Explore europe in a campervan

Yesterday was quite relaxed.  We didn’t aim to do any major driving – and actually ended up retracing our tracks!  The night was quiet, as was the morning with just a few people arriving to walk their dogs on the beach.  Fortunately the wind had calmed down so we were able to have a good scour of the beach for interesting pebbles and shells.  The rocks in the area are fascinating.  I’ve read that there’s lots of granite and we were told, further back up the coast, that there were silver mines once-upon-a-time.  The cliffs we drive past sparkle with minerals and it reminds me of the snow glittering on bright days.  My niece, Grace, is also fascinated by different, pretty stones so I collected a few along with some unusual shells.  We also saw a sea urchin, which must have washed up in the big waves the previous night; so we photographed it and dropped it back into the sea. 

We drove a little way along the coast looking for somewhere to do some food-shopping, have some lunch and maybe get in a bit of sunbathing.  After some frugal shopping we found a lovely spot in Torre del Mar.  There was a huge car park, right by the beach, which was almost empty.  There were no signs to be seen saying we weren’t welcome so we parked up, made our sandwiches and sat on the beach to eat them.  There was still a reasonable amount of wind which was fine to cool you down a little, but it blew off the top slice of bread from my sandwich! Cheated!

The afternoon was spent on the beach, then recovering from the heat by sitting in the shade of the van.  We ventured just up the nearest road where we’d spotted an internet café.  For once it was ideal – with Ethernet connections for laptops, many PC terminals, booths for making international calls and very reasonable rates.  If only there was one like this in every town.  I didn’t take a note of the name but for anyone visiting Torre del Mar it’s just off Avenida De Antonio Pere Pere.

When we heard from Mike he was a few miles back along the coast, going to a park up he had heard about from friends.  We found him with little trouble – there aren’t many black Merc vans like his around – and he was heading down a track just off the main road at a precarious angle.  The track was passable, but only just and not a comfortable ride at all.  The pictures go some way to showing how tight it was to maneouvre.  But we made it.  We were on a tiny patch of land above the beach, with a fantastic view of the sea and the full moon reflecting on it all night.  There were two smaller (German) vans there already and a disproportionate number of people and dogs to be living in two such small vehicles.  We caught up with Mike and his travels around Morocco, which sounds like an amazing country to visit.  It’s so far removed from the ‘western’ countries we’re used to where the differences to the UK are relatively minor, yet it’s so close and fairly accessible.  Soon we’ll be able to see across the Gibraltar strait to Morocco, but I think a visit will have to wait until another time for us.

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