No photos today...

... as we are shrouded in fog. That'll learn us to be smug! 


Still, at least it's motivated us to leave the campsite-from-heaven and explore a bit. We're now in a place called Azohia, and just got back to the van from a restaurant overlooking the bay (allegedly) with a 10 euro four-course menu. It was lovely, and because we've been wild-camping the last two nights we figured that dinner had already paid for itself, sort of. No wonder we're poor. And fat.


We've kept up the exercising though, even though we don't have the use of the campsite pool for the next few days - we went for a LONG bike ride this morning to a place called Mazarron, past vast polytunnels full of tomato plants and lettuces. I wish I could tell you how inspired I felt to go back to the van and make salads, but all I could think about was how beautifully it would all go with bacon and mayonnaise in a sandwich. 


We are, though, still losing weight - thanks almost entirely to Sergeant Spanner here. He is even now hovering by the door suggesting a hike along the beach. I must be getting healthier, because I'm almost tempted.

Don't quite know what to say

We haven’t updated the blog for a while because we’ve been far too smug and don’t want you to hate us.  We’ve got ourselves more under control now, and can tell you that the mountains really aren’t that beautiful, the sun-drenched beach is okay if you like that sort of thing, and the campsite’s heated pool that nobody else seems to know about can feel a bit lonely with just the two of us swimming lazily around in it.  The gin and tonics are horrible too, it goes without saying (it’s only the freshly picked lemon we put in them that enables us to force them down), and really and truly you ought to feel thoroughly sorry for us.  It’s lucky we’re made of stern stuff – we are just about bearing up under the strain of it all, you’ll be pleased to hear.

Seriously, we have found the best campsite ever, and never want to leave.  What a shame that reality has to intrude on it all, but our re-entry strategy – or lack of one – has started to impinge on our thoughts just a little.  Well, when we’re not stretched out on the sun-drenched… etc.

A very interesting option has presented itself, though:  we’ve met two couples here who are campsite wardens from March to October, and then spend every winter in southern Spain.  You can save a good proportion of your wages because you get a serviced pitch along with the job, and best of all, there are loads of vacancies in Devon & Cornwall.  You could all come and stay! 

We don't know enough about it yet, but it sounds like varied work in beautiful places, along with the ability to bugger off again next winter.  Who wouldn't want a job like that?  We will definitely be looking into it, and will keep you posted.

Off to the bar now, but here’s a picture of the view from the van....

..... and then another of the van from the view. You will see our gorgeous little Hymer just up from the boat.  Not our boat, as I'm sure you'll also be pleased to hear, because otherwise we'd be insufferable, even to ourselves. 

Sorry, and hope you still love us anyway.  Even in this paradise, we are still missing you.

Suzy & Mike xxxxxx

Death Bodega

Just so you know it’s not all sunshine and frolics, here’s where we spent the night in Carinena near Zaragosa – the below-freezing car park of the enticingly named Bodega Morte.  The dusty-looking stuff on the bottle is SNOW. They did sell nice wine though. 

We’re now south of Valencia, having managed to go round it this time; much quicker! We have lost the satnav though, which probably helped – we were having trouble getting a signal so we put it on the roof, then, um, we forgot about it and drove off.  Mr C****y’s powers are even more far-reaching than we thought.

Up to date, nearly: crazy Valencians, Christmas, and a tooth fairy

We’re on our way back down through Spain now, but as the last entry was from southern Spain and there’s been Christmas in France in between, it’s all getting very confusing.  Here’s what we’ve been up to since putting our clothes back on in Cartagena:

We had to rush to get back to France in time for Christmas at my sister’s house near Agen (Spain IS bigger than it looks on the map, I don’t care what anyone says) and did a few long days of driving.  The van’s 1992-spec suspension really doesn’t help – one of my fillings even fell out, but more on that later.

The highlight of this part of the trip was supposed to be Barcelona, but we were very late by then and had to skirt the city and promise ourselves we’d go next time.  The only city we DID visit was Valencia, and that was by accident:  we’d relaxed into a kind of blind-obedience-to-satnav trance, and suddenly found ourselves heading for the city centre at 8pm on a Saturday night.  There were people dancing across roads, cars driving on pavements and motorbikes weaving everywhere, and there were SIX-lane roundabouts with no apparent rules at all.  Mike was soon cackling hysterically as he beeped the horn and zig-zagged in and out like a native – he absolutely loved it.  I had my eyes shut for most of it, but one thing I did see through my fingers was a rack of bicycles for public use.  The bikes looked all new and shiny under the Christmas lights, and the rack was completely full.  At last, evidence of some sanity in Valencia – you would, honestly, have to be nuts to ride a pushbike here.

Christmas with Lin and Brian was amazing.  It was strange to be in a house again, and also strange to be a guest rather than a host, but they were very entertaining company, very generous with their bath and laundry rooms, and they even let us win at cards!   Lin is also a fantastic cook, and although that caused a slight setback on the weight-loss front, it was worth it!

It was wonderful to see Nathan too, but I was very sad that Laura couldn’t make it.  Back in May last year when Mike and I started thinking about this trip, talking to the kids about it made it seem possible, and booking their flights over for Christmas made it real.   Given Laura’s work situation, staying in England was the only sensible decision, but she was very much missed, and the idea that I wouldn’t see her till May made me feel an uncomfortably long way from home.  It was really nice to see Lin and Brian getting to know Nathan better (they've lived in France since 1997 so haven't seen a lot of him, as we left in 1999), but I felt upset at the same time that Laura was missing out on their generosity. 

After Christmas it was time to wait for news on the old laptop (not good, as you know) and get an appointment with a dentist: the filling-less tooth had started to throb a bit.   I’d assumed I might have to wait a day or two, so I was quite taken aback when the first place I tried suggested the first week in April.  It hurts, I said.  They didn’t exactly shrug but it soon became clear that this was going to be harder than I’d thought.

One dentist did take pity on me, although not to the extent of giving me an appointment (mon dieu non, rien avant juin).  What he did do was make me a photocopy of the dentists page from the Agen phone book.  I almost cried – it was the nicest anyone had been to me all day.  It also made the search a lot easier, and for the next couple of days Mike patiently drove me round Agen and the surrounding towns and villages so I could call on each and every dentist listed.  There was no point ringing them, we discovered.  Very few have receptionists, and even the ones that do don’t answer their phones, so you just have to go round in person and try to look more desperate than the next would-be patient.

I got a lot better at it as time went on.  Instead of ‘on holiday in a camping car’ I was now ‘just moved into your town’, and instead of ‘it hurts’, I was clutching my face in my hands and shedding real tears.   The tears were genuine – not so much toothache as frustration – but still the earliest appointment I’d been offered was a fortnight away.  

We'd given up for the night and were on our way to back to our parking spot when we saw a dental surgery in the village we were passing through.  I almost didn’t have the energy to go and ask – there’s only so many times a person can stand being told to fuck off in one day, even if it’s very politely done in beautiful French – but we couldn’t just drive past either, so I plodded in wearily.    When the dentist said “Demain, treize heures et demi” I nearly fell over.  “Are you SURE?” I asked.  He repeated my appointment time very slowly and looked at me like I was some sort of idiot, but even so I really had to fight the urge to hug him.  According to Mike I actually skipped back to the van.   It was very odd to be delirious with happiness because I’d managed to book a dental appointment; in England I do my best to avoid them.

The next day, this wonderful man spent his lunch hour doing a really careful job on my tooth.  He took the time and trouble to explain, in simple French, what the problem was and what he would be doing, and made absolutely sure I understood how to tell him if anything he was doing was hurting.  It’s the smoothest, best-feeling filling I’ve ever had, and cost less than 30 euros.  He even used the remainder of the amalgam to fix a cracked filling somewhere else free of charge – it’ll only be temporary, he said, but it’s better than it was.

And best of all, fully equipped with new IT and teeth, we could start to ramble on again. 

Brits, bingo, buoyancy, boobies - and ostriches

The road between Tarifa and Alicante is one long strip of hotels.  Very nice if you need one (and don’t mind crossing a dual carriageway and a railway line to get to the beach - that’s town planning in the Franco era for you), but not so good if you’re an impoverished campervanner just looking for somewhere quiet and peaceful to park up for the night.  On the Costa del Sol it does seem to be campsites or nothing.  

Luckily my sister Lin had given us her ACSI camping guide when we’d met up near Calais.  That seems like months ago now (and is – what on earth have we been doing?), but this book has really come into its own since we left France:  we have almost-reliable knowledge - and sometimes even GPS co-ordinates - of campsites open all year round.  To camper-vanners in Spain, that’s not far short of the Holy Grail.  

However, the sites we’ve stayed on have been a bit peculiar - little fenced off corners of scrubland in the back of beyond, mostly; also hugely expensive but absolutely chock-full of vans with GB plates.  It's nice to speak your mother tongue to someone other than your partner from time to time, but it’s also a bit weird to go for a short stroll round a site and come back to find your windscreen festooned with flyers advertising Brenda’s Marmalade Just Call in At Pitch 39, or the fact that there’s a Proper Pub Quiz Every Wednesday 7.30 in the Bar.    Other campers also seemed to know way too much about us – I only said hello to someone in the shower block and she said “Oh yes, you’re in the Hymer aren’t you, arrived yesterday?  Now don’t tell me, let me guess… pitch 82?” 

We didn’t stay anywhere more than one night – we’d started to feel like prey - but if you’re of a certain age and you like English, bingo and fish & chips, this would be heaven.  It still strikes me as weird that we Brits retire to other countries en masse regardless of whether or not we speak the local language – maybe it’s something to do with once having had an empire - but there’s no getting away from the fact that there is a wonderful sense of community here;  a home from home down in southern Spain.   And of course, the one thing you can’t reproduce in England is the sunshine.

Talking of sunshine, we’ve been incredibly lucky.  Don’t want to sound too smug or anything but we were sunbathing on a beach near Cartagena only ten days before Christmas, and guess what?  It was so hot we even had to take our cozzies off! 

Well actually that’s not quite true…. We did have to take our cozzies off, but only because the naturist campsite was 12 euros a night including electricity and heated indoor pool, and the place just down the road was charging 24 just for the pitch. We mulled it over for all of ten minutes seconds and thought sod it, we’ll do it. And once we got over the bizarreness of the whole thing, it was really quite relaxing:   you go to the pool wearing your towel, you take your towel off and swim, then you dry off and go back to your van wearing the towel. There’s no changing in and out of clothes, and no wet swimming costumes either – it’s got a lot going for it, I think. And what a very beautiful place too:

I also realised that a huge plus for me was what nude swimming did for my chest!  I felt very buoyant indeed, let me tell you - almost like I was 25 again. Temporary I know, but immensely cheering nonetheless, and I thoroughly recommend it to all my female friends. Useful note to partners of female friends, though: expressing surprise at said buoyancy may not be well-received - just ask Mike.

Happy New Year to you all if I forgot to say that last time - one day does seem to merge into the next a bit here...   Still, it'll all be over soon enough, and then real life and jobs will have to be thought about.  For now though we're happily burying our heads in the gorgeously warm sand, so lots of love from Senor and Senora Ostrich. xxxx

Tarifa, Tangiers - and wizards - 7th to 12th December

People get stuck in Tarifa.  We met dozens of people from all over Europe who’d travelled south until there was nowhere else to go except Africa, and who’d just stayed on.  They don’t call this place ‘The Last Resort’ - and even Hotel California - for nothing.

But what a great place to get stuck.  The old town is a maze of narrow streets with bars and cafes everywhere, not to mention a really friendly group of people who all seem to know one another; outside you’ve got miles of sandy beach and pretty damn spectacular mountains too. 

We really came to understand why Dizzy spends his winters here, but it DID take us a while to get into the Tarifa rhythm.  We were a huge disappointment to him the first night, for instance - by 10pm we were heading back to the van.  Even on the second night we only managed to stay up till 11.30, even though everyone was telling us that nothing really got going until midnight.  The third night  Dizzy had a prior engagement and so we didn’t even go out - and a bloody good job too, as on 10^th we needed all our strength and stamina to keep up with the birthday boy, who, unbelievably, is fifteen years older than we are.  

 You’ll be pleased to hear that we rose to the occasion magnificently:  we danced till our legs went to jelly, and then we danced some more.   We finally made it back to the van at 7am, where it seemed like a marvellous idea to start on the sherry.  See, you needn’t have worried - our spannerish reputation is still very much intact, and we have been able to leave Tarifa with our (aching) heads held high.

But not before we’d been to Tangiers:  only a 35 minute ferry trip away and a whole new continent, so even though it was yet another budget-buster at 60 euros each, we really had to do it.  The ticket did include a coach tour, lunch in a ‘typical Moroccan restaurant’, and a guided visit to the souk – and even better, we persuaded Dizzy to come with us.

He was very grumpy about being herded around, and flatly refused to wear the GrupoStar sticker that identified us to our guide, but even he liked the coach tour. We were shouted at in Spanish, French and English - and the PA system was such that they were equally unintelligible - but it WAS nice to be taken to the most northerly point of Africa, especially as only the day before we’d been the three most southerly people in the whole of mainland Europe.  It was also pretty amazing to see the more wooded areas of the city where the king of Morocco and various Saudi princes have their summer palaces.  These are vast marbled things with fountains everywhere and guards with machine-guns at almost impossibly ornate gates, yet only a few miles away in the heart of Tangiers, people are hustling for a few dirhams just to stay alive.

And there WAS a lot of hustling:  our guide gave all the women in the group roses from the souk, then demanded tips – not exactly with menaces, but it wasn’t entirely un-menacing either. We also got cornered in a rug shop, and once we’d escaped from there, in a handbag and ceramics shop, where the proprietor tried to sell me a chipped bowl for 35 euros.  We then stopped at a café for mint tea, and I made the mistake of showing the owner my – or rather Dizzy’s – twenty-dirham note.  The bill for three teas?  Twenty dirhams.  That'll be 6.66667 dirhams each then.

The typical Moroccan restaurant also turned out to be quite scary, insofar as the charmless waiter and the tuneless musicians didn’t even let us finish the couscous before marching round the tables and bullying tips out of all the tourists. They clearly didn’t want to be there, and neither did we.  As a cultural exchange it felt all wrong, and really quite horrible. 

We felt much better when we’d ditched the guide (had to give him another tip, otherwise we’d have been insulting his grandmother’s grave) and were wandering by ourselves.  The colour and life of it all was extraordinary – the fruit & veg stalls, the huge fish market, the fabric-sellers, the spices in vast sacks rather than the prissy little containers we get in England (you can get a kilo for less than the price of a Schwarz bottle) and above all the absolute in-your-face clarity that chickens aren’t just food, packaged up and sanitised beyond recognition, but were once living creatures with beaks, feet and innards (all of which are for sale).

Life and death is all right there in front of you, and we were completely overwhelmed by it – shocked, horrified, and thrilled.  We also went to the Kasbah where we saw kids who can’t have been older than five chasing cars down the road.  What a different life it is here.  I didn’t even feel comfy leaving mine in a room by themselves at that age, and the weirdest thing is that I’m no longer sure if that’s better or worse. 

Back in Tarifa – and it’s amazing how safe and normal it felt to us after Africa – we talked to Dizzy about life, the universe and everything.  We mentioned that we were hoping to find work at some point to eke out our budget, and he said – and this is a direct quote – “Why put a work in the spanners?” He is such a fab and funny man, and I’m very glad that he is so loved in Tarifa.  I told one of his friends – Lily – that we have a lifesize cardboard cut-out of him which helps us miss him less at parties, and she said she wasn’t at all surprised. Here’s a lovely picture of him and Mike:

We also met – and I think this was also on Dizzy’s birthday – a German motorhomer who said “and how about your friend?  Is he wizardy?”  It took about ten minutes to realise that he was asking if Dizzy was visiting.  Well, Dizzy m’lovely, you are very definitely wizardy as far as we’re concerned.  Thank you for showing us round so beautifully, and I'm sure we’ll be back. Sticky Tarifa and all.

Long time no blogroll - Portugal into Spain

Well, it’s been a very long time and no blogroll, but thank you Alison and John LeS for the comments on here, and everyone else who’s emailed or texted.  Although I too was shocked at the the things that other so-called Spanners seem to get up to - I had no idea, so thank you John LeS - I am delighted to know that we are Googlable, and I really did appreciate the encouragement from you all.  I was actually all fired up with enthusiasm for the next instalment, but then the laptop went and died on us.   We were near Malaga at the time but given the gracias por favor cerveza limitations you already know about, we decided to leave the difficult technical conversations till we got back to France.  Then it was Christmas, so we only heard from the repair shop on 29th December that our computer was completement baise, as they say over here.

This might seem like very bad news, but amazingly (Amazonly?), we took delivery of a new netbook yesterday.  Our budget may also be baise for at least a fortnight – longer if we actually want to eat or drink anything – but on the plus side we managed to transfer all our photos to an external hard drive just in time (we’d have been very sad to lose those, and not just because we intend to bore you rigid with them when we get back – you have been warned) AND our flashy new netbook has four times the battery life of the old laptop.  We’ve also had the unusual and instructive experience of being really, properly, almost long-term incommunicado, which felt very uncomfortable to begin with, then just weird, and then actually became NICE.  Once we got over the have-to-check-emails anxiety, it was really very relaxing, and reminded us of what’s really important in life, like relationships, sunsets and beer.  My Web Sudoku addiction of last year seems like a lifetime ago, and that really does have to be a good thing.

Anyway, I’m rambling.  Here’s a précis of everything up till Tarifa, put together from my scribbled notes.  We’ve had fantastic times – and some difficult ones too – but we’re still standing.  And rambling.

4^th December

Spent the night at Castro Marim, where a Spanish woman was living in her car, parked up with all the campervans for safety, I think.  Some of the other vanners were muttering about her, saying she was parked just where they would need to turn, and did we think she was a prostitute, and so on – but nobody seemed to wonder whether she was actually all right. Not for the first time, I felt embarrassed to be British.  We did try, but not hard enough.  She turned down coffee and showed us the little stove she had, and she said she was ok and that it was a temporary thing.  At least I think that’s what she said – she spoke even less English than we do Spanish – but I do know that her name is Marie-Helena, and that she’s a fantastic hugger.

I wish now that we’d tried harder to help.  I am definitely getting over my fear of sounding  silly in a foreign language (and realising - very belatedly given I’m 48 - that communication is about so much more than words) but I still very much regret letting Marie-Helena plod off up the road by herself.

We have seen a lot of poverty on our way down through Spain and Portugal, and even in France – there seem to be people begging outside most supermarkets – and I’m finding it very shocking, and uncomfortable too.  We’ve been thinking how poor we are, but we're now starting to understand how very lucky we are.

5^th December

Went back West today – maybe we’re scared of Spain – but not very far, to a coastal town called Manta Rota between Tavira and Altura, where we’d been told there was a huge free parking area with dozens of other vans.   We just wanted a day doing nothing much by the sea without having to worry about the van.  There were lots of other vans…

… and we parked up next to another ancient Hymer (they do seem to last well), and started making our way to the beach.  Stopped at what we thought was a beach bar on the way, but it turned out to be a proper restaurant.  We’ll just have a beer, we thought.  But that one was so nice we had another.  Then they brought olives and the menu, and all our resolve was gone – even though one of the dishes was described as ‘fish kebab with spit’.  Mmmm.

 We had probably the nicest lunch I’ve ever had, under the prettiest yellow umbrellas I’ve ever seen, and even though the final bill was nearly twice our daily budget, it somehow felt like money well spent.  I wish we’d taken the camera so you could see how beautiful it all was, but the place is called Sem Espinhas, and I think they have a website.   Someone there really cares about ingredients, cooking, presentation - also about interior design – and the whole experience was lovely.  And we still got to go sunbathing, albeit drunk at 4pm.  We had to dig little hollows in the sand for our enormous bellies but we didn’t care.

6^th December

We stopped just before the Spanish border so we would still be able to use our Portuguese dongle to look up camperstops in Spain, as we’re now heading for Tarifa for Dizzy’s birthday.   We found it really difficult to find places to stop in northern  Spain and wanted to be better prepared this time.

 We left Manta Rota in good time after getting up at 8am to play tennis and then go for a bike ride – and no, you didn’t imagine that.  I can hardly believe it myself, but it is actually true - but we still really struggled to find somewhere nice to stay for the night.  Spain really isn’t easy, and our previously reliable website came up with three duds in a row.  Two places didn’t exist at all – the SatanNav declared confidently that we were “arriving at destination”, when all around were piles of rubble and gangs of disaffected youth - but the third place was worse:  behind a petrol station, fenced in by barbed wire, and patrolled by suspiciously foamy-mouthed dogs, it was the last place on earth you’d want to park in.

So we asked if it was ok to stay the night – we were very tired.  The first person we spoke to said yes, it would be fine, then a really aggressive bloke came up, poked his head right into the van, and demanded 10 euros.   Ten euros, to park in a muddy compound behind a petrol station with no water, no nothing.  We shook our heads and started the engine – we were desperate but not quite that desperate.  He waved us down.  “FIVE euros”, he said, and we said thank you but no.  As we drove away he was shouting ‘One euro, ONE euro” above the barking of his slavering dogs.  Phew.  But we still didn’t have anywhere to stay.

Night was falling when the Guardian Angel of Spanners finally took pity on us and pointed out a camping-car sign in a small town near Seville called Puerto Gelves.  We followed the sign down a back road and then, amazingly, there was another, and then another, until we came to a beautiful marina by the river.  There was a barrier between us and it, but the angel intervened again and a car came the other way.  Mike didn’t hesitate – he stepped on the accelerator and we nipped underneath the barrier before it came down again.   I may have shrieked at him at the time but I was, actually, very proud.  We were then approached by a man with a clipboard – not usually good news - but he just welcomed us to the marina (in perfect English), and directed us to a parking place next to the riverbank which was, almost surreally - but very wonderfully - covered in flowers.  This is the view from the van, and the other side was just as good.

On the other side of the marina was a café, full of people and music and life.  Two beers each and platefuls of olives and nuts and little bits of sausage came to less than 5 euros.  Another lucky escape for the Spanners. 

I forgot to write about Tommy and the Mozzie Zappers, and I meant to write about Tarifa too, but they really do need their own dedicated bits. Will do it tomorrow if the dongle holds out!  In the meantime, lots of love to you all.