Geneva to Denmark

After leaving Spain, we had a quick drive through France to Geneva to spend the weekend with our friends James and Steph and their two boys Aydan and Mattis. I hadn't seen them for about 11 years so it was great to catch up. 

From Geneva, Mark navigated the winding roads up the Jura through France to Germany and the faster autobahns. Even though the weather wasn't very good, we arrived in Billund in Denmark a day ahead of schedule. We took the opportunity to visit the original Legoland and what a day we had. I walked around the park with a big grin on my face all day.  The park opened on 7 June 1968 and is located next to the original Lego factory. The models were amazing showing in detail various cities, buildings and structures from around the world.  Many had motorised vehicles, boats, trains and planes and kept us entertained for hours. Even the safari park had life size elephants, giraffes and rhinos. The replica of Copenhagen harbour used 2.3 million bricks to create. Here are just a few photos from the day 

One month on the road - photos

 Here are the pics as promised relating to my last blog.

Cambrils

Girona including flower festival

Bay of Roses

One month on the road

Goodbye Gandia It's been fun. We've met a lot of people over the last year and made many good friends so we will return one day.

We left the house we had rented for the last year on April 19th and hit the road. Due to the amount of time we need to spend in Spain for our residency, we slowly made our way up the coast.

First stop was Peñíscola where we caught up with an old friend from London (Philip). That afternoon was extremely wet so we spent the time in the camper drinking wine while Philip tried to teach me to play Backgammon. The following day was much better so we went exploring and up to the castle. The large entrance, Portal Fosc, was used during the filming of the 6th season of Game of Thrones. 

Next stop, Benicassim. I had wanted to find us a place to stay last winter but now I'm so glad nothing was available. We enjoyed spending three days there but that was enough. 

Then onto Cambrils, another seaside town with some funky sculptures.

We headed back to our old stomping ground, Calafell, and caught up with a few of our friends. It was there that we heard about the Girona Flower festival so we altered our plans and made sure we were could visit for a few days midweek.

Girona is such a beautiful old, walled city and we really enjoyed our time there. We will visit again when it's less busy.

Back to the coast and the small town of L'Escala in the Bay of Roses, named by UNESCO as one of the most beautiful bays in the world. We walked to the hamlet of Sant Martí and took in the views along the way

We are now in Roses (at the other side of the bay) and getting ready to leave Spain and begin the next stage of our travels.

Unfortunately due to a technical glitch, I'm unable to upload photos at the moment. These will follow at a later date.

Away in a Ranger,

 Equipped with a bed.....

As we didn't get to take Campalot to the UK this summer - ever changing covid rules meant it was more flexible just  to take the truck and move around faster - we decided to take a few days down at the Mar Menor to test out the latest modifications and see if there was anything else we wanted to change before we set off on a major trip. It was also a chance to check out a couple of possible locations for our next move within Spain.

Mar Menor is a large saltwater lagoon in Murcia (next province down from Valencia) that often features in A Place in the Sun but having seen it for ourselves we don't think we want to stay there - the townships are all quite small and artificial with little infrastructure or character.

Cartagena on the other hand dates back to about 200 BC and the Carthaginians and has been occupied ever since, in particular there are some large roman ruins. As such it has the character that the Mar Menor lacks, and some nice back streets and squares, and I think it could be a good contender for a winter rental. No beach in the city itself as the natural port is all rocky and is Spain's main naval base for the med, but that is less of an issue out of season. A good food market with more varieties of fish than we have seen anywhere else in Spain so far.

it also had a large nativity diorama set up in one of the squares, reinterpreting the christmas story to feature their own roman amphitheatre - and of course it made me think of Life of Brian

Campalot performed well and we were quite comfortable for all it was cool and windy - we spent more time sat inside than we would normally expect to keeping warm and away from the mosquitos. I have a few more tweaks to make over winter but talking with some of  the German snowbirds on the campsite reminded us why we made it demountable in the first place - they were either having to tow another vehicle on a trailer behind their motorhomes or couldn't get into the towns because their camper vans were too large. Tigger II isn't exactly small even without the camper on the back, but at least we manage to get into on-street parking spaces.

So now we hunker down for winter and hope that the travel situation improves again before next spring.

Land of my fathers (almost)

San Sebastian in the Basque country about 100km from where I used to visit as a kid. We allegedly came through here but I have absolutely no recollection of it - I don't think we ever stayed as it was so close to the end of our journey that we always pushed on through.

On our way back to Valencia from our first official UK trip in 2 years. This is our only stop in this part of Spain as tomorrow we head home via an errand in Madrid. We will visit and a tour properly one summer, but at this time of year it's a bit cold and gray