April 2017

The weather on Tuesday was a bit mixed when we got up, so we went for a bike ride up and down the coastline – about 25 km in total, to see what other resorts in the area had to offer.  It was easy cycling, mostly along the seafront. Frankly, the area is a collection of ghost towns; there are huge numbers of empty apartment blocks, two to three deep, which, whilst completed have hardly anyone living in them. I expect that they’ll be occupied once the season starts, but for the moment it’s eerily quiet. There is also evidence of the 2008 crash hereRead More →

We left Ruidera early on Wednesday to make the trip across the remainder of central Spain to the east coast and the Costa Blanca. We’d booked into a site at a small town called Daimus, just outside Gandia, which in turn connects to the main train line to Valencia, and is only about 20 km away from Denia, where we plan to catch the ferry to Ibiza, so as you can see, quite convoluted, but we reckoned this would be a good base. The site, Camping Aventura, was the only one we could find in the area which got moderately good reviews, although frankly thereRead More →

We left Córdoba to travel to Ruidera, in the Parque Natural de Ruidera which is a bit like the Lake District but without the rain! It’s in central Spain about 200 km east of Madrid, about half way to the east coast where we’re heading, so seemed like a sensible spot to visit over the hectic Easter period, which is huge in Spain. In fact we saw our first traffic jams on the way to Ruidera, thankfully heading in the opposite direction so we congratulated ourselves on the foresight to go somewhere quiet to see out Easter in peace. We entered the national park onRead More →

After a long, hectic day in Seville – I should mention that we got lost on our way back from the station, and ended up walking through some much less attractive areas of Córdoba – we had a quiet day catching up on cleaning, laundry and food shopping. Easter week in Spain is very different to in the UK, we were warned that nothing would be open over the weekend, not even food shops. So we stocked up our tiny fridge in preparation, especially as our next stop is in a national park in the mountains. Feeling very pleased with ourselves we headed back intoRead More →

We’d booked our train tickets to Seville online so set off for the station in plenty of time for a coffee and the security check. We hadn’t expected this but we and our bags were scanned, normal procedure here apparently, and found our seats on the spotlessly clean train which departed bang on time. We hadn’t mentioned before the beautiful drive from Seville to Córdoba, but it really is spectacular with mile after mile of olive trees, vines, long rows of cypress trees and even hedges made of prickly cactus. The Spanish seem to have very organised farming systems and everything is planted in perfectRead More →

Córdoba is a great city with loads of history, dating back to Roman times but by far and away the most spectacular building is the cathedral which is called the Mesquite which actually started out life as a mosque and was later converted into a church when the Christians took over from the Moors in the 13th century. The King later admitted that he’d made a mistake by insisting that a cathedral be build in the middle of the mosque (which was big enough to house 40,000 worshippers at its peak. It also faces the wrong way, facing south instead of south east where MeccaRead More →

After a longer journey than we expected (this seems to be recurring problem) we eventually arrived at our campsite at about 3pm – it had been an easy journey as the roads were very quiet apart from the busy Seville ring road, just a long way and to be honest a bit boring. However we saw lots of storks nesting on lampposts and the Osborne bull signs soon reminded us we were back in Spain! We settled in to our pitch and went to explore the local area – the weather was beautiful and we walked on the pathway alongside the beach to the marina.Read More →

We left Lagos at 9 to make the long trip to Cadiz – some five hours distant. the journey was uneventful, and very quiet with it being a Sunday, when the roads have little traffic particularly wagons which don’t travel at weekends. However, I’m going to gloss over Cadiz today other than to say that it’s a lovely place we will definitely visit again. For now I want to concentrate on the logistics and the campsite. We decided to stay across the bay from Cadiz at the resort of El Puerto de Santa Maria which is a typical Spanish town and a ferry ride fromRead More →

Friday we’d earmarked to return to Sagres for a day on the deserted beach, as the forecast was good once again. We did indeed have a super day on the beach, but it was far from deserted – in fact it was littered with surfers, both experienced and beginners, who were shadowed by their surfing teachers shouting encouragement. When we’d been here in Wednesday the surfers had all been in the other bay – clearly the surf was up on this bay today so they were all here instead. However It made for a very interesting day watching them all until we had to vacateRead More →