Spain – Episode 1

After the trying run down through France we decided to stay for another night at Zumaia – it was Sunday so very quiet and of course we had to have our now traditional bacon and egg breakfast. Then as the weather now appeared to have calmed down we took Jamie for a walk along the river into the town itself and down to the sea shore where the waves were still kicking up a bit – pity anybody on the Bay of Biscay crossing!

Nothing particularly special about this small town which, being Sunday morning, was quite busy with locals taking the air as we were, then meeting friends in the bars and restaurants as the Spanish are wont to do. We strolled back to the van for a quiet afternoon and a reasonably early night, having made our route plans for the next couple of days. Just in case, although it hadn't run out, we changed over the gas bottles, planning to get them refilled t an early opportunity.

North Spanish coast near Bilbao

Our plan was to head for Valencia, looking for fuel, a service point and gas in that order of importance. A vehicle washing place was also on the agenda, Bertie being very scruffy indeed. Fuel we found almost immediately and at €1.13 was considerably cheaper than in France where we'd been paying €1.37 per litre. As we were still unsure of the state of the roads we kept to the main routes so our next target was Vittoria-Gastiez where we knew of a service point and also a fuel station or two selling GPL. The aire had been enlarged but the service point was open so task two completed. A bit early as yet for lunch we sought out the fuel station and having driven round it twice to find the gas pump, finished off our tasks for the day and headed out.

From Vittoria it was all toll-free motorway class roads; we could have used ordinary roads but they generally ran alongside anyway so there didn't seem much point. One thing we did notice however was that there was a lot of snow lying and the snowploughs had obviously been at work over the previous couple of days. Probably as well, then, that we paused at Zumaia.

There's snow on them there hills!

But the real pleasure was in the vast weather improvement; little wind and glorious blue skies meant our first use of sunglasses. The warm sun through the windows was lovely. Most of mainland Spain is a plateau at around 2000 ft above sea level so it was generally a steady level drive on almost deserted roads through rather featureless landscape. Our route took us through the outskirts of Logrono, where we stopped on an Al Campo supermarket carpark for lunch then more quiet motorway towards Zaragoza. Our campsite book showed very little in the area for a stopover so we elected to stop a little earlier than usual at the small town of Cascante, where we found a section of the sports centre carpark had been given over to motorhome parking and we joined 5 other British vans already parked up. It was very definitely a new urbanisation with little character, as a walk with Jamie showed us, but more than adequate for our needs.

Our hopes for a quiet night were thwarted however when at 0100, Jamie decided he needed to go out. He would not settle and Terry found himself again wandering round the aire at 0445 in nightwear with a jacket and shoes. Good job nobody else was up!

Up again at 0900 strangely it felt much colder than earlier and we found the service point frozen up when we departed. All the other vans had left – it turned out later we had been parked next to another Funster and hadn't realised – so in due course we once again set our wheels towards the autovia and Valencia, noticing a high proportion of the cars passing us were British registered. We must have encountered a migration route!

Lunch at a service area, where we were able to refill the water tank, then back to a somewhat boring cruise in bright sunshine. Once again it looked like we would be arriving somewhat later than we had hoped for so Bren sorted yet another “aire”, coincidentally one we had used before, at Segorbe which is about an hour from Valencia. This actually worked out quite well as it gave us plenty of time to find a nice campsite tomorrow. So we took the last “official” place (although there was room for others who came later), parked behind one of the vans we had met at Cascante.

The following morning, having picked out a likely looking campsite just south of Valencia, we returned to the autovia and headed into the city. We needed to restock the larder and found a Carrefour on the outskirts where we also took advantage of the cheaper fuel station. Then TomTom took us through this very modern city and out along the coastal road into the Albufera Natural Park where we found Deveza Gardens campsite, featured in our ACSI book so offering discounted rates.

Checking in we noticed a 7 nights for 6 deal and, as the weather forecast was good for at least the next week, we booked in for 7 nights. We'll take a deal anywhere! Deveza Gardens is not a huge place but it has all the usual facilities we expect to find on a holiday site with several other attractions – altogether a very nice place. Much to our surprise we found it almost empty, as we had been led to believe everywhere was crowded, and we had a choice of excellent pitches, finally taking one in full sun all day and quite close to the facilities. There were a couple of British units parked up and we struck up a chat with a Yorkshire couple who had arrived the day before.

A late lunch and setting up took no more time than getting the loungers out and enjoying the rest of the afternoon relaxing in warm sunshine. This will do us for a week!