Category: Travel (Page 12 of 21)

SPAIN

SWe had a few days in a site just between Figueres and Capmany about 10 miles from the border with France. The site was spacious with lots of large pitches and very quiet, surrounded by vineyards and oak forests, at night the site was very dark, plenty of bats and owls about.  We had a few windy days here, even though we were protected by the tall trees…..we were rocking, so to speak!

Capmany is a tiny village but well known in this area for being home to not one, not two, but three winemakers and distributors! A small castle type building houses accommodation, a pub and a shop are all that are here, the area is surrounded by oak and cork trees, as well as the odd vine and olive tree. We also found almond trees in flower, such a beautiful scent.

The site was also a few miles away from the motorway and the town of La Jonquera, which cannot really be described as a town.  There is a small traditional village a mile away with the same name but the main attraction here was the massive supermarkets and tobacconists, perfect for motorhomers and lorry drivers stocking up on bulk alcohol, tobacco, clothes, electronic goods and traditional Spanish products.  We could not get over the size of the bottles available in the supermarkets, 1, 1.5, 2 and 3 litre bottles of every possible alcoholic drink you could think of and several you may never have heard of! 

People, mainly French speaking, had trollies full of huge sacks of meat, vegetables and everyday household products, the staff on the tills spoke French first then Spanish then English so obviously a popular day trip destination from France.

The journey from Spain into France was an easy one but Narbonne to Lake Garda was 1,655kms, broken up into jumps of 360, 300 and 280kms, always stopping halfway for a refreshment break.  We find it quite funny looking at the lorry driver’s expressions as we pull up alongside their 18 wheelers!! Along the way, we also passed several snow capped mountains, experienced sun and rain, saw blue skies and grey clouds, green fields, grey industrial areas and brown rocky hillsides.

FRANCE

FIn France we returned to a site we have been before just off the motorway at Narbonne called La Nautique where we had a few surprise visitors from Bonterra – our lovely Dutch friends Kees and Reik stopped overnight on their way back to the Netherlands, and our even lovelier Dutch/Hungarian friends Chris and Mary stopped en-route to their overnight stay, stopping long enough for a bite and a drink and a quick walk around the site before continuing their journey. 

We moved onto Frejus for just one night, despite emailing the site weeks in advance, when we arrived on Sunday morning there were no staff on reception at all!  Apparently they do not man the reception desk at weekends until the end of April!  A kindly German man let us in and in the morning we paid and moved on. 

We tried a new site in Antibes, called La Vieille Ferme (The Old Farm) which turned out to be lovely, housing several RVs and permanent home to a Welsh couple from Tredegar, we felt at home!!

We explored Antibes marina the first day and was star struck when we saw the world’s largest Superyacht, called Dilbar.  It dominated the skyline due to its huge size and gold colour.  We established it is owned by a Russian billionaire, is only 3 years old, 156 metres long, houses 40 passengers and 80 crew and has not one but TWO helipads and an indoor swimming pool on its top deck!  It only cost a cool $600 million US Dollars!!!!  We spotted a people carrier on the 4^th deck, gold in colour of course, to perfectly match the yacht!! 

Antibes is an attractive place, comprising the old seafront village and a more modern smart area behind the old town on the Cote D’Azure.   Here the sea is soooo blue, blue is not a good enough description, try azure, turquoise, deep aquamarine, cobalt, navy or indigo and all shades in between.  The old town has lots of medieval stone walls, a fort and beautiful tall buildings looking out to sea.  We had several lovely hours wandering around admiring the beauty, sadly we did not spot any celebrities….

ITALY

The drive from Antibes in France to Asti in Italy took just over 4 hours, boy do the Italians know how to charge on the tolls! We paid €85.90 from Narbonne to Frejus and another €136 from the French/Italian border to just outside Asti.  And all because we have 8 wheels on our vehicle and are over 2.3m high!!

We returned to a site in Asti that we stayed at last year, again the owners welcomed us back before they were officially open. It was so cold at night, a real shock to the system after a warm Spain and hot France, we had to put our heating back on!!! One day we did sit outside in the sun until about 6.30pm!

We did venture into Asti one evening and found a wonderful Indian restaurant, recently opened, where we had such a lovely meal. David tried a new beer, it did not have any additional effect on his prowess that night!!

We ventured into Turin from Asti, another day, another blog!!!

After spending a winter in Benicassim (Spain) because Italy, Croatia and Greece were cold and closed up, we have, sadly, had to break away from the Bonterra community and have recommenced our travels. We have had a fabulous four months, in a relaxing situation, made good friends, almost won the quiz (OK, I lied there, wishful thinking) had wonderful social afternoons and evenings but time to move on and up……

In February, we returned to the UK to help Caity move into her own flat in Hampton, Peterborough. After 14 days of cleaning, painting and decorating, shifting furniture and making sure things were up and running, we left happy with the knowledge that the flat was clean and warm, in full working order and Caity had a full fridge of food! A mother’s final job is to make sure her child had food!! Boy, did my hands (and bank balance) ache when I left!!!

We moved up to Vilanova just outside Barcelona, our sending off was lovely, all our neighbours came out to see us off on Sunday morning, mid March.

We decided to experiment with an alternative site called Vilanova Playa, down by the beach instead of Vilanova Village, outside the town. As usual, we emailed the site, told them the dimensions of the trailer and how much space we needed and was assured that we would fit…..we had 4 members of staff assuring us they would help us onto a pitch, and so the fun began…….after about half an hour of to-ing and fro-ing, became stuck because the road was narrow, there were too many trees either side of the pitches and he didnt have enough space to swing the cab around fully in front….so he eventually reversed onto a pitch but could go no further. The staff had a bright idea!! Let’s chop some trees down, so you can reverse back onto the pitch behind, turn a little and pull forward onto an exit road, (this was just as David was muttering under his breath “Get me out of here”). Bright idea. Removed the trees, reversed, pulled out, got going and headed up to Vilanova Park where we were allocated a huge pitch on a wide road, no major trees either side and total peace to chill out!! A few glasses of wine were sunk that night!!

Memories of Bonterra Park

We are now heading on up to France, to Narbonne and Frejus, before heading over to Asti again, where we will visit Turin before returning to Lake Garda.

We have spent many a beautiful day wandering along the seafront at Benicassim, the beach is beautiful and changes with the weather. I loved taking these pictures, hope you enjoy them too.