23. Oct, 2021

SATURDAY 23-10-21

I began camping back in 1960 with a ten day camp to the Lake District in my first year at Secondary School. This was followed by my participation in the Duke of Edinburgh's Award Scheme, and many holidays of my own in adult life. Then there have been my adventures with The Chef. But this morning I had a new experience in the shower block.

The Chef was like a greyhound out of the traps at a race meeting in order to get over to the shower block in good time to wash and dry her hair before it got busy in there. Lying there on my own I thought I may as well get up and make my way there myself.

Not too long after I'd entered my large shower cubicle I heard voices from another one about three doors down. Not one male voice but two. There was lots of small talk spoken fairly quietly before one of the occupants, lets refer to him as 'Mister Receiver' started to choke a lot on the shower water, or something else so I guessed his head must have been pretty low. The other occupant, let's call him 'Mister Giver' kept up the small talk and an ambience of mutual 'deep cleansing' seemed to begin. I can only assume they were camping in one of those overpriced campervans with the rising canvas roofs in which there is no room to do anything to anybody. If this is the new face of camping then I'm glad we'll be done with it in a couple of years. I mean, there's a time and place for everything.

Today was to be our ride out on our hire cycles. We were both expecting to walk parts of the trail, especially the slightly uphill sections. As we set off the German caravanning couple behind us, 'Cough & Wheeze' were in the process of hooking up their caravan to their car and heading off. In fact I swear this morning they were even too busy to sit outside and light up their first fags at 07:00. I won't miss them.

The cycle ride along the Vias Verdes del Mar went well and the temperature was lovely and comfortable, about 24 degrees C with a very light breeze. Our Irish neighbours had recommended the restaurant in the marina at Oropesa (GPS: N40.074976° E0.132980°) which we pass by on the way to the town. I would have been rude not to check it out, but unfortunately there was a lot of fish and shellfish on their menu and so we carried on in to the town. Here we locked up our bikes and went for a lovely walk around the headland, past the lighthouse and on to Playa Morro de Gos with its lovely beach, promenade and restaurants.

We sat and took it all in for a while realising that our time in this lovely warm sunny climate was coming to an end (this time next week we'll be on the ferry to Portsmouth) and soon we'd be sat at home looking out at wet, cold, damp weather, but at the end of the day, it's home, and there's nowhere like it.

Walking back towards the bikes we stopped off for lunch at a beachside restaurant before heading off back to the campsite.

On our return the gay girls in the pitch just across from us were busy smooching together. My word, this campsite really is becoming inclusive.

We both felt we'd done pretty well as we hadn't been on bikes for such a long time, in fact two years at least. Hopefully we won't wake up with aching legs in the morning.

This evening we will be dining on a pizza with chips, something quick and easy for my darling Chef to prepare, and no doubt washed down with a glass or two of grapes.

Tomorrow being Sunday, I am hoping to walk down the road about a mile or so to the model railway site to see if it is running. We've been there a couple of times in the winter and, understandably, there is very little activity, but maybe tomorrow it may be nice enough for them to fire up their steam locomotives for a play. Either way it will be a nice walk out.

22. Oct, 2021

22. Oct, 2021

22. Oct, 2021

FRIDAY 22-10-21

My apologies for the interruption to the daily uploading of the blog. I had just uploaded the text of a couple of days ago when I was immediately prevented from uploading anything else completely without warning.  I emailed the company expressing my intense displeasure, and it seems that I have an account which has unlimited pages but for security reasons they block the creation of new pages after so many to avoid hackers getting in and creating pages of junk. Whilst I totally understand why they do it, I'm just not happy that it can take up to 48 hours to sort it out.

I digress..................

Until we arrived here at our current pitch in not so sunny Benicassim I never knew what dried horse sh*t smelt like when you put a match to it - but now I do. We have chain-smoking French caravanners in the pitch behind us, and because our pitch is small we've had to park the vehicle at an angle to get it to fit. This means that the back of our vehicle is very close indeed to the back of their caravan. I don't know what it is with the French but they do seem to enjoy smoking the foulest smelling ciggies money can buy. I think this couple had a choice of assisted dying in Switzerland or do the job themselves, smoking heavily whilst enjoying the sunshine at the same time. In the mornings I have to drop the bedroom hatch down when they stagger outside and light up whilst coughing their lungs up. Surely when somebody gets that bad with smoking they'd think to themselves "I really must give this up - it's killing me".

This morning was cool and cloudy as we made our way to the 'Nasal & Other Orifice Cleaning & Extraction Building'. The showers here really are good with lots of lovely hot water, as hot as you like it.

Once scrubbed up we wandered down to the village to hire our bikes from the Sports Centre. We just have to produce our passports for ID and leave a fifty Euro cash deposit for each bike and we're away. The free hire also includes lights lock and helmet, but we carry our own helmets and locks with us.

Riding them back to the campsite was a reminder of how unfit we've become. I do now so wish I'd done things differently when we first bought the vehicle. I should have left the spare wheel in the rear garage and have a bike rack fitted to hold two electric bikes. If we'd done it then we could have had so much enjoyment from them, but now we are coming towards the end of our motorhoming life so it isn't worth spending the money to change things.

While we were in the village I popped in to one of the numerous Chinese shops and bought a small make-up mirror for a mere two Euros. This would help me to read the guages showing me the gas levels in both gas cylinders.

Back 'home' it was lunch followed by housework. We really did give 'Freddie' a good clean. It was a race against time as rain showers were forecast from about 14:00 but we had it all completed before we got a few spots of the wet stuff. I think the current weather is preparing us for our journey home.

When I then read the gas levels I found that we had two almost full gas cylinders, which means we must have had a good overfill as we've had a few barbecues since the overfill and we've still got plenty left. This was reassuring as when we leave here on Tuesday morning we will be stand-alone independent for three nights, which includes heating, cooking, running the fridge and hot water. We've now regained our confidence in the 'Truma Combi 4' gas boiler. In fact I don't think there was ever anything wrong with it, I think it was just protecting itself from the excessive pressure of a gas overfill, but rest assured it will be checked by a Truma engineer back in the UK.

As I type my darling Chef is preparing tonight's festive wonder which will be followed by a bit of TV, well DVD's actually. We can't get UK television down here. I've always been frustrated by how Brit travellers are short changed when it comes to receiving television from back home. Other European travellers, living just across the channel can flick a switch and have their small satellite dishes lock on to their favourite stations back home whilst Brits have to rent dishes the size of a house and then rely and some dodgy jiggery-pokery to get some of the UK channels. It really isn't fair.

So I'm afraid today was a nothing day in anticipation of wet weather which still hasn't really materialised. Tomorrow will start with a little passive smoking whilst lying down followed by a scrub up and a nice long bike ride along the coastal track where we'll have lunch.

22. Oct, 2021