All posts tagged: motorhoming in Europe

Stopovers 6 – Peniscola to St Chinian

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#51 Camping La Volta, Peniscola This stop was listed in Camperstops Europe as a five euro stopover but was actually a campsite with campsite prices (albeit very reasonable ones). Peniscola seems to have lots of cheapish campsites and although it’s an established beach resort, is not without its charms. There’s an absolutely huge stretch of sandy beach and a very pretty old town complete with hilltop castle as well as the usual resort distractions. We didn’t expect to love it, but we were surprised by how much we liked it. #52 Camperstop at La Casa de Fusta, Ebro Delta  This was a totally unexpected find and turned out to be a real highlight. The Ebro Delta is a fascinating place and the visitor centre, complete with camperstop, has plenty to offer everyone; a fantastic restaurant, punting, museums, wildlife watching, boating, cycling and plenty more. The camperstop is fully catered for and costs around 5 euros a night. There’s plenty of space and you can spot rare and exciting birds from the comfort of your van! …

Stopovers 2

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Time has run away with me and I have not been keeping up with our stopovers! So here are the next ten as far as I can remember… 1. Camping Monfrague This was the first campsite mentioned in this post, that converted us to a more luxurious way of travel. It was positioned in a natural park and although in high season I imagine it might get a bit crowded, it was almost deserted while we were there. Great facilities and beautiful surroundings. Also horses, trees, azure winged magpies… If we hadn’t been trying to get South so quickly, we’d have stayed longer. The boys obviously found it such a relief to not just be parked in some bleak urban car park, that they danced and ran around singing ‘oh what a beautiful day! Everything’s going my way!’ 2. Camping Merida Not our favourite, but perfectly fine. We’d stopped in Merida as there were lots of Roman remains but unfortunately many of them seemed to be closed or not terribly easy to see. The bit of …

Donanas National Park

Campsites and Caterpillars

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Between Salamanca and El Rocio we discovered that staying in campsites in Spain is easier than trying to find aires to park at. In France we’d navigated by finding an aire somewhere in the general direction we were travelling and then heading for it. In Spain, they’re just not as common and seem to only be available at fairly sizeable towns or cities. So we joined a European camping club and downloaded their app. What joy there was to be had reading about the various sites’ provisions of running water, hot showers and electricity; like children in a sweet shop we gleefully pored over our options. So it was that after Salamanca we drove to a campsite on the edge of a natural park. There were horses running about in the field next to us, azure winged magpies hooted and fluttered about the many trees surrounding us; the sunset was golden and the future bright. Overnight we’d become campsite junkies. The next campsite was less romantic but conveniently placed for visiting the Donanas National Park. …

Salamanca

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Salamanca. Even the name of this city makes me smile. Somewhere between salamander and Scaramanga, it sounds exotic and dangerous, a place where James Bond might surreptitiously follow some femme fatale through the echoing streets. It’s word that simply feels lovely in the mouth. So it’s with some embarrassment then that I have to admit that I hadn’t heard of the place before I looked at a map and realised it was well positioned for an en route visit. After we left Vitoria Gasteiz in floods of rain on the morning of Rob’s fortieth birthday we worked out that if we put in a good enough drive we could make it in a day. Most of the time the boys just aren’t up for driving anything longer than a couple of hours but after a few days of storms, they were willing to deal with the tedium of a long stint on the road to try and get past the bad weather. The landscape was barren and windswept for most of the journey but the …

Stopovers

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I’m in danger of forgetting all the stops we’ve made over the course of our journey so far so I thought I’d make a quick list here in the hope that some of this information may help some hapless motorhomer who, like us, set off with no real idea of what they’re doing or where they’re going. To those of you not intending to go off motorhoming around Europe in January the following may be of limited interest. First stop – Dover. Motorhomes are allowed to park along the front. This road is known, I believe, as Marine Esplanade. It goes without saying there are no facilities, it is just a road. Free. Second stop – Disneyland Paris This is just an enormous car park that you pay 20 euros a night to stay in, although after our first night no one came to ask us for more money. I think they pitied us. There are absolutely no (official) facilities in winter but if you’re sneaky you might get away with having a shower in …

Passing through

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After Blois we drive down through the centre of France, sometimes for just a couple of hours at a time and occasionally managing a slightly longer stint. We generally wake up slowly and only manage – frustratingly – to get going around noon. Once or twice with a lot of effort we’ve managed a slightly earlier start. There are always jobs to be done; water to be filled up, loos to be emptied, beds to be taken down and put away, children to entertain and food to be cooked. Due to extreme cold and wet, we have really only ventured out for the odd mooch. We don’t stray far from our little home; we’re not in the lingering phase of our journey yet, we’re compelled at the moment to keep moving. The changing landscape is a constant source of interest to us adults. From flat, vast expanses of land dotted with sparse trees hung with spherical blobs of what looks to be mistletoe, to gradually more undulating fields, then to thickly wooded hills. The character of the buildings changes …