Vallongas

Last night around 9pm Barky McMutt Mutt started off again. We’re not sure what started him off but he was relentless and after us both going outside in the dark and telling him to shut up we gave up and moved.
We just drove probably 50 meters away back up onto the road over the railway lines and back down the other side.
Yes we could still here him but it wasn’t nearly as loud and luckily after watching an episode of the x files he was quiet for about 15 minutes which meant I fell asleep. Ellie heard him again through most of the night but after my bike ride I was dead to the world until 7:30am.
After a coffee we unmade the bed and then had breakfast and tidied Wanda. Today was going to have to be a day of sorting things out for being off grid so I checked park4night and found some locations to top everything off.
We left the Via Verde Ojos Negras station at 9:50am heading back in the direction of Navajas before picking up the A7 and heading south. Today we were leaving Valencia and heading to Alicante. Our first stop was to do the washing and we’d found a great little place in the town Xativia about 60 miles away.
It had a fuel station for diesel and an on-site laundrette so we washed our clothes there which took around an hour, then filled Wanda up and then went to Lidl to stock up on fresh stuff which was next door.
In total we were in Xativia for almost 2 hours and we left there at just after 1:30pm heading for the little town of L’olleria which had 2 motorhome spaces and a dump and fill station. It was only an 11 mile drive which took around 20 minutes and the station wasn’t the nicest but it was free and convenient so we couldn’t complain.
Time was ticking on now and we left L’olleria at 2:20pm with 64 miles to go.
We passed through Valencia city centre which was a nightmare as the Spanish and French have absolutely no idea how to use roundabouts and all lane discipline goes out the window when they come to one so we had a couple of scary moments. Especially when a taxi driver on my right cut across us and three lanes of traffic and then back again.
We continued down the A7 passing by Benidorm and it’s huge high rise hotels in the distance, and then Alicante before finally reaching the town of Elche. This is where we would be spending the night and first impressions weren’t looking good as we passed over roundabout to roundabout and industrial areas before finally turning off the main drag and out into the mountains.
Just 2 miles away from all the traffic we found a huge car park in the Explanada del pantano de Elche, a massive national reserve with hiking and biking trails. It was a beautiful parking spot and we had a nice little area all to ourselves.
It was now 4:30pm, we had covered 156 miles today and stocked up on everything so although it seemed like a day of nothing we had achieved quite a lot. Washing done, fuel done, shopping done, water and toilet done.
As we sat down for dinner the sun started to set and finally after nearly a month on the road we had our first amazing sunset.Read more