Bienvenues and Au revoirs

While we’ve been away, Australia has burned, Northern Europe has drowned, plague is spreading around the globe and locusts have ravaged some of the African continent. Biblical! Politicians continue to play games as they vie for fame and glory (or infamy) and the human race either contemplates its navel or cries into its pint while so many species face extinction. That’s how it seems anyway. 

Brexit also happened after Boris won the election, Prince Andrew made a fool of himself, Harry and Meghan resigned from the monarchy, blah, blah, blah.... We have sort of tried to keep up with ‘The News’, the serious and the farcical, but in general we’d have preferred not to know.

At the time of writing, we are parked up on a blustery sea-front on the Normandy coast. We are eking out our resources before we disembark from what currently feels like a boat in a choppy sea and embark instead onto our slightly bigger, but probably equally blustered caravan for the ‘summer’ season. The larger space will be a nice change after sharing this small, Hymer-shaped space with each other and two hairy, mucky spaniels.

Sea-front promenade, Cucq on the Normandy coast

Cold, foamy beach

We are slowly making our way towards the Chunnel, booked for a Friday crossing. It’s ten days since we crossed from Spain into France, where we’ve been met with a lot of grey, wet and cold weather. A few days in the Dordogne afforded us an interesting walk around Sarlat-la-Canada, a beautiful old medieval town, but mostly closed for the season, and too cold for al fresco eating (dogs aren’t welcome inside French restaurants). An aire at Les Eyzies, another interesting and touristy town with grottos, was next to the very fast flowing river Vezere. Bess and Pwdin, always water curious, had to be kept closely tethered, or we’d have had to pick them up from the Atlantic (if that’s where it flows to). Full rivers and muddy conditions everywhere testified to the sort of weather the area has been having. 

Throughout the Dordogne there are lots of grottos and pretty little towns, so we enjoyed another night stop in Brantôme before a scenic drive to Sauvignac near Limoges to visit Lorraine and Larry, friends from El Berro who live in France. It was a lovely, well-lubricated stay, and our groggy goodbyes the next morning were full of promises to meet up again soon. They are in Calais themselves, now, on a mercy mission to the refugees encamped there. Lovely couple.

Brantôme

 Brantôme 

After a night camped up north of Poitiers in a tiny little aire at Chezelles (near Chatellerault), we found our way to a beautiful country house in the Loire - the home of a friend I’ve not seen for going on thirty years. Janet and Christophe hosted us warmly and together we pieced together old memories and put the world to rights. To reconnect after many years of lost contact is very wholesome. More goodbyes but with new memories to take away, we left another lovely couple and set off north with home on our minds. Sad news of a dear aunt’s passing also draws us home to grieve with family.

As we sit huddled in Hymer within sight of Dover’s white cliffs it’s on our minds that oceans have dropped from the sky onto our homeland. We are assured that our caravan hasn’t floated away but the prospect of a muddy site reminds us of the awful weather we had when we left in October. Has there been ANY let up? We have a bit of a wine stash and a couple of French cheeses to take home with us along with a few things for the children. I also stocked up on anti-bacterial handgel which we’ve been using consistently in case Intermarche or Lidl is harbouring coronovirus on its shopping trolleys and door handles. As for face masks, much as I dread our picking up whatever germs my grandchildren may have picked up lately, we can’t present ourselves to them wearing face masks. It’ll be interesting to see what precautions are in place when we go through the border checks on Friday. See you soon, Blighty!

Bye-bye Spain

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Sunday:

Last night the tribes of Aragon were gathered on this hilltop in the Pyrenees. We are encamped outside a castle with a few other motorhomes like a mini army while from the inside came the sounds in the night of a bigger army psyching themselves up for war. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? 

Actually, this popular tourist spot and motorhome aire, hosted a rave last night; something we weren’t aware of until we were woken from our happy slumbers by noises that would awaken the dead. I haven’t looked yet, but if Joshua was able to bring down the walls of Jericho with trumpets then I’m expecting to see these castle walls in a heap of rubble this morning. I need another strong cuppa first. Grrrrr.

Later:

That was Ainsa, in the Spanish Pyrenees. The walls hadn’t fallen down when I looked, but I bet they’re a bit less sturdy after that racket. Not wanting to risk another sleepless night in spite of the place having everything either of us, or the dogs, could ask for (mountain bike and hiking trails, quality food and gift shopping, free space for the dogs to run around) we packed up and headed into the mountain passes, destination France. Just as well, maybe. Gareth’s plan to stop there a couple of days to do a bit of biking while I enjoyed some browsing would have meant him trying to tackle some of the most challenging trails possible. It turns out that Ainsa hosted one of the Enduro biking championships back in 2018. He doesn’t have enough padding for those kind of fall-offs.

We did start to worry a little about the route we’d chosen. Some of the motorhome forums informed Gareth that it is rather hairy, especially the climb down on the French side that really tests your brakes. The tunnel at the top of the pass, too, is described as unsuitable for trucks. Ms Sat Nav thinks we’re a lorry so......(read ‘gallic shrug’ there). The reason for our choice of route was a last-chance Spanish Lidl to supply the nice vino we’ve been enjoying. The one at Huesca was undergoing a make-over so we diverted to the only other one possible without having to go back to Zaragoza. Barbastro is the gateway to one of the most scenic routes through the mountains, and, oh boy, did it deliver! Some of it was pretty scary, but good old Hymer, captained by my sleep-deprived but able valentine, got us through. We’re now parked up in the French foothills in a quiet little aire (so far, fingers crossed) at Preignan. Time to open some of that wine.

En route north

Spain - what a country! Well, is it?......one country, I mean. Each region has its own flavour and we’ve now had a little taste of some of them. After Murcia and Almería we entered Castilla La Mancha soaring into the heights of the Natural Parks Sierra De Cazorla, the Sierra Segura, and into Aragon’s Calar del Mundo, Sierra de Alcaraz....... I say “soaring” as though we are like the eagles who live in these parks, but it was more of a low gear haul for poor Hymer as she carried us up to more than 1200 metres from our entry to the first park at La Iruela and down again into the valleys and canyons over the week it took us to get through. She has bravely hauled us around the most amazing scenery and I have a cricked neck from staring up at the cliff sides of the gorges or staring down into the scary rocky depths as Gareth keeps his eyes firmly fixed on the road. Great roads, these, mind you! We have to congratulate Spain on having created a road network  that makes travelling almost anywhere in this great country, easy-peasy (I hope Gareth agrees with me). Oh, I’ve just remembered, though, that the road to El Berro definitely needs some attention; it’s a political issue apparently.

Heading into the Parks from La Iruela

A highlight of our geographical tour was a visit to the Haunted City (La Cuidad Encantada) 1500 metres up in the Serrania De Cuenca. It is a park of incredible stone shapes, carved by water over the millennia. The strange stones have shapes that can easily be seen as likenesses to things like ships, a dog, an elephant fighting a giant crocodile, lovers, and other curious shapes. “Conan the Barbarian” was filmed there and it certainly lends itself to films requiring strange, other-worldly settings. We spent a magical couple of hours wandering through it and Gareth’s initial reluctance to visit (only 9 Euro for us both plus dogs, by the way) was soon replaced by fascination.

Wow!

A seal

Stone ships

A man’s face

A sadder relic of the past is Belchite, on a high plain in Aragon. It’s another haunted city, left in ruins and un-restored after its destruction in the Spanish civil war. Our guided tour of the place left us with the sad senseless feeling that accompanies mementos of war, like a cross placed in the plaza where so many had been shot, a once magnificent church and friary where the roof had collapsed in on the villagers seeking refuge there, an unexploded shell still embedded in a church tower that had served as a machine-gun placement. That war was a strange one indeed, and I struggle to understand the politics behind it, even after reading “Homage to Catalonia” by George Orwell. But then, is any war less difficult to comprehend?

Belchite

Belchite

So, the geography, the history and the inconsistencies of Spain gives us much to think about. Another example is Cuenca - a town that hangs on a gorge, some of its buildings looking decidedly unsafe! I can’t get my head around how these places get built, rendered, painted and have people choose to live in them at all, unless the inhabitants like places where a leap to certain death is always a suicide option. A visit to a waterfall, however, is often met with a series of safety warnings, and instruction to wear suitable shoes, not to bathe in the water, to step carefully, to take great care of children. Given the precipitous nature of Spain’s geography and how Spanish people have adapted to living in it so well I would have thought that safety instructions were a bit superfluous. It seems, though, that European money has funded the creation of Natural Parks in Spain, and with it has come European directives in relation to such things as signage, health and safety. Feeling that the magic of a waterfall visit was being intruded upon by such instructions we reflected on why so many people have become tired of EU standards and regulations. While still being ‘Remainers’ (too late now, of course) we share some of that disillusionment as regards the EU, especially when being nannied through a beauty spot.

Do they have buildings insurance??

While the ‘powers that be’ have so little faith in common-sense (is it to do with litigation concerns? Need I ask?) EU money is also regenerating some rural communities. In one old wood-milling hamlet that we over-nighted in, the two remaining original inhabitants, now very aged, were acquiring the families of forestry workers as new neighbours. The old mill is now a forestry school providing a fluid population of trainee foresters to bring vim and vigour to the sleepy little place. What we don’t understand is how these projects, begun with such vision, energy and extravagance, often finish abruptly and incoherently, like roads neatly finished with pavements and zebra crossings but going nowhere! Spain seems to have an issue with maintaining some of these developments, too, though we were glad to see some road crews out on those canyon roads, even if their repairs to road-side collapses looked a little slap-dash. Spain copes with crazy geography, crazy weather, and crazy tourism and crazy times, so I raise my nice glass of tinto and say “Muy bien muchachos!”.

                                                                    

Top end of the Sierra De Segura parked  up in Riopar

A nip in the morning air -
 it’s way above sea level in these partsI 

The Rio Mundo appearing out from
these amazing rocks

La Iruela

Chinchilla De Monte Aragon
 in Castilla-La Mancha

 Cave houses in Chinchilla

Is anyone in?

What a ditch!
The castle of Chinchilla De Monte Aragon

Pretty

Petite and bijou? 

A nice view of our recently polished van roof

Doors

Pretty roof tiles

Clever metal art work at this castle that looks to me like soldiers
Castillo De Garcimuñoz
(between Albacete and Cuenca)

Cuenca

Pretty Cuenca

Well preserved Cuenca

Happy hippy-ness

Wow! There really is a place like the ones you see on motorhome brochures - park-up spots with nothing in front but sand and an azure blue sea. We found one in the Natural Park of Cabo De Gata. Our new El Berro friend, Lorraine, had suggested that we shouldn’t leave the coast before spending some time at Rodalquilar, so we left the laid back beach front aire at Fabriquilla, and headed off back up the coast of this amazing old volcano park. We were able to park up in the pretty little ex-gold mining town she had told us about. We drank beers in Restaurant Crisol (run by a beardy biker whose photos are all around the bar, and who may be quite famous for all we know), took photos of a resident chameleon and soaked up the laid back arty-but-not-ostentatious ambience of the place. The sun shone very warm and we enjoyed trotting out the well-used phrase that so many motorhomers say on greeting each other “This is the life, eh?”

What a life!

Art displayed on every building

Old mining village, now an artists haven

A couple of days stay allowed for a decent hike into the gold mine hills, a visit to the Geology museum where we learned heaps about how Spain was formed through the millennia, a meal of salad and big juicy prawns in a little restaurant, and a mountain bike expedition for Gareth. Then on Monday we decided to risk losing our parking place (other motorhomes were showing up) and head off to have our breakfast at the beach. It was just the place you see in those MH dream-selling brochures - somewhere to be footloose in the warm sand, sea tickling your toes and a camper van opened up to the view. A small convoy of self-built ‘motor homes’ (i.e. lorries) had beaten us to it but we found a spot where we could sit and gaze while the dogs romped about. Naturists were clearly enjoying the place, too, though not romping fortunately. Since Gareth had opted to rest an aching back I took the opportunity to walk dog-less along the strange, gnarly cliffs. I indulged myself in a long meditative stare into the crystal clear turquoise waters of a deep, fish filled lapping inlet, the sunshine hot on my back and the tumble of flowering plants filling the air with scent and bee hum. Feeling in love with the world, John Denver’s song “You Fill Up My Senses” came to mind. It must have been written in something like the same frame of mind as the one I was in, though if you’ve never heard of or liked that song you probably won’t get my drift.

Such amazing geography

Nudists not visible

Suitably bathed in warm Mediterranean sunshine and joie-de-vivre (me, anyway - Gareth’s back was hurting), we returned to the village and managed to find a space before motorhomes started arriving in their thousands. Ok, not thousands, but enough to make the small gravel car park feel rather crowded. I wondered how the hippy vans still at the beach would get in. The police seemed to be a bit worried about the dreadlocked, dog accompanied inhabitants of such ‘vans’ and were moving them on from the beaches where signs stipulated ‘No motorhomes between sunset and sunrise’ (such a lovely loose Spanish directive). Part of me admired these young drop-outs for whom home was an old adapted horse box, complete with patio doors and a drop down patio, or an old vegetable truck, now with a chimney, wooden front door and double glazed windows.  Did they qualify as ‘motorhomes’? As many variations on that theme as you can imagine are freedom homes these days. There are many vloggers too, extolling the joys of ‘Van Life’ and showing how to do it. It’s rather different from the all-comforts-included, off-the-shelf motorhome living of the (mostly) older generation. Let’s face it, so many of us living under the illusion of ‘freedom’ in our mass-produced travelling houses, once dreamed of living ‘on the beach’ like these scruffy young itinerants. Nevertheless many of us (though not me, he or thee, of course) tut and mutter about the cheek of young people these days, cluttering up the beauty spots that we’d like to clutter up ourselves.

Andalucian blues

A nice pad in town

Talking about hypocrisy, which is what that is, I think, last Friday Brexit finally happened. We sat in the van listening to the BBC and marked the occasion with moments of quiet reflection. Meanwhile, our divided country was simultaneously celebrating and mourning. In Rodalquilar at least, there was neither fuss nor fury. To hear next morning, though, that in some places here in Spain Brits had celebrated the occasion noisily and publicly, I felt angry that fellow country men and women could be so rude. That old imperialist British attitude which rides rough shod over countries that host us is still alive and well it seems. Hypocrisy!

Anyway, the event passed and those of us trying to be considerate guests just got on with being transitionally European, enjoying it while we can. Goodness knows how things will look from now on. 

Tuesday needed to be a shopping and servicing day. We weren’t keen on the increasingly loud camaraderie of life at the car park anyway so off we went, stopping first at the little beach resort of Las Nigras for a drink at a sea-front bar and a photo opportunity to make everyone at home jealous, then went off in search of dog food, gas, food, water and a new destination.

Las Negras

Campohermoso, a commercial town, is a kind of oasis in a vast plain of plastic green-housing. It’s not a pretty place. Sorry, Campohermoso if I’m doing you down, but thanks for Lidl, anyway. Stocked up, we headed off to Roquetas De Mar, though not, as most tourists would expect from the name, to the beach. We were headed to a shop called Tiend Animal, the only shop we’ve found to supply us with Bessie’s fit-deterring dog-food. We weren’t drawn to visit the regional town of Almería - a big unattractive sprawl along the coast before the Cabo De Gata curls off out into the Med. But the highway...! It’s an incredible bit of infrastructure with views of the sea as it cuts impressively through the rocky massifs and sweeps the traffic along high above the city.

Fully provisioned for Hymer plus human and canine occupants, we took the road north towards Grenada with the snow topped Sierra Nevada looming magnificently on our western flank. Known for a scenery that lends itself to Spaghetti Western movie making I continued to be stunned by the drama of Spain’s geography. Being now better educated about its geological history after the information centre in Rodalquilar added even more to my wonderment. We parked up for the night at Abla in a little feral-cat-inhabited aire below the glistening mountains before continuing our journey toward another Natural Park, the Sierra Segura. Apparently it is the second largest in Europe and we might take a few days to travel through it. It’s big and if Gareth decides to head off into it on his mountain bike, I think I’ll put one of those tracker things on him, or I might never see him again.

Parked high up in La Iruela  on our way to
Natural Park Sierra De Segura