Week 25: The road to nowhere
- Feb 21, 2022
- 5 min read
Our stops this week:
· 2 nights at Camping Rio Mar (near Oliva)
· 2 nights at Camping Sol de Calpe Austral (in Calpe)
· 3 nights at Camping El Tranquilo (in the middle of nowhere… somewhere north of Murcia)
After a bit of a false start (thanks to the Adblue problem) last week felt like our first proper go at touring and getting to know Spain a little better. Once Gordon was sorted, we headed down the coast to a campsite right on the beach, this was great for me and Bear (we both love the coast) but not ideal for Yvette as she has an aversion to sand… which triggers her already ‘mildly obsessive’ need to clean, the van and dog got de-sanded at least three times a day!
The beach and campsite at Rio Mar, I couldn't fly the kite and take a picture at the same time... so here is a picture of it on the beach ready to take off.
The campsite was really busy and whilst the pitch was a decent size, it took a fair bit of manoeuvring to get Gordon parked up, thanks to the low overhanging trees and very narrow alleyway in between the pitches. This seems to be a common theme of Spanish campsites, they really try to squeeze in as many spaces as possible, which usually means the roads around the campsite are very narrow with tight corners. I’ve no idea how some of the bigger vans managed to get in and out… it looks like a lot of them are here for several months, so they probably arrive and leave when the campsite is much quieter.
We’ve also noticed that new arrivals to any campsite are a bit of a spectator sport for the other residents, the Germans and Dutch especially like to come out, stand in the middle of the road and watch you shifting forwards and backwards into your pitch, we find it quite amusing, watching them watching us. We spent a great few days enjoying the beach, flying the kite and watching Bear getting brave paddling in the sea… although not quite brave enough to go for a proper swim just yet.
For some reason Bear likes to crawl along and drag his belly through the sand!
On the way down to Calpe, we stopped off at Denia… this is a really pretty little port town with a castle high up on a hill in the centre and a marina full of expensive looking boats.
This is where the main ferry crossing to Ibiza and the other Baleric islands leaves from.
We spent a couple of nights in Calpe, which is a much bigger resort town… the first campsite we tried was full but luckily there was another one just down the road and a short distance from the town and beach.
We found out later that the campsites are much busier than usual for this time of year because Morocco has stopped all ferry crossings due to Covid and lot of the winter snow-birds that usually spend the winter in Morocco are currently hanging around in Spain waiting for the Moroccans to let them in. Fingers crossed this will happen soon, as we’ve had to book a few campsites in advance and whilst it’s easy enough to do this by email or online, we’d prefer to have more flexibility and less need to plan ahead, especially as we often don’t know how long we’ll want to stay somewhere until we get there.
The beach and campsite at Calpe.
Despite being busy the campsites we have stayed at so far have been very quiet at night, it seems the campers here are very considerate of their neighbours, more than we’ve found in the UK… no loud music or TV’s playing at night. Although I’m sure when the evenings get warmer more people will sit outside later at night… as the temperature drops quite quickly after sunset, people tend to retreat into their vans. We’re currently up in the hills north of Murcia and the temperature here drops so much at night, we’ve actually had to turn the heating on at night! Unfortunately we’ve also got a couple of noisy and inconsiderate neighbours here, that have woken us up a few times… one is a Cockerill and the other is a donkey, although Bear seems to be oblivious to them.
There are very few English people around, or at least in the places we have been to so far, it’s great to see and hear such a mix of nationalities and languages after two years of on and off lockdowns at home. I would guess that there are more Germans and Spanish vans on the campsites than any other, although we’ve seen a lot of Dutch, and a fair few French and Swiss. In Calpe, where the pitches were particularly close to each other… I spent a good 15 or 20 minutes sneakily listening to our neighbours chatting before I worked out which country they were from… I eventually worked out they were Glaswegians!
Whilst in Calpe we went to visit the vet to get a Spanish EU passport for Bear, this was much easier than I had expected, they’ve clearly dealt with a few Brits needing to find a better way to travel abroad with their pets since Brexit. We paid €20 for the passport plus €35 for a rabies jab (the jab was for Bear not us)… this gives him a passport which allows unlimited trips in and out of the EU for the next two years… this is compared to the Animal Health Certificate we had to get a few weeks ago from our vet at home which cost over £140 and only covers him for a single trip of no more than 120 days. So Bear is now the proud owner of both a British and a Spanish passport, lucky dog! Unfortunately the rabies jab made him feel a little unwell but he was back to normal the next day.
Our last stop of the week was high up in the hills about an hour from the coast, we we’re a little surprised when satnav told us to turn off the main road and follow a dusty track for the last half a mile but this did eventually lead us to an oasis of a campsite, surrounded by olive, orange and lemon trees, although there isn’t much fruit on the trees this early in the year. The pitches are large (probably 3-4 times bigger than the campsite in Calpe) and the campsite is really spacious, surrounded by miles of tracks to walk and cycle. The air feels different away from the coast and the pace is definitely much slower here, if only we can persuade the Cockerill and Donkey to have a lie in tomorrow morning!
Some pics of the middle of nowhere! The first picture is the dusty track to the campsite, the rest are of the surrounding area... very different here to the busy resorts on the coast, amazing how much the scenery changes in such a short distance.
Comments