Spain really is a beautiful country and although we’ve had our fair share of rain the country looks amazing. We’ve driven past miles and miles of olive groves, orange groves that smell absolutely incredible, almond trees in full blossom and miles and miles of green fields. Although the scenery is amazing Morocco has the edge for making the journey interesting always something or someone to photograph not many donkey and carts on Spanish roads.
The weather really is hit and miss. We’re back to wearing our winter coats and it feels like hat, scarf and gloves might be making another appearance. We’re heading north-east towards Barcelona and the weather warnings are either strong winds and rain or snow for the next week at least so we are trying to pick our way through the country trying to avoid the worst of it, we are definitely not doing snow again.
Over the past week we’ve been to some beautiful towns and cities and stayed on the free Aires which have been provided by the towns which have been great both for location and facilities. Spain has some great architecture and history, not that I claim to understand any of it, but it’s great to be able to wonder round without any interruption from anyone, take our time to enjoy even if it is raining most of the time.
Monday 12 Tuesday 13 March
We stayed two nights in Úbeda which was declared a World Heritage Site by the UNESCO in 2003.
Ubeda is a city that needs to be explored by walking through its streets where every corner hides a treasure so much so that we took our washing for a 7 mile walk only to discover that google maps had marked the laundromat in the wrong place and it turned out it was only 200 metres up the road from the Aire, but at least we got our steps in for that day lol.
We stayed on a free Aire which was opposite the Police National Guard training school so we felt it should be pretty safe. It was a quiet site although we could hear the guard at gun practice at 7am in the morning! During the evenings we could hear a brass band playing which carried on until 10pm we didn’t know where it was coming from or what it was about at the time but now we realise it was band practice for the coming Las Fallas fiesta.
We had our first tapas in the centre of the town where we sat with a few beers, tapas and watched the world go by.
Wednesday 14 March
We paid a quick visit to the hillside town of Cazorla which is on the edge of the National Park Sierras De Cazorla. The tourist information office is set within the ruins of a very old church. For 2 euros each we took a guided tour under the church and main square of the town to an aqueduct which was built to channel the water from the mountains under the square and church, it was built a long, long, very long time ago and is pretty impressive.
The roads in the town are so narrow that the flow of traffic is controlled by a series of traffic lights, we saw a transit van crawling along the street wing mirrors turned in practically taking the plaster off the houses, eeek hope Snooper knows how big we are we don’t want end up down one of these roads when we’re ready to leave.
We decided to drive off along the 319, the mountain road round the National Park Sierras De Cazorla. The drive was stunning as we climbed higher and higher up the mountain and hoped we didn’t meet anyone coming the other way. We saw deer, wild boar and tons of birds. The lake was massive but it was nowhere near capacity apparently it’s been a dry winter! It was a long drive about 3 hours but worth it.
We headed off to the town of Chinchilla de Monteagaro where we stayed on a free Aire. The Aire is quite new in a massive carpark that sits at the bottom of the town and the facilities are good.
We took a hike up though the town to the castle which is at the very top of a very big hill. It’s blowing a hooley today and it’s freezing, winter coats and scarves on. The castle is pretty impressive has a huge moat and drawbridge, but it’s closed so we can’t go inside. There are also a load of cave houses but again none were open for us to have a look.
The weather for the next few days is snow in this area, we’re not doing snow again so we have no option but to head for the coast. We’ve decided to try and find a good campsite to stay for at least a week. The power lead for the laptop has blown up for some reason and we can’t seem to find a shop open (any shop) in Spain let alone try and find a shop selling the power-lead so we’re going to order from Amazon and have it delivered to the campsite.
Thursday 16 – Saturday 24 March
We find a great campsite in Denia, Camping Los Pinos they’ve got a good out of season offer on, the longer you stay the cheaper it gets, it’s got great facilities, the beach is right outside with a great promenade which is about a 40 minute walk into town. We’ve decided to stay for 9 days, the longest we’ve stayed in one place. The promenade and beach are great, on the first couple of days it was nice and calm, but this soon turned into wild winds and rolling waves but we didn’t let this spoil our enjoyment. We spent time just sitting on the beach doing nothing but listen to the sea, competition between us who could throw a stone on a rock in the sea and see how long it can stay there before being washed off and making balancing stones, what else can you do when you’ve got nothing else to do but relax lol.
Keith got his 3rd haircut and I must say this is the best yet, I’m getting good at this hair cutting business and I’m sure we will be ready to open shop anytime soon lol.
We were entertained by the small red squirrels running around the campsite, using Eugene and our bikes as a spring board to bounce onto the wall behind us. They are very cute but we were careful to ensure we don’t leave a window or door open, don’t want a squirrel inside do we.
We walked into town everyday and cycled on a couple of days, on one of the days we walked into town twice and cycled doing a total of 13 miles in one day. We got told off by the police on our first cycle trip into town we think it was because we cycled into an empty carpark against a no-entry sign but I think he was just a jobs worth, you know the sort spouting off to us in Spanish we really had no idea what he was saying but it was clearly a telling off.
We cycled up to the motorhome dealers and looked around a couple of new motorhomes but we didn’t like the layouts so decided not to buy one because it didn’t come within our budget lol, but we did manage to pick up the ACIS book which gives us discount on various campsites in Europe out of season.
The laptop lead arrived from Amazon and guess what, Keith ordered the wrong one, £20 wasted, but as it turns out it was very easy to find what we needed in Denia which is a much bigger town to the others that we’ve been to, so laptop up and running again phew.
Our camping neighbours tell us that we have arrived in time for the start of Las Fallas Fiesta which starts tomorrow for the next 4 days. Las Fallas is a celebration that spring has arrived and the monuments are built and burnt to remember the transitory nature of everything (that’s what it says in the book!) and is only held in this region of Spain.
Over the next 4 days all we can hear is fireworks day and night, all night, it sounds like it’s a bloney war zone. The main street through the town has been cut off to all traffic and is pedestrian only. Nearly everyone has fireworks, kids as young as 3 years old with satchels full of fire crackers, lighting and throwing them into the street we’ve got to keep our wits about us to ensure we don’t tread on any. The bigger, bangers are frightening I don’t know how many times we’ve nearly had a heart attack or jumped out of our skins at the sheer noise of them going off every few minutes as we walk up the street.
All over town are these incredible monuments created entirely out of polystyrene. We are lead to believe some of the monuments have a political theme to them which we obviously don’t understand but nether the less they are incredible works of art. The town is divided into districts and each district has created monuments which are judged in different categories. The winners of each category are burnt, with the burning of last place starting at 9.30 on Monday night with the overall winner being burnt at 1.30am on Tuesday morning. At the start of each burning is a small firework display with the fire brigade being in attendance to hose down the buildings and the street furniture.
We watched the daytime fireworks which were so loud I’m surprised the shop windows didn’t break, it was a lot of noise and smoke for 15 minutes.
It had rained for a few hours during the early evening on Monday night and we were undecided whether we would brave the wind and rain to head into town, but by 9pm the rain had stopped. We put a few beers in the rucsack and wrapped up warm and headed into town in time to see the burning. Not knowing which piece was being burnt next we had to follow the crowd around town. At one of the burnings we were moved further up the street whilst the fire brigade hosed down the big pieces of burning polystyrene which had caught in the wind and were landing on the watching crowds, our cloths absolutely stink now, more washing.
We called it a night at 12.30am because the wind had increased and we had a 40 minute walk back to the campsite.
We meet up with friends from home, Phil and Maeve who have rented an apartment in Olivia which is 20 minutes away. Phil and Maeve came and picked us up and took us to have a look around their apartment, collect some books and then head to the Font for lunch. We had a great catch up, the setting was lovely, food was delicious, company was great and to top it off Phil and Maeve treated us to the lunch which we were very grateful for.
Saturday 24 March
We left Denia in the middle of gale force winds which are to last for the next 24 hours, Eugene has been doing some serious rocking all night and the roof is covered with pine needles and pine cones. Our first stop was to the scrap yard we finally got rid of those blessed leisure batteries which we’ve been carting around for the past 2 months, got 18 euros for them not bad so spent that on 2 cases of cheap beer lol.
We’ve found a great campsite in Benicarlo, Camping Vizmar it’s a 5 minute walk to the beach and it’s only 12 euros a night.
We leave Spain via Barcelona on Wednesday for Civitavecchia in Italy. We booked a 20 hour boat trip with a cabin for 180 euros but stupidly when we booked the boat we didn’t realise that we would arrive in Rome for Easter weekend the place is going to be heaving, I think the Pope is making an appearance so not sure what our plans will be now but I’m sure we will fill you in on our developments.
Lets hope the sun is hiding in Italy and will make the long awaited appearance.
a la perchoine
Shirena & Keith
xxx
