Finally, after being away for over 18 months, we are heading back to Spain. Yippeeeee!!!
Bessy, our new caravan is turning out to be very comfortable, Benny (the lovely red BMW convertible) has been replaced with a much more practical towing vehicle, a Kia Sorrento. Just don’t ask why!!!
Pictures and more details will follow, as we set off into the sun and settle down in the lovely town of Benicassim, just above Valencia.
Our planned journey, Peterborough, Chertsey, Portsmouth leaving SaturdayArriving into Bilbao Sunday, overnight at Zaragoza, arriving Benicassim Monday!
We had an amazingly smooth crossing around the notorious Bay of Biscay, stopping overnight in Zaragoza, before arriving in Bonterra Park by MOnday lunch time.
We’ve been on our pitch for over a week now, it’s so lovely to be somewhere familiar and surrounded by people we know and to be able to sit outside in the sun during the day! Happy hour has been extended to 3 hours a day, bit too long if you ask me! The restaurant still does Menu del Dia, 3 courses plus a drink for about £10, and the same happy friendly staff that we knew 2 years ago are still here, plus a few more new happy faces.
Bonterra Park is just outside Castellon, Valenciaregion, in the town of Benicassim, famous for it’s summer music festivals and the Paella festival in January every year. Several changes have been made to the campsite, bringing it up to a higher standard than before. We have found ourselves a large pitch on the sunny side of the Calle (road) and have spent nearly a week setting up the new awning, with a kitchen and dining area.
Now the domestics are sorted, we’ve joined in activities, starting with tai chi on the beach in the morning – gentle exercises on the sand whilst loooking at the rolling waves and breathing in fresh saline air. We then walk along the seafront and return to the site, clocking up our first 5000 steps of the day 🙂
Our bikes have been serviced and we are ready to start exploring!
We took a day trip to some caves 700m above El Campello, called El Canelobre, which translates to The Candelabra. We enjoyed the view of the whole bay of Alicante and the Monnegre river valley from the viewpoint at the entrance. The caves are said to be Spain’s largest and deepest cave system, only opened to the public in the middle of the 20th Century.
The internal temperature of the cave is a steady 17c, which after the early morning breeze outside, seemed very warm. The cave is just one cavern, containing one of the highest vaults in all of Spain, with a height of 70 meters. The internal space is more than 80,000m2 which is often used for musical concerts, and is full of impressive shapes such as stalactites, stalagmites, columns and jellyfish, among many others.
During the Civil War, the cave was used as a repair shop for aircraft by the Republican army, and it was at that time that the current tunnel of access to the cavity was drilled, before then access was through a narrow crack in the rocks. Sadly there was no visible record of the military activity.
The caves were formed many millions of years ago, but they are still very slowly changing at a rate of just 1cm every 100 years!
In El Campello, we came across a wine merchant extraordinaire! If it wasn’t “dry January”, we could have and would have spent a fortune!! 47,000 bottles, 7106 different wines, dating from 1730 to 2019, valued from €2 to €10,000.00.
The 1973 Rothschild at the top of the rack is priced at €2970.00 PER BOTTLE!
We also, finally, got to meet some very old friends of my parents. Jim and Veronica Eadsforth have been friends with my parents since before I was born, Jim and my Dad were in the army together! I had met them when I was a teenager, but don’t certainly don’t remember, so we headed to their local town on a wet windy Sunday morning and stopped in a cafe for a coffee, lunch and catch up. It was lovely to finally meet them 🙂
As a final farewell before we left Spain, we went into Alicante for an evening, checked into a hotel and went out to dinner with Mum and Dad, before heading to an intimate flamenco show. It was a lovely evening, the highlight was staggering back to the hotel just before midnight nursing hangovers! Dad managed to eat a full cooked breakfast the next day, so he couldn’t have been that bad!!
Breakfast Proof!
Wandering around Alicante
Scrummy food!
After dinner speeches ?
The Flamenco team
Night time Alicante
We left Alicante, Benidorm and Southern Spain to head inland for 2 nights in Zaragoza.
December was an interesting month, we settled into a small campsite in Vilajoyosa, just outside Benidorm, with Mum and Dad in another site in the same town. We are in a small secluded bay, with a beautiful beach, surrounded by small hillocks, giving us amazing views of the campsite, the cove and the fishing farm out at sea. We have climbed the hill several times, we make a special trip up there on Christmas morning before early lunch time tapas, then enjoyed a late afternoon traditional English Christmas dinner at Mum and Dad’s campsite.
Christmas & New Year pictures
Boxing day was spent relaxing before a Chinese buffet dinner, then a show at the Benidorm Palace. Never having been before, we didn’t know what to expect, but we had a wonderful evening, entertainment was great, varied and professional and we had amazing seats in the balcony area.
New year’s eve was a quiet affair, David cooked a meal and we relaxed until venturing out just before Spanish midnight, onto the beach with a bottle of fizz. Our local restaurant put on a few fireworks, nothing spectacular, but we toasted in the new year with a few other couples before returning to the warmth of our trailer.
Christmas Day
Lunch time Tapas
About to go into the Benidorm Palace for a show
Benidorm Palace Show
New Years Eve Dinner
New Years Eve on the Beach
Fireworks on the beach!
Day trip to Denia
One afternoon we drove to Denia and Altea and stopped off at a beautiful Buddist type building which turned out to be a 20 year old Russian Greek orthodox church, complete with friendly stray cat. Sadly I had no biscuits in my pocket that day.
We have explored the coastline on cloudy and windy days and witnessed the debris left by the seas. We climbed one hill nearby to watch and record the sun set on a fabulous calm sea, only to find we were the subject of scrutiny by several single men scouring the car park. Turns out we had missed the signs in the hurry to get the perfect picture at the right time, signs telling us were in the local “nudist bay and dogging spot”! We laughed, but chose not to hang around 🙂
Alicante Visit
We recently had a lovely day out in Alicante, a traditional low rise Spanish port town just down the coast, with an old Castle and Fort on the hilltop, some 180 metres above the town, giving us amazing views. Thankfully there was a lift to the top, although ‘one’ can walk up to the top via a steep winding pathway. No Health & Safety at the top!!
City view
View of the city
Alicante beach
Health & Safety??? What’s that??
The Oldies Bench!
And finally, we have had a day out at the local reservoir, stopping for a picnic lunch.
Having returned from our trip to the USA in October and November and letting it sink in as to all the hugely fun adventure we had, we settled in Vilanova I La Geltru just outside Barcelona for a week, not wanting to travel too far just yet!! This was easier said than done!
The Rolls Royce engine on the Dreamliner and below, coming into land at Barcelona
Samson coming out of the storage yard.
Our storage facility had a Dometic engineer on site, one who was prepared to take a look at an issue we had with the electric on board heater not firing up, a fault we had found just before we left for the USA so after we had landed in Barcelona at midday, driven to the storage facility and hooked up the trailer, it was about 4pm. We left the storage place to travel only 15 miles to the local campsite and we expected to arrive half an hour later and get ourselves hooked up and straight before the sun set but we got caught up in the French/Catalan/Spanish demonstrations. The campsite was just a few miles from the French/Spanish border and the main AP7 motorway had been closed by Police that day due to demonstrations on the roads, all traffic had been diverted to parallel roads and told to park up as the Catalans were hoping to keep the road closed for 3 days!! I have never seen so many stagnant lorries, cars and motorhomes, in car parks, garages, service areas and on the edge of roads, all the drivers looked really ‘peed off’, just sitting doing nothing. We eventually got to the campsite at 7.45pm, the receptionist had kindly stayed open for us.
Lorries for as far as the eye can see……
We headed out of the site the next morning, back to see the electrical engineer, thinking how clear the roads were heading away from the border, until 2 miles down the road we hit brake lights! This time a coach, full of older aged French passengers, decided to pull across our side of the road, blocking our exit, with the attitude of “well, if we can’t move, neither will you” until the Police arrived! The Civil Police arrive, the coach driver soon moved and we were on our way. A few hours later, electrical fault identified, we headed south, still shocked at how many lorries were still parked up, probably back as far as 30 miles from the border!
We arrived at a site familiar to us, Vilanova I La Geltru, and signed in for a week; caught up and tried to regulate our sleep as well as eating at the correct times, my stomach was often wide awake at midnight, 6pm USA time!!! We did 4 suitcases full of laundry and found homes for all the extra bottles of alcohol we have imported from the USA!!
Vilanova was a little cooler than we had anticipated, we had to retrieve our jumpers and coats!!! However, the sun was out and the sky was blue, the sea was still rolling and the drinks were still cheap!! And…..one evening I scored 6 in a row when feeding the wild cats!!!
6 in a row at dinner time
One of the site’s pools.
Vilanova beach at sunset
Leaving G22 pitch at Vilanova.
After a
week we moved 200 miles south to Alcossebre, on the Costa Dourada. The change in weather and temperature was
immediate, an increase of 5C, which resulted in David getting his shorts
on!! We stopped at Camping Playa
Tropicana, where all the drinks are free!!!
Fun and Sunshine, there’s enough for everyone!!!
The coastline here is a mix of sand and pebbles, very clean and perfect for snorkeling in the summer, maybe not in November 🙂
We took a drive out one day to Alcala de Xivert, a small inland town with a fantastic 17th Century Moorish church, closed the day we decided to visit as the forthcoming weekend was a religious festival. However, the church tower was open, and we ventured up all 213 steps to the top, for amazing views of the plains.
The views were worth the climb. At 120 steps there was a platform with 7 bells, used for celebrations and holidays, and another tiny staircase upwards. We reached the very top, with several more bells, just as it chimed 12 midday, boy did that hurt the old eardrums being right under them!
Tower steps
View from half way up
We also spotted just across the valley, a hill top castle, Castel de Xivert, so off we went, 5kms drive over dust and dirt and another 1.5kms on the knees and calf muscles! Again the walk was worth the views from the castle. It was part of the Knight’s Templar empire, built during the 11th and 12th Century, but possibly with parts dating later than that, as suggested by an Arabic template on the main outer wall. The castle walls and towers remain, as does several of the small village houses below, but the quietness, and the views were something special.
View of the valley below
Upper area and twin towers
What health & safety???
Part of the lower walls to the village
Orange groves below the Castle
In full bloom still.
As we left the castle and headed back to Alcossebre, we drove through the orange grove valleys, the trees still loaded with partly ripened oranges. The smell was so fresh and fruity.
After several days here, we have decided to move on south, towards an old favourite, Bonterra Park in Benicassim.
We have spent the past 6 weeks in a lovely seaside town called Roses, in Spain, just over the French/Spanish border and have very much been acting like tourists, cycling along the prom, eating in the local tapas bars, chatting to other British caravanners about the occasional thunderstorm or windy day we were having, or swimming in the Med or the pool. But. … same as in the UK, autumn has arrived! Just not on such a grand scale!!
The nights are drawing in, getting dark by 7.30pm, mornings are darker until sunrise at 7.30am and evenings are a little chilly, resulting in the reappearance of my faithful fleece! Another downside to this weather, is the abundance of flies during the day and bloomin mosquitos in the evening! They drive David mad!! Me, the flies just annoy, and the mozzies feed a family of 20 on me, so frequent applications of anthisan are a regular occurrence after dark! I hope our neighbours have not heard the frequent cries of “oh, you b**tard, David, quick, rub here!”
This will be our last post for a few weeks, as we are jetting off to the USA with friends Mike and Brenda. We are flying from Barcelona to New York, spending 5 days there, then flying to Detroit, arriving on my birthday!
In Detroit we will be joining a few hundred others at “Motown A GoGo”, a celebration of Motown bands and singers, organised by a British man and held in the area famous for the Motown museum and Berry Gordi’s recording studios. On Friday 25th we will attend Mike and Brenda’s wedding, along with a few others, being performed in one of the actual studios.
After the wedding, we are taking an Amtrak train to Chicago, spending a few days there, before collecting a hire car and driving down part of Route 66, to St Louis, and Louisville, where we will pick up the Bourbon trail. Here we will no doubt visit a few distilleries, sampling their wares, maybe even purchasing some!!! From Louisville we head across to Indianapolis before heading north back up to Chicago. We fly back to New York and Barclona mid November, where we head south, so news updates will continue….
Sunset on Roses beach
A sundowner??? Don’t mind if I do!
Beautiful pink sky over the campsite bar
Empuriabrava beach one Sunday afternoon
Roses Bay from the mountains behind
Off roading to achieve the best views.
One day we took our snorkelling gear to Montjoi Bay, a secluded bay a little further around the coast, and spent the day at this deserted beach. At one point in the afternoon, there were a dozen people there, most had arrived on yachts or canoes! The water was cool, but not particularly clear, not many fish there, despite us taking tasty bread rolls along.
Montjoi beach
David contemplating going in
Next bay along.
One day, we took a ride out with Mike and Brenda to the local Hyper shopping mall, and found this amazing Cadillac, reminding us that we are just weeks away from our visit to the USA.
Brenda and I also visited Salvador Dali’s museum in Figueres, housed in an old theatre that burned down, so Dali purchased it, renovated it and used the interior to display his artwork, paintings, drawings, ceramics and jewels.
David, Mike, Brenda, Me and a Cadillac!
A beautiful house in Figueres
Dali’s Museum
Brenda on her way up!
One of Dali’s famous jewels
And another….
And another….
His most famous…..
The centre piece in the interior of the museum.
One of Dali’s most unknown works is called “Explosion of Mystical Faith in the midst of the Cathedral” and is worth studying, the photos probably don’t do it justice. Its a stunning piece of artwork, which Dali worked on for 15 years (1959 – 1974) and is still claimed to be “unfinished”, showing the virgin saint surrounded by a nebula. The second painting shows his first attempt that was used as his “study” attempt, without the layers or colour and depth of bodies.
Superman enjoying some beach time!!! OK, you can breathe out now!!!
One of the beautiful bays in this area.
And another, we have done plenty of off roading to achieve these views!
Recent Comments