Author: Selina Gough

Tomo, Tomo, Tomo

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I just had to write a little post about our wonderful stay at Buffet Butina in Kuterevo. We don’t eat out all the time as funds generally don’t allow it but sometimes, when we’re tired,  we just can’t resist. Particularly when the restaurant in question looks like the cosiest, most Tolkienesque place you may ever indulge in a plate of food. Fortunately for us, not only was the food delicious and the surroundings bewitching – our host, Tomo was also a superstar. We were given a sweet and safe place to park the van for a couple of nights, more homemade rakija than we really should have drunk, a family of hand carved spoons, and a welcome that makes a weary traveller’s heart thump with joy. Tomo’s place, like the rest of Kuterevo, feels ancient and magical. The light seemed to fall with intentional care and the combination of old wood with old embroidered and woven textiles cast a time-travelling spell. We ate vegetable soup, the best mixed grill of our lives and ustipci (a …

Travel Wonder in Kuterevo

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In an effort to be more dynamic (!) and current in my despatches from afar, I’m going to try and alernate between what’s going on now and places from back down the road. So right now! Or rather, yesterday…ok maybe the day before. we visited a really special place in the Croatian mountains. I’d been feeling somewhat jaded of late, ‘road weary’ is as good a description as any. The inconveniences and frustrations of living in a tiny space with one’s nearest and dearest, with ne’er a moment of peace (not to mention the homesickness) was proving a challenge. This is nothing new. Throughout this long journey, there have been many moments of questioning, days of tension and enough bouts of sadness to have fully excorcised the idea that this was some kind of extended holiday. These moods always move on eventually, often helped by a large dose of travel wonder. Travel wonder is what I’m calling the feeling brought on by coming across a place that gives you a fluttery stomach, when you can’t …

Stopovers 5 – Velez Malaga to Alcossebre

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#41 Hotel Cotijo Bravo, Velez Malaga A rare treat made possible by the grandparents: marble baths; champagne at breakfast; gardens full of the scent of jasmine, lemon blossom and lavender along with helpful and patient staff made this an oasis of calm, comfort and cleanliness in the midst of our otherwise chaotic, cramped and crusty existence. All hail the splendour of Pam and Colin’s generosity! #42 Dave and Annie’s land – Posada Edith, Espino, Andalucia Yes it was a bit cold and grey while we were there but, as I said in this post, when you’ve got gin, movies, a log burner and fantastic folk, you’ve got the ingredients for a good stay anywhere. We were able to plug in Colin and the land was level, which made for perfect camping conditions. With Vera the Airstream for a neighbour, a misty view down the valley and a gang of waggy dogs to greet us each morning we could want for little else. Thanks Dave and Annie! #43 Camping Cabo de Gata, Almeria This place is …

On Homesickness

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It comes in waves. Today is a bad day. We are seven months or so into our travelling adventure and I’m aware that each bad spell feels a little harder; each new start after visitors have left takes a little more energy. Poring over maps feels daunting rather than uplifting on days like these. We’re in Istria still and have been here for around three weeks. After Rob’s parents left us near Trieste we had a couple of weeks to kill before our friends, the Parry family, were due to visit. Hanging around without a clear plan, with very little money for fun or luxury camping, kills momentum. We struggled, or rather I, struggled. The many frustrations of living a life within a few square metres were getting to me, along with grumpy children and nowhere to escape to. On a bad day the list goes on and on. Then our friends arrived and we spent a blissful week of children playing together, swimming in crystal waters, eating out and drinking too much. All was …

Finca Slow – Regenerative Farming and Friendship

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Ana’s embrace was full of the goodness of friendship and familiarity, goodness I’d been craving. We pulled over by the fountain in the centre of Ginestar and jumped out, grinning to see her waiting for us in the shade, beer in hand; shiny with mid-afternoon sweat and beautiful, she led us to the bar. And so began one of the most precious weeks of our trip. Ana lives in a yurt with her two children, Gabriel and Ofelia, on a piece of regenerative olive farmland called Finca Slow. This little slice of Catalonian rural paradise is owned by, and home to, Dan and Johanna McTiernan who also live in a yurt on the land with their two children, Otso and Leo. Dan and Johanna moved here to live the modern agrarian dream three years ago; Ana and her tribe soon followed. Here the two families live without grid electricity or mains water supply, amongst almond and ancient olive trees. It was in a little shady patch between these almond trees that Ana and Rob pitched …

Sky Mirrors – The Ebro Delta

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(if you’d like to hear a soundtrack to these pictures, go to the bottom of the page and click the You Tube vid.) Due to a bit of a mix up on our part, we found that we had longer to hang about after Bicorp than we thought. We’d arranged to go and visit a friend at Finca Slow, a permaculture/regenerative olive farming operation, but  somehow we’d got it into our heads that it was much further away from us, close to the French border. In fact, it is not far from Tarragona, south of Barcelona and only a couple of hour’s drive away. When it dawned on us (hanging about doing very little on the coast at that point) that we actually had about five days to kill, we were forced to do a bit of a re-think. In our usual haphazard manner, we looked at the book, and just picked a couple of places in the area to stop at. One of these places turned out to be the remarkable Ebro Delta. Allowing the …

A Magical Place called Bicorp

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Europe is well charted territory so it’s always exciting when travelling to come across a place that feels ‘undiscovered’. Bicorp was one of those places. We’d decided we wanted to move inland as we passed Valencia heading north and Camperstop Europe suggested there was a cheap place to stop over at Bicorp. We looked it up and saw that there were possibly some cave paintings and reckoned it would work out. A little while later as we drove up the side of a wooded mountain through a series of hairpin bends, I knew we’d done the right thing. Woods and greenery had not been a feature of our Spanish explorations up until that point. Dry, brown and somewhat barren had been the general trend and the experience of suddenly being deep in green was thrilling. I continued to be thrilled by Bicorp and its surrounding area. Although the town itself isn’t quaintly beautiful, there was something about it that gave me butterflies. It sits on a little rise of land surrounded on three sides by …

Banos de Fortuna – How we Travel

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There are travellers who have ‘bucket lists’, a list of places they want to visit before they die. Pinterest is full of these things – glamorous pictures of exotic destinations – often followed by the exclamation ‘That’s one for the bucket list!’ or some such thing. Some travellers research the area they are planning to visiton the internet, checking for places of interest or ‘things to do with children in X’. Many travellers go to their favourite trusted guide book, usually Lonely Planet or Rough Guides. But we follow none of these methods. In making our decisions about where to go, we consult the bible of motorhoming, Camperstops Europe 2015. We have a vague idea about the direction we want to go and how long we want to drive for, then check the maps in the front of this fine book to find a suitable stopping place. Travelling this way, we have come across places we never would have happened upon otherwise. It has taken us to quiet towns, bustling ports, mountain views and beach …

Cabo de Gata

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Cabo de Gata, a small section of the Spanish coast where nature comes before tourism. A natural park, a protected oasis for wildlife; a place of deserts and deserted beaches, sandy coves and quiet villages and small towns. We went there on a tip off, and spent almost two weeks parked on or near beaches, wandering across arid hills full of wild thyme amongst bright flowers and pacing beaches restlessly through a spell of bad weather.   The calls of birds were our first impressions; from the natural saltwater lagoons mysterious bird calls and hootings filled the air but the reeds kept the singers hidden. We lay in bed and listened to what we thought were geese crying overhead and later realised they were flamingoes passing in flocks of red and pink feathers; surprisingly noisy, gangly and graceful. Here on this little protected toe of land, jutting out from the otherwise concrete encased Costa del Hell, we found long dark stretches of sand with barely a soul to be seen. The boys rolled in the …