it doesn’t open until 6:30 and that’s far too late for us 😂. It’s the same menu all day, so we didn’t miss out on anything. Although it turns out that not many people want a proper meal at lunchtime, we were the only people there. We both went for the vegetarian burger. The description was rather vague - this should have been a clue that something was going to surprise us, and it did. The ‘burger’ part was a rather moist potato Rosti, with massive chunks of roasted veggies on top, all smothered in a creamy mushroom sauce. It wasn’t unpleasant, just very interesting. We had tiramisu for dessert, it was very tasty but not exactly what I would call a tiramisu. The cream was super light and airy, and it didn’t really taste very boozy.
After lunch we relaxed a bit around the camp, it’s a warm day but not too hot. Marla’s been a bit of a grumpy gus today. We thought she would sleep during lunch seeing as we had a good walk this morning, but she’s been really restless. We tried to put her in the van after lunch to sleep for a bit, but I think she has cabin fever and just wants to be outside.
We had a light tea of cheese and bread, and my new favourite flavour of crisps, Cheese Naan!
Marla finally relaxed a bit after dinner so we’ve been all settled inside catching up on some TV and I’ve been doing a little bit of crocheting.Okumaya devam et
Day 38 - Hola Spain!
12 Ekim 2024, Ispanya ⋅ ☁️ 13 °C
We woke up quite early this morning, wanting to make an early start as we had a lot to do today.
From the van could see a beautiful pink sky so I wandered off to see if I could see the beginning of the sunrise and it was absolutely beautiful!
After breakfast we made our way to the closest petrol station to top up on LPG before we go into a Spain (we don’t have the right adapter to top up in Spain 🤦♀️). Then onto the supermarket where Charlie went in for some essentials - including a giant babybel! While he was in there, I walked Marla over to the Maxizoo (pet shop) for a mooch. We picked up another bag of Edgard Cooper dog food, some treats and a sandfly repellent collar. We then all popped over to the closest DIY shop where Charlie picked up some springs. We are going to have a go at some van repairs tomorrow, I’ll explain more if it’s successful.
By now it was 11am and we needed to get a wiggle on, we had a new country to explore!
The drive was relatively straightforward, a lot of motorway and dual carriageway - until the last 13km and we turned onto wiggly mountain roads (again!). Not going to lie - it was a bit stressful as there was a lot of traffic coming towards us and the road was pretty narrow, with the drop immediately to my right….
We arrived at the camp at mid afternoon, the place is quite busy. It turns out it’s National Day of Spain and a bank holiday.
The site is quite pretty, it looks onto a massive mountain called Pedraforca which is quite stunning.
A quiet night in for us tonight and hopefully we will be able to go for an explore tomorrow in the mountains and woods!Okumaya devam et
Day 39 - you learn something new …
13 Ekim 2024, Ispanya ⋅ ☀️ 20 °C
We have just the one full day here at Camping Repòs del Pedraforca, so we went for a hike this morning before it got too hot as it was forecast to get up to 23 today. The sunrise was stunning - well, I think it was, the reflection on the mountains certainly was beautiful
Although we are in mountain territory again, we found a relatively flat route from AllTrails and Strava so thought we would give that a go. Thankfully, for once, the route was exactly as we hoped! Charlie has a track record of following Strava routes that are borderline dangerous 😂
Unfortunately a lot of what we thought were tracks were also roads used by people to get to the trails to forage for mushrooms, so we couldn’t let Marla off lead - apart from one small bit we thought was fine, she disappeared completely in some bushes and then all we could hear was splashing….. she managed to find a little stream to have a paddle in! Unfortunately that was the end of the route, so back on the lead and we had to turn back and retrace our steps.
We did come across a group of people jumping off of a bridge, I can’t call it bungee jumping as it didn’t have much elasticity to it - more like controlled swinging.
Back to camp for lunch and we had a ready meal risotto that’s been hanging around in the fridge for a while. It was still in date but I think it was a panic buy from Charlie - he doesn’t even like risotto 🤦♀️. I thought it tasted like cream of mushroom soup with some rice in it - I quite enjoyed it 😂😂
A quiet afternoon for us. It was getting a bit warm, and I started to come up in a heat rash - I’m so delicate, so Marla and me hid in the van. She slept and I did some more crochet. Charlie was more energetic and did a camp workout.
I had a shower, which was ok apart from the shower head was so clogged up that the water came shooting out and went straight up, so it was like trying to shower under the strangest fountain… when I got back from my shower, Charlie was very happy as he had got his DIY on and replaced a spring in our kitchen worktop extension which means it’s usable again! It snapped about a week ago, and we sought a bit of advice about how we could do a temporary fix.
Not wanting to be outdone by Charlie - I made a discovery, turns out we have a fly screen in our bathroom! We had no idea and have been putting the blind up and down almost daily for the last 6 months, but neither of us realised there is a fly screen immediately behind the blind.
Dinner was a case of using up more things that had been hanging around a while. Gnocchi, tinned sweetcorn and veggie ‘chicken’ dippers that came with us from home in the freezer.
It’s been a strange evening at camp, suddenly almost all other caravan and motorhomers packed up and left. Seems a bit strange to us, but I guess it makes sense if they need to get back for work or school tomorrow morning and wanted to make the most of today.
We’ve packed up all our outside stuff so we can make a move quickly in the morning. We are heading a bit further west for our next campsite.Okumaya devam et
Day 40 - Flies…. Flies everywhere
14 Ekim 2024, Ispanya ⋅ ☁️ 22 °C
Another travel day today. We woke up about 6:30, my turn to take Marla out first thing for her business. The problem with this campsite is that it’s basically straight off of the main road, so there’s not really anywhere to go for a dog walk. Thankfully most people had left the day before, with more people leaving even after I’d written yesterday’s blog! So we were able to walk around the pitches so Marla could do her business. The mountains this morning looked really misty, and the sky looks a bit orange. It’s very atmospheric!
After we’d got mostly ready to head off, we took Marla for another wander and found the on site football pitch / playing field. With no one around we let Marla off lead and she had the biggest zoomies! She definitely needed to get that out of her system. Unfortunately she didn’t like being restricted to just the pitch, and started to bugger off back up to the campsite. Thankfully we had a whistle and she responds to that - cheeky little monkey. So back on the lead, and back to do the final van prep ready for travel.
Today’s the first time I’ve had an issue when emptying the toilet, managed to get a bit of splash back on my bare leg. No worries - I can wash that off fine. Then I turned a tap on too quickly and got splashed with cassette splash back…. gross…. So back to the van for a full change and wash….
Finally on the road. Our travel time was about 3.5 hours, so we stopped after about an hour at a supermarket and it was finally my turn to go in. We had a bit of fun getting in to the car park. There was a height barrier for the car park, but not for the petrol station which you could drive through to get into the car park. So I managed to park up ok, after a bit of tight manoeuvring. Thankfully we didn’t need too much - the shop was massive but there didn’t seem to be much that was suitable for us (not bulky and vegetarian!). This was definitely a meat heavy shop, lots of different raw meat counters and many pig legs hanging around.
Back to the van to unload, have a spot of lunch and carry on our way. I did one small navigational error - stupid Sat nav said to slight right, when they meant turn right. Oh well, no harm, no foul.
The drive was pretty uneventful. We stopped at a couple of look out points so Marla could stretch her legs and do some business. It was mostly motorway / dual carriageway and the speed limit for us is 90kph - none of the big lorry’s were doing anything like that. Most were doing 100 easy, so I joined in (when in Rome!). I get annoyed when a big old lorry overtakes me, and I was getting bored of driving at less than 60mph for such long distances. Thankfully Google maps is allowed to tell me when the speed cameras are coming up again!
We arrived at site late afternoon. We were the only people here, and no one else was due to check in - so we had our choice of pitches. Only we can’t actually park on a pitch, the ground is quite delicate from recent rain, and with more forecast although we won’t get stuck, we are likely to damage the grass. So we’ve had to park on the camp road, and have our habitation door facing out pitch. A bit strange but it’s ok, especially as we got to pick a lovely view!
We set up all our gear outside ready for a relaxing evening, unfortunately the flies around here had a very different idea. The buggers are absolutely everywhere. We lit a citronella candle, no effect. Charlie covered himself in bug spray, no effect. They are on the van, in the van and out to really piss us off. We’ve made a makeshift fly swat from some cardboard. I think we’ve dispatched about 20 in the van. Hopefully we’ve got them all and we won’t have any buzzing at bedtime.
We had a small wander off site, there’s a lot of farms around here and you can certainly smell them.
We have now got some company on the campsite, a couple and their caravan arrived about an hour after we did. Thankfully they’ve gone and pitched up the opposite end of the camp.
We had some dinner in the van, falafel and cous cous, then headed to the camp bar / restaurant for a glass of wine. It was an absolute bargain, €6 for two glasses of local red and a small plate of spicy snackies.
This camp site has 407 5* reviews on Google - but I’m afraid I really don’t see the massive attraction. We are booked here for three nights based on the rave reviews, but have already decided to move on after 2 nights - that means we can have a full day tomorrow to do some washing, exercise and Marla can decompress a bit. Then we will move on. We are coming up to halfway through our trip, and we don’t want to spend time in places if we’re not having fun.Okumaya devam et
Day 41 - Thunder and lightning
15 Ekim 2024, Ispanya ⋅ ☁️ 20 °C
The forecast for today was to start off a little bit of drizzle with more rain coming later in the day, so I decided I’d like to go for a run in the morning, and leave Marla and Charlie at camp to do whatever exercise they’d like to do.
Rewinding a little, yesterday I pre-ordered a baguette and a couple of pain au chocolates from Carlos (owner), who bakes everything fresh if you pre-order. I collected these at 8:30 AM with a view to have the pastries once I’d gone for a run, they smelt so good that I almost caved and ate it while it was still warm - but I’d not been for a run in ages, so off I went up the road to do an out and back run. And I do mean up the road, it’s not flat around here! It ended up being and out and back and round and round as I ran out of road and ended up in someone’s farm, and then going the other way was so downhill that I didn’t think I’d make it back up again! The weather almost held out for me, I got wet in the last 5 minutes.
The strangest thing I saw on my run was a few barns full of cows, and they were all absolutely silent! It was really eerie - cows back home are so noisy.
Charlie did a camp workout and did some shuttle runs around the camp with Marla so she got to join in.
Then we finally got to have our pastries, I was so excited I forgot to take a photo 😂.
Then it was time to shower and set off some washing, this is the first place that use of the washing machine is included in the camp fee, so we wanted to make use of it! It’s just a shame there’s no dryer, and it started to rain more heavily once we set off the wash. No worries, we had the awning up so could rig a washing line under there.
Time for lunch and we opened up the giant babybel! That was pretty exciting. I also had a Spanish tortilla that I’d picked up from the supermarket a couple of days ago. It was strangely wet…. but it couldn’t have been awful as I ate it all!
The rain eased off a bit later on in the afternoon so we took Marla out for a walk, unfortunately there’s no trails from camp so we went up the road I ran this morning until it ran out then came back down again. I showed Charlie the quiet cows and he couldn’t believe it either!
Back to the van to feed Marla and sort out our own dinner. Stuffed pasta with a jar of tomato sauce and part baked baguettes finished off in the oven. Most of this was edible…. the bread not so much. The sauce had big lumps of carrot in, and tasted like it needed to be cooked down for a bit longer.
Then the big rain came… and the thunder and lightning…. Poor Marla was not a fan of any of this. We could see why we weren’t allowed to pitch up on the grass - it just flooded immediately. I took a step out and the water just came up out of the ground. It’s not quite like anything we’ve seen before. Unfortunately our clean washing under the awning was getting wet, so I donned my jacket and went and collected everything up. Then I realised we needed to take the awning down as it was getting quite gusty, and then saw the cargo box was sitting on the floor getting wet. Worried for the electrics that get plugged into the tow bar, I had to enlist Charlie’s help and we put the contraception back on the tow bar (we’d taken it off as it was supposed to be better under the awning….).
Now time for a quiet night it - I got the crochet out, and Charlie played on his switch.
There’s more of the same forecast for tomorrow so we are definitely moving on tomorrow in search of drier weather!Okumaya devam et
Day 42 - more thunder and lightning
16 Ekim 2024, Ispanya ⋅ ☁️ 17 °C
We moved on early from Ecocamping Rural Valle de La Fueva a day early, the weather was forecast for rain, rain and more rain and it wasn’t the best sight for Marla as there was nowhere to walk from site that wasn’t on a road.
We had a normal morning, up naturally, breakfast part one of overnight oats followed by breakfast part two of fresh croissant thanks to Carlos!
There was light rain was on and off all morning so I braved the outside world and packed up our chairs, table, cables etc before the rain got worse. Turned out the forecast wasn’t right and the sun came out mid morning! So we took Marla for a wander up and down the road to tire her out a little bit.
Back to camp for lunch and then we headed out. It was about a three hour drive, and we found an area to stop at on the way which supposedly was some ruins. Unfortunately the car park was up high and the ruins were underneath where we parked, with no way down. Thankfully it was enough for Marla to have a wee and want to get back in the van. The rest of the drive was uneventful but the last 12km was pretty much was narrow, it felt like single track but when I came face to face with a tanker, we both made it out unscathed so it must have been wide enough!
We made it to camp safely, this is quite a quiet place with a nice bar that was playing a good rock mix quite loudly! Marla wasn’t allowed inside but there were outside seats under cover so that was good, apart from the scary mantis on the window! We had a couple of beers here - very tasty indeed!
Back to the van for vegan burgers and chips (the chips were ready about 10 mins after the burgers - oops!).
And then the thunder and lightning started again…. thankfully the thunder has calmed down but there’s still a fair amount of lightning I can see in the distance. Let’s hope it stays silent for Marla’s sake!Okumaya devam et
Day 43 - oh what a night
17 Ekim 2024, Ispanya ⋅ 🌧 10 °C
Not long after finishing writing yesterday’s update, a big lightning storm rolled in. It was pretty spectacular, and thankfully we couldn’t hear any thunder to go with it. That did not last….
At about 2:30am the biggest storm rolled in and it stayed for hours. Marla was absolutely terrified of all the thunder. It really ranged from far away to being right on top of us, and I’ve never seen that amount of lightning. We even had hail at one point, although the continual heavy rain made it hard to tell.
At around 3:30am I turned around to Charlie and said that I want to go home now please……it was awful.
To make matters worse, Charlie had very kindly agreed to swap sides of the bed with me. His side has more leg room and meant I could stretch all the way out - which I can’t quite do on my own side. So when we went to bed, I was looking forward to a good nights sleep!
Roll on 7:30 am and the Marla alarm went off again…. That was not enough sleep for either of us - but it was still raining so there was no chance of getting back into bed after taking her out. It even was still thundering a little but either Marla didn’t notice or she’d gotten used to it.
The rain has carried on all day, with only a few moments respite here and there. So we’ve got the dry robes out, and all our dog towels are now disgustingly wet….
We hunkered down for the rest of the morning, just popping out to do washing up and pick up a few bits from the on site shop.
Lunch was bread and cheese - a firm Van favourite and we opened a bottle of local cider to go with it. Unfortunately the cider was quite unpleasant and it ended up going down the sink.
When it looked like a slight lull in the rain this afternoon we went out and explored a couple of footpaths from site. We started out going in one direction but then the footpath led you into a field of cows, so we went the other way and ended up having a good stroll in the woods! It was definitely worth getting out there.
Dinner was pasta with a fresh walnut sauce and some green beans.
This evening has been hiding from the weather, doing more crochet, catching up on TV while we can (we won’t be able to stream anymore once our UK sim runs out of data at the end of the month).
Moving day tomorrow and we have a few stops planed on the way, an early alarm is set - so we’re going to have an early night now.Okumaya devam et
Day 44 - finally sunshine!
18 Ekim 2024, Ispanya ⋅ ☀️ 12 °C
It was another very wet night, but thankfully no thunder or lightning this time!
I took a photo of the “fishing pond” on site that was bone dry when we arrived two days ago, and it was almost full as we drove away.
It was moving day today and the rain made everything just that little bit more of a pain in the backside…. By the time I had put away our electricity cable and closed up the cargo box, I couldn’t feel my fingers! I was very glad to have bought my dry robe (not actually a dry robe - it’s a Passenger changing robe and it’s soooo much more softer than my dryrobe!)
We did a quick turnaround leaving camp, opting more just to bung all the wet and stinky things into the bathroom and we would sort it all out when we arrive at the next place.
We stopped at a supermarket on the way, Charlie went in and came out with a lot of goodies, but weirdly couldn’t find any milk. So I popped into the Aldi next door - also no milk! Not even a place for it. So strange! But aldi did have a lot of vegetarian ’meats’, so I grabbed one of everything to give it a whirl.
We also popped into the Decathlon for essentials (warm gloves and a skipping rope!).
We made and ate lunch in the van before stopping for diesel (€1.35 a litre!), then back on the road for an hour to get to the next place.
We drove along the A12 for a while, which is essentially next to the Camino so we saw a lot of pilgrims for a while.
We arrived and had been sent the gate code in advance, which was good because there was no one at reception. A member of the bar staff was around, but they didn’t speak English so they called the owner who said to pick any pitch and they would be here tomorrow to do the paperwork. Very odd…. We thought we had the place to ourselves but there’s a caravan up above us somewhere, and a caravan and motorhome turned up later on.
We unpacked everything to give it all a dry off, and Charlie did a bit of hand washing for us. It’s lovely to be able to hang it in sunshine, although it’s not really too warm. But I’m not complaining!
We took a walk into town to find the small shop that Google said existed, and finally got some milk, although not fresh.
Dinner tonight was a couple of supermarket pizzas, both very tasty.
Hopefully we will all have a better nights sleep now it’s not raining anymore….Okumaya devam et
Day 45 - messing about in the river
19 Ekim 2024, Ispanya ⋅ ☁️ 14 °C
Today started off with a casualty…. I managed to break yet another coat hanger (this was number three - thankfully first this trip!). Rather annoying but I know I was being a bit heavy handed with it….
We all went for a run this morning. There’s a river that runs through the local town and up into the woods and beyond, so we all headed out together. A couple of wrong turns thanks to me (who didn’t even have any form of navigation going 🤦♀️)…. Marla and me turned back after 2.5km and left Charlie to do more distance by himself. To be honest - we needed a bit of space, Marla was pretty confused as to why I was dog napping her and wasn’t that keen to run all the way back, so we had fun and did some splashing in the river along the way. Lots of downed trees to go around, under and over to keep us on our toes, but otherwise a lovely route.
Back to camp for some tasty post run treats for Marla - we still have some rabbit ears and chicken feet so she had a small feast.
We both showered off and did some hand washing of our sports clothes. There’s no washing machine here so we got out our little magic washing bag and did it the old fashioned way. The sun was shining and there’s a good breeze, so there’s was a good chance of everything drying quickly. We ended up with just a couple of damp socks left, so that’s pretty good!
Lunch was some tinned veggie hot dogs that I’d bought with us from the UK. We also rehydrated some of our onions and fried those up too, and put it all in some brioche rolls that we’d picked up a while ago. Overall - they were pretty tasty!
Marla refused to come inside while we ate our lunch, so once we’d finished we went back out and joined her outside.
After lunch had gone down, we went for a wander down the other end of the river until it ended in the town. Then headed back up again and did some more of the route we did this morning, but letting Marla jump in and out the river as much as she wanted to.
Dinner tonight was stuffed pasta in a tomato sauce - seems to be a van staple. We were going to have falafel and cous cous, but it seems what I thought was cous cous in our cupboard was actually a curry mugshot…. So that wasnt happening.
I did some crochet this evening, then realised I’d used the wrong sized hook so had to undo a load of work…. But it’s not like I don’t have the time to fix it properly.
We also caught up on the latest taskmaster - although it almost killed me. I took a big drink of squash at the wrong time and laughed while my mouth was full…. that was unpleasant and poor Marla didn’t know what was going on.
Moving day tomorrow, but not a massive drive so we aren’t going to be in a huge rush.Okumaya devam et
Day 46 - moving day again
20 Ekim 2024, Ispanya ⋅ ☁️ 20 °C
We moved on from Camping La Trapera today, heading towards Portugal but having one last stop in Spain before we cross the boarder. Today’s destination is Camping El Astral.
I loved the location of La Trapera but not so much the site. The toilets smelt very strange, and it just felt a bit odd.
We had one last walk up and down the river in the morning so Marla got some proper exercise. We should have left the site by 12, but with no one actually there running the camp, we were a bit more laid back and had lunch before heading out. I had another Spanish omelette - it was still a bit runny but very tasty. Charlie had cheese and oat crackers - we very much missed having fresh daily bread - but being Sunday everywhere in town was shut.
The drive today was pretty straightforward, the roads getting increasing larger until we hit the motorway for 150km.
We arrived and checked in no issues. The pitches are really big and we have one that you can drive through, so there isn’t really a front or back.
Marla made friends with the Bernese Mountain dog and Chocolate Lab on the pitch opposite us - when I say made friends, I mean she was surrounded by them, so she pulled herself free from Charlie and ran to the owners of the other dogs for protection 😂. She’s a funny girl.
We had a glass of wine (or two) in the sun before heading over to the camp bar / restaurant for a couple of beers and a cheesy pizza (which seems to be the safest vegetarian option).
We had a good heart to heart over dinner about what life is going to be life next year - what our expectations and fears were. It all got a bit deep - but we’ve had a lot of time in our own heads these last 45 days so it was good to be able to have an honest conversation about everything.
Marla was being her usual self over dinner, looking like she was asleep then barking her head of because someone walked past and disturbed her - so we decided to head back to the van for the night. We watched a couple of Silent Witnesses - it’s not going to be long until we’ve seen every single episode. I wonder what we will do in the evenings then! Hopefully it’ll soon be warm enough to sit outside soon - as we head to warmer areas.Okumaya devam et
Day 47 - Tordesillas
21 Ekim 2024, Ispanya ⋅ ☁️ 20 °C
This morning we decided to do our own things. I wanted to explore the town and we knew Marla wouldn’t appreciate walking around town so Charlie took Marla for a run.
It was a very misty morning which made the town look eerie. It’s a very historic town, which has had a lot of modern buildings built up around the old.
I bought some goodies for lunch while having my wander round.
When I got back to camp, Charlie and Marla had been back a little while, they had covered 9km in 50 minutes. Poor Marla wouldn’t have known what was going on 😂
Lunch was tasty fresh bread from town and I braved the vegetarian ’meat’ with pickles - it was interesting…. Not unpleasant but I wouldn’t buy it again. Dessert was what looked like a chocolate sausage roll - it was absolutely delicious.
This afternoon it was nice and sunny so we took advance of this and sat outside. I got a lot of crochet done! I’ve finished the main blanket now, but there’s still a lot to do. Pictures will follow when I’ve finished.
We had a surprise guest in the van this afternoon - a little sparrow had hopped on in. It scared the life out of me when I came into the van. It seemed to be stuck around the drivers area, so I went round to open the door but as soon as I left the van it flew out. Little bugger left us a small present on the kitchen worktop 🤦♀️🤣
We had an afternoon walk from site, there are many sandy paths to explore with lots of pine trees and the biggest pine cones I’ve ever seen!
Dinner tonight was a simple fare of chips, sweetcorn and vegetarian escalopes.
Two more episodes of Silent Witness - just a final two to go!!Okumaya devam et
Day 48 - Portugal
22 Ekim 2024, Portekiz ⋅ ☀️ 20 °C
Today we got up relatively early thanks to Marla pickles who wanted to go out to the toilet before 7 am then we had a slow couple of hours. I had a shower, we packed up the van and then we went off for a walk in the Sandy Pine forest before we had to leave at 10:30.
We headed for a lidl that we’d found on the way, but it turned out to have extremely inappropriate car parking. It was midday by now so we parked up by the side of the road and ate our sandwiches that we’d made before we left.
Then we plotted a new destination of a Portuguese supermarket and headed off over the border to Portugal. We didn’t understand the Toll system so it was a bit confusing once we got into Portugal. We may have ended up paying our toll three times once using my credit card and Charlie might have registered twice. Who knows…. But we got to our Portuguese supermarket which I was able to park absolutely fine. Charlie went inside came back with some goodies. It was all very fishy and they didn’t have much in the vegetarian way, but we have some good staples and treats.
Then we carried on the campsite which is lovely quite a big terraced campsite with lots and lots of pitches but we wanted a sunny one so we have parked next to some Germans.
Also the time zone from Spain to Portugal is different, that was a bit of a surprise. We didn’t know that was gonna happen. And it’s going to change again on Sunday - we aren’t going to know if we are coming or going!
Dinner tonight was falafel, couscous, tomatoes and cucumber. And dessert was some pastel de nata that Charlie got from the supermarket - very delicious!
After dinner I did some crochet while Charlie hunted all of the flies that had snuck into the van!Okumaya devam et
Day 49 - decompression day
23 Ekim 2024, Portekiz ⋅ ☀️ 22 °C
First full day in Portugal and we had a very relaxed day today, well I did and Charlie worked hard.
Marla did very well this morning and didn’t wake us up until just about 7 am. Considering the clocks changed when we entered Portugal, it was really 8 am and she would have eaten her breakfast by then, so she did very well.
We were going to go for a hike today, but Marla looked absolutely shattered so we just let her relax, rest and decompress. We didn’t really know where we were going so it probably would’ve been a bit stressful anyway. ii’s been absolutely beautiful weather here, a bit windy but that not a bad thing. It meant we probably kept a bit cooler than we would have otherwise.
I did some crocheting this afternoon and Charlie did exercises and some yoga. Dinner was a vegetable curry all handmade by Charlie, it was very tasty indeed. He says it didn’t look very pretty but I thought it was beautiful. Impressively it was made with everything from tins so tinned spinach, chickpeas, trapped potatoes and rice. We were going to have a bag of pre-made dhal with it that we bought from home, but we realised it had a hole in it and we didn’t know when that appeared best not to eat it. This evening we caught up on some TV, just generally relaxed. Moving day tomorrow so watch the spaceOkumaya devam et