All posts filed under: Places

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 …

The Alpujarras, Orgiva and a birthday

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After bidding one set of grandparents a tearful goodbye in Granada, we drove off to Orgiva in the Alpujarras, an almost legendary place of beauty and alternative living. We’d heard about its little hippy camps that had sprung up there since the 1970s and how that community had grown with more and more dreamers turning up every year, their heads filled with visions of freedom and sunshine. We wondered what we, always with one eye out for a different kind of life, would find there. Would we feel a pull to this sunny mountain idyll as so many before us had? Even as we drove into the lovely little campsite just before Orgiva, surrounded by the hills of the Alpujarras, we felt a wave of positivity. We had another grandparental visit due in just over a week at Velez Malaga, not too far from where we already were, so we decided to spend the intervening time in and around Orgiva. It was the longest we’d stopped anywhere in all our travels up to that point. …

Return to Europe!

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On the day we left Morocco and came back into Spain I think we were all fairly glad. This slight feeling of relief was helped by having had the most expensive and disgusting omelette ever served to us the night before we left, at a ‘campsite’ where crazed dogs seemed to be allowed to just run free. It was also raining and cold. All of which helped us leave Morocco without too much sorrow. Additionally, we hadn’t had an alcoholic drink for around three weeks, which is a bit too long by anyone’s standards…isn’t it? For all of us too, the excitement of meeting up with my mum and stepdad that very day spurred us on. We’d arranged to stay with them at a campsite near the beach in southern Spain and were looking forward to more of a week-long holiday experience than our somewhat rather more gritty general travelling life. A week of relaxing in Costa del Sol-style ease. Foolishly mum had entrusted Rob and I with suggesting a suitable campsite. We didn’t have a …

10 Things to be Aware of When Visiting Morocco

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#1 The roads The roads, other than the big toll motorways, are pretty bad. Admittedly probably not so bad if you’re in a car rather than a 22ft motorhome, but even then they’re a long way off what I’m used to. One of my main gripes was width, with even major roads only just wide enough for two cars to pass each other and certainly not a whole lot of breathing space. Potholes, of which there are many, are another major nuisance with some roads seeming to consist mostly of pothole and not much else. The edges of many of the roads are strangely broken away so that if you did want to give that enormous coach hurtling towards you at 100 mph a little more room, you’d fall off the mini-cliff at the edge of the road and crash anyway. It all makes for some pretty hairy driving at times but as I say a car would not be quite as problematic as a motorhome. #2 Coaches If I went to Morocco again I …

10 Reasons to love Morocco

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Righto then, as I’m a travel blogger of sorts (in that I travel and I blog), I thought it was about time I did one of those listy blog posts that travel bloggers like to do. And as I’m now at the end of the Moroccan episode of the adventure, it seems fitting that I should wrap it up with a couple of vaguely advisory posts about the whole affair. So, without further ado, these are ten of the reasons why you should visit Morocco: #1 Every Journey is Epic I think I’ve probably said this many times to quite a lot of people, it’s become my Morocco related catchphrase, but it’s absolutely true. If you drive anywhere apart from the major motorways along the coast, you will be blown away by the scale and variety of landscapes. What’s more, lots of it feels familiar in a ‘seen it in the movies’ kind of way and because of all those romantic movie associations, every journey is moving. As I’ve said (a million times!) the mountain …

Photoblog – Azrou, Volubilis & Chefchaouen

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Given that the blog is now approximately eight weeks behind our actual lives, I’m attempting to cover some ground with this photoblog. The chronology is a little out but apart from Fez these three places were our last stops in Morocco and we drove like people possessed to get round them before we had to zoom off to Spain to see waiting grandparents. I’m going to wrap up the Morocco adventures with the next two posts and then it’ll be all about Espana! But for now enjoy these last few piccies (and Rob’s little debut) – especially the ones of Chefchaouen, which was a total treat for a lass that likes to take photographs. Azrou Volubilis – Rob I used to be an archaeologist, and while I got tired of scraping around in the earth looking for tiny fragments of pottery, I retain a high level of geekery about ancient sites. I was very excited about visiting Morocco; the place is littered with remarkable remnants of the Roman Empire which I had been taught about …

Stopovers 3 – Essaouira to the Sahara

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#21 Fertile Roots After camping at the very peaceful Esprit Nature our next stop was at Fertile Roots. Quite apart from the terrifying drive down the track to find the place (I doubt any other motorhomers would have been daft enough to try it!) the land we were offered to camp on was itself a bit of a trial. The ground was uneven – so we constantly felt like we were on the wonk – and the wind blew dust into the van whenever we opened the door. Then the sand and cement dust that had gathered on us throughout the day got transferred into our beds making it all feel a bit gritty and grimy. On the upside, we were with some totally ace people helping them to achieve their permaculture vision which definitely outweighed the discomfort. My recommendation? If you fancy going to help Mark and Ajelen, unless your van is very nimble and agile, perhaps leave it somewhere else and walk down… #22 Cathedral Point, Imsouane This campsite is pretty laid back …

sahara desert

Into the Desert

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Going into the desert. It’s a concept loaded with meaning and not just for those of us who’ve broken our hearts watching Deborah Winger in The Sheltering Sky. From Laurence of Arabia to Jesus’ forty days and forty nights, it’s impossible to escape associations with solitude, vast unrepentent wilderness and the deep domed sky. I went to the desert expecting to feel small, to look out at miles and miles of undulating sand and contemplate my own insignificance amidst the hugeness of it all. Trekking on camels to a Berber camp? A night under the desert sky? This would surely be the ultimate traveller moment, wouldn’t it? Our desert ‘experience’ started with meeting our strangely lovable tour organiser and being taken to meet our camels and guides. The guides were dressed for tourists in the blue Berber robes we’d come to recognise at all the Moroccan visitor hotspots, but my first thought as we wobbled off on our camels was that if the guides were on foot surely that made our camel transport surplus to …