7th Apr HORT DE SORIANA – BENICASSIM

11.30 last night we were sitting, reading our Kindles (thanks Steph!), when we heard this noise outside – it was the ‘dustbin men’; in Spain and Portugal you take your refuse to large community bins and it’s collected daily (it’s really efficient) these men were working at 11.30 p.m. on Good Friday (impressive).

7.30 a.m. I heard something outside; I looked out of the window and there were a couple of cars outside the gates (waiting to get in; by 7.50, when the man unlocked the gates (phew!), there were seven cars – they roared in and parked; we have no idea why they were here so early we left at about 11.00 and no other cars had arrived.

The aire we headed for at Benicassim was fine, but alongside a main road – however it did have water (double phew!!), so we filled up and then drove into town to explore (to look for somewhere to wild camp), we found ...... Lidl’s (there were a couple of vans parked up)!!! We parked, had lunch and then got our bikes out.

It was a lovely day when we set out, so I changed into my short shorts. Benicassim has dedicated cycle paths and a circular route of 15k around the town. We headed towards the beach; after a couple of miles it got quite windy, then it started raining (huge great plops) – we cycled on, it got sunny again.

Spot the pretty bike!

 We arrived at the beach and cycled for a couple of miles, adjacent to the sea, then it started to rain again, and it was bloody cold – a slushy hailstorm!!!

You can see the storm coming in from the sea

 It was obviously a freaky occurrence as people were coming out of cafes and bar trying to catch the hail in their hands (we of course were used to it coming from Wales!). During our cycle ride we spotted a patch of waste ground with a few campervans parked, so we moved the van to join them (we are genuine travellers now, see below!).

Tomorrow we’re heading for a ‘real’ camp site, as we need to have showers, wash our hair (me), shave (Brett), and do our laundry – it’s going to cost us 8€. We might stay there for a couple of days.

6th Apr IBI - HORT DE SORIANA

Well we had an ‘interesting’ night; yesterday evening we were joined, at the aire, by a Spanish family in a caravan (we know they were Spanish as one of our obsessions these days is checking number plates, looking for British ones!) and they had a generator to run their electrics - which they kept running until gone 3.00 a.m. this morning (most campsite rules say that generators can only be operated up until 11.00 p.m.).

We had no idea what time the procession was, so made our way into town just after 11.00; we timed it really well; we could hear this drum beat in the distance which we followed down the hill where we could see a crowd of people. The drummers were marking time for the participants who were rocking slowly from one foot to the other as they shuffled forward (it reminded me of a voodoo funeral in a James Bond film). There were two huge (heavy) floats being carried on the shoulders of some of the participants; one float had a statue of Jesus carrying his cross

this float was followed by two men carrying a cross each, on the other float was a statue of the Virgin Mary with lots of gold ornamentation, candles and flowers (this float was carried by fifteen people front and back).

 The floats were accompanied by people dressed in these really spooky outfits (like purple and black versions of the Ku Klux Klan) and women dressed up in black lace mantillas, black dresses, black tights and high heels carrying very big lit candles (one lady was chewing gum!).

and this was all accompanied by the very loud drum beat (it was impressive).

We had a shortish trip to the aire in the orange groves; the directions in the aire book didn’t bode well “These are old roads lined with orange groves and villas and can be narrow, single lane with passing places at times. GPS will not know all, or the best, roads. Allow some time to find it”!!! Sat Nav had a field day, and due to the book, we followed her instructions – at one point we came around a corner and there was this water pipe across the road, up in the air (with a warning, 4m sign next to it) fortunately we are 3m but there was no prior warning so a bigger campervan would have been in trouble (we are usually one of the smallest vans on sites, there are some really big ones). The road did indeed get very narrow but we found it in the end, unexpectedly there was this fenced off country park type area, with parking bays, picnic tables, children’s play area; but we weren’t sure as we couldn’t see the usual ‘aire’ sign – so we checked with this man, who appeared to be in charge, and he showed us somewhere to park. Then we noticed that all the parking bays had reserved notices and the ‘aire’ sign had been covered up – it was obviously closed for an Easter event. Bearing in mind this aire is in the middle of nowhere the car park was full of cars; families had set up tables and chairs and were picnicking and barbecuing.

CYCLING OVER ORANGES: Good title for a book?

Well that’s what we were doing this afternoon; it’s peculiar there are ripe oranges on the trees (and on the ground) but the trees are also in bloom (the smell’s intoxicating). We returned to the van about 6.00 and there were still cars arriving; the last ones stayed until about 9.00.

This was my favourite house, it was a lovely green that doesn't show in the photo

But this one was rather nice too!

Brett has just been out to lock up the van; we double lock the habitation door (we have a bar that goes across the outside) and we put a chain between the driver’s and passenger’s doors – we do this when we’re wildcamping or at aires so we feel quite safe. But while he was out he noticed that the gates to the park have been locked – so we’re locked in!!!! We’re hoping that the man with the key isn’t on holiday over Easter, or we could be here until Tuesday, which could be a real problem as there’s no water!!! We can’t believe it, all the aires have water and now we’re had two in a row without (actually I’m lying this one has water, with notices saying it’s not for drinking as it comes straight off the mountain).

5th Apr PUNTAS DE CALNEGRE – IBI

We had a lovely peaceful night and slept well, it was warm again last night (Tuesday night was cold we had to add extra bed clothes).

We continued along the road we drove in on yesterday, alongside the long sandy beach, then out of the village back through the acres of polythene, and sometimes tunnels that seemed to be made of nylon netting – all very ugly. We ended up driving through what looked like a factory forecourt; basically it was factory fruit and vegetable growing.

We drove to an inland aire today; we let Sat Nav show us the way, but when we got there it looked deserted and the water tap was missing. We concluded that the aire had been moved to another part of the town and set off to find it. We drove through the town, past the police station, then the road became narrow (and one way) as we negotiated the church, then there, in front of us, were two roads with weight (5 tonnes) and height (2.7m) limits – our weight was fine, but we’re 3m tall, and to our right was a VERY narrow street with low over hanging balconies and about a 1 in 2 incline. And Brett’s response to this? “We’re stuck”!! I got out to investigate our options; Brett having already decided that I was going to go up the one way road, stop the traffic from coming down, and he was going to drive the wrong way up it!!! Then we reasoned that as there was no warning before the one way street there must be a way out – it was behind us through what looked like a small car park the other side of the church. Phew!

 We didn’t find another aire so went back to the deserted one; we filled up with water Tuesday morning, so we’re ok for another day.

When we walked around the town later, about 6.00, there were masses of people milling around – mainly coming out of the church where the bells were going absolutely mental. Most of the shops were shut with shutters down and some of the roads had barriers across with notices saying they were shut off tomorrow (Good Friday) for a procession, we’ll have a walk in the morning to have a look. We found the supermarket, it was heaving (just like Tesco the week before Christmas) it’s obviously shut tomorrow (someone told us that at Easter shops were shut from the Thursday to the Tuesday) so we got in a few extra supplies.

Tomorrow’s aire is in an orange grove, we’re looking forward to that – hope it’s got water otherwise we’ll be in trouble.

4th Apr VENTA DEL PAREL - PUNTAS DE CALNEGRE

We didn’t sleep that well last night; the aire, which was next to a hotel and garage, was also an overnight stop for lorries. We were woken up at 1.30 a.m. there were two lorries parked end to end and they spent about an hour transferring the load from one lorry to the other (very noisily), then they both drove off – seemed a bit suspect to me!

In the end we didn’t visit the cave house village today as it would have been an extra 60 miles of travelling; we think that it was the village where we first noticed the strange dwellings from the motorway anyway. As we drove along we still saw lots of caves at the side of the road, some with a house facade, some just holes – I think they are manmade dug out of a kind of sand stone/soil, Brett can’t see how the roofs don’t leak when it rains!

We got the timing for our Barcelona trip completely wrong – we were heading to arrive Easter weekend (we had not taken on board that it was Easter); so now we’re taking our time travelling there and visiting a few more aires/wildcamping – we are much more confident wildcampers now than when we first started this adventure.

Tonight we are camping on a beach; we’re literally 20 metre from the Mediterranean Sea!! We’ll be lulled to sleep by the sound of waves gently lapping the sea shore, so we should sleep a lot better than last night!

I don't like to brag but ...... just looked where we're parked!!!

This is an agricultural area with acres and acres of tomatoes growing under polythene (they are already ripe), fields of lettuces, all opposite long stretches of sandy beaches with a backdrop of mountains.

3rd Apr TORRE DEL MAR - VENTA DEL PAREL

I breakfasted on Lidl’s Greek style yoghurt (comfort food, as I often have it for breakfast at home), fresh strawberries and Dorothy’s Lemon Curd (which I am addicted too – sorry Tamsin you have a rival!) – delicious. Oh yes, and all this was whilst overlooking the sea, even though it is a little bit bleak this morning.

We had a day of travelling today to an aire about fifty miles beyond Granada. We had wanted to visit Alhambra Palace (Moorish), but tickets have to be bought in advance and when Claire looked online they were sold out until well past Easter except for a couple of days with an 8.00 a.m. entry – so all we could do was look at it from the outside; one day we’ll be more organised and go back as it looks well worth a better visit.

Sat Nav was quiet today, we couldn’t make her talk (she wasn’t on mute, I checked and the volume was turned up to 90%); I turned her on and off, I muted and unmuted her, I turned the volume down and up; and still she wouldn’t utter a word. In the end I found a setting that was blank and when I selected ‘British English’ she suddenly came to life – don’t know what that was all about.

As we were driving along the motorway above the Sierra Nevada Mountains we saw these very interesting houses; they were underground cave houses, all you could see was a door built into the rock  and a chimney coming up through the soil – it was impossible to take a photo, as we were on a motorway.

Anyway once we had camped up for the night we went for a walk and found a few of these houses closer to the road; again the photos don’t do justice to these fabulous dwelling, but then we came upon this ........................

I'm standing on the roof, which is at road level

The walls had to be about four foot thick; Brett so wanted to go in, but the door was locked. It was no longer lived in (as part of the roof had fallen in), but furniture was still inside and we could still smell the smoke when we looked down the chimney.

Further along the road was a modern version of the cave house; it’s quite hard to visualise but you can see the chimney coming up through the vineyard and to the left is a roof-light/skylight (standing about 3 foot proud of the soil).

We ‘googled’ Andalucian cave houses; about 10,000 people still live in them today and their ages vary from Moorish to modern day. We found a village close by which we plan to visit tomorrow.

2nd Apr LOS ROMANES – TORRE DEL MAR

Hoorah, good old Will, our book arrived this morning; so we are very happy. We’ve had a wonderful few days at Dorothy’s; we’ve been very well looked after, entertained and fed (and we did our laundry) and of course it was absolutely lovely to see Henry and Claire before they leave for Thailand at the end of the month.

Henry has always loved communing with wildlife; his ‘pet’ here is a tree frog – he’s especially proud of this picture.

Tree Frog

I don’t know how it happened but somehow we left much later than planned (it was nearly lunch time) so we decided that a 150 mile drive was not a good idea; we drove to Torre Del Mar to look for a campsite and came upon a group of campervans wildcamping – so we’ve joined them.

We had a walk around town; I was propositioned by a man - I was quite flattered until Brett pointed out that he was roaring drunk!!!

Tonight we went out for a meal (tapas); we chose seven dishes (half portions, we’re not greedy we just like to try lots of different flavours), as we were giving our order to the waiter, at dish five, he said “enough, no more” and walked off, he wouldn’t let us order anything else – he was dead right we were absolutely stuffed (and we left food); our favourite dish was aubergine with honey, wow it was so delicious – it was fried, sliced, aubergine (no skin, and quite dry), drizzled with (we think) maple syrup; I don’t know if we’ll be able to recreate it, we’ll certainly give it a go. The same waiter, when we tried to order 'Chopitos' (small grilled squid) said it was not for the English, we wouldn't like it as it was black (at this point he was pointing to his black jumper); we can only surmise that it was cooked in squid ink - now I wish we'd over ruled him and given it a go.

30th Mar – 1st Apr LOS ROMANES

Friday: I’m sitting outside on the terrace, overlooking the lake, watching the sun come up and writing my blog – it’s a pretty idyllic spot!

The view from Dorothy's house - I have to admit cheating, it's Claire's photo from last year!

On the down side there are several abandoned properties around as the land is unstable; ground has slipped away and parts of gardens/swimming pools etc have disappeared down the hill, some houses have large cracks in the walls and now need expensive under-pinning and retaining walls to make them safe.

Today’s trip was up into the hills to the National Park for a picnic. I’m not going to go into details; suffice to say the road had a very loose surface, it got very narrow, with very steep drops to the side; at times Brett, Henry and I had to get out of the car, as there were such deep crevasses in the road surface, that it was in danger of ‘bottoming out’. It was not a journey you would enjoy if you don’t like heights (I don’t like heights!!). However once we got up there the views were beautiful and we had a lovely picnic of Aberico pate with baguette, crisps and sparkling water.

We found a pool full of orange and green toads mating and then Brett thought he found Wild Fennel and proceeded to eat it – it wasn’t Fennel!!!! I was pretty confident it wasn’t Hemlock or Dropwort Water Hemlock, but I was still worried that it might be poisonous - we tried to identify it when we got back to the house (I had picked some in case I had to take Brett to hospital!), but to no avail; it looked like very lush Florence Fennel fronds but it didn’t have the smell of Fennel (and all the internet could come up with was that Hemlock could be mistaken for Fennel – very worrying). Brett seems to have suffered no side effects; apparently with Hemlock poisoning the symptoms can come on within 15 minutes and you can be dead within the hour!

Our book ‘French Passion’, which we had hoped Henry and Claire could bring out with them, didn’t arrive at William’s until after they had left; so it’s now been posted out to this address, we’re hoping it arrives before we leave on Monday.

Saturday: Whilst Claire and I amused ourselves today, painting and sketching, Brett and Henry did some chores for Dorothy (Claire’s gran); painting walls and gate posts, pruning shrubs etc. The gate post painting was ‘fun’! They had to run the gauntlet of the farm dogs!!! To get to Dorothy’s villa you have to drive through a farmyard with large warning notices (in Spanish, but roughly translated) “Keep Out” and “Dangerous Dogs”; and as you drive through the farmyard about eight barking and growling dogs run at your vehicle. So off Brett and Hen went with their tin of paint and paintbrushes, with instructions to pick up a stone to threaten the dogs if they came at them! Then the dogs started making this horrific noise ..................... when Brett and Hen reappeared (they hadn’t been eaten by dogs!) they were quite upset as the dog noise that we’d been hearing was some of the dogs attacking the boar, and him fighting back – in the end the dogs were caught and tied up, and the boar appeared to be ok.

Sunday: We had a lazy day today; we went ‘scrumping’, we picked lemons, rosemary and lavender, from the garden of the house next door (one of the ones with cracks in the walls) to take with us when we leave tomorrow – the van smells lovely.