Week 8 - campervan adventures

---

Day 49 9^th October Nerja – Granada – Sierra Nevada

This morning we woke early with the plan to go and check out Granada and then head to Sierra Nevada. We did this kind of, we drove into Granada, had difficulty finding parking for Stan and then drove out of Granada. We both are still feeling a little sluggish and feeling the effects of the 5 day alcohol binge we have just had. After our drive through Granada, we headed to Sierra Nevada. I wasn’t sure what to expect due to it being a ski resort and there being no snow, but Steve’s plan was for us to walk the peak of the highest mountain, or bag a high peak as he would say (tomorrow). We drove up the mountain and stopped at the tourist centre to get a map. As soon as we got out of Stan you could feel the difference in the temperature, it was fresh. After getting a map we headed to the main shop/restaurant area, this was like a ghost town, there was only one restaurant open, no shops not even the grocery store was open. Lucky we had food with us (I was a little concerned that we didn’t have enough in but we planned to survive off our tin food) so we had lunch and Steve got sprayed with mayo as we had not thought about the altitude and the pressure and as soon as he opened the bottle it went all over him, it was rather funny but he was pissed off due to having a clean t-shirt on. After our comical lunch we drove further up the mountain, to the last car park. I needed an afternoon nap by this time so I stayed with Stan and had a sleep while Steve went and checked out the area, and to see what we would walk tomorrow. When he came back I was half asleep and he told me that you could cycle to the top and that’s what he wanted to do tomorrow rather than walking. In my sleepy state I agreed to this. Tonight we are free camping in the car park at 2500m and I may need to get winter pj’s out as it is very cold up here, it will be a good test to see how Stan is in the cold, I hope he is okay.

Day 50 10^th October - Sierra Nevada

People tell me all the time that I am crazy, today I would have to agree with them. I cycled 12k up a mountain just to turn around and cycle back down again. Okay that’s not true I had a big rest up the top before I cycled back down and also had a number of rests on the way up, and also got off to push a few times. The cycle started off nice it was on a tarmac road and not to steep but then it got steep and the tarmac turned to gravel and rock which did not make for an enjoyable ride, but the views where amazing. When we set off the sky was blue and clear and you could see for miles, sadly by the time we made it to the top clouds had started to come over so it was not that clear. It took me nearly 4 hours to get to the top which was about 3400m about sea leave, I knew Steve just wanted to bomb off and leave me but he was his nice caring self and stayed with me and encouraged me to get to the top, at one point as I was riding I was wondering if I would make it to the top before sun down, but I did, I also wished that after riding for 20minutes and Steve asked me if I wanted to go back I did, but once I got to the top after 4 hours I felt rather pleased with myself (as you may or may not know me and bikes don’t have a good history so it’s only recently that I had started to cycle and I had never done anything to this degree) till a local man joined us who had also cycled, and told us it had taken him 4 hours to ride the 50k uphill from Granada, this just made me feel silly but also made me feel motivated to cycle more so I can improve. The ride down was cold and difficult to see at times due to it being an almost white out due to the cloud but it was fun and it only took 40minutes. Once finishing the ride we got cosy in Stan and had a nice warm coffee. I think the rest of the evening will be spent relaxing with Steve cooking dinner due to me being exhausted.

Day 51 11^th October - Sierra Nevada – Benidorm (Villajoysa)

Today I have a sore bottom, I am not sure if its due to the cycling yesterday or because we have had a long drive day. Something we have not done for a long time. Today’s plan was to drive till we had had enough of driving and for fun we added in a little adventure. This was stopping at a large supermarket to stock up on supplies (due to using most of them during our stay in Sierra Nevada as we had nothing fresh as we did not shop before arriving). We normally shop at our favourite store lidl but they don’t have small tins of things we thought we would go to one of the Spanish supermarkets (Carrefour or Jumbo) which we see all the time on our travels but not today, as this is the Sims luck if you are looking for something you won’t find it. So we drove in and out of towns, none of them looked very nice and did not have a large supermarket. We thought we were in luck when we reached Murcia there was a sign for a Carrefour but we could not find it, and we were driving around in circles in the middle of Friday rush hour. By this time Steve was feed up with the search for the large supermarket and the traffic and was yelling ‘this is ludicrous’ ‘only we would go searching for a supermarket to get small cans of sweet corn’. We gave up looking and went shopping in a smaller Mercadona supermarket, where we got almost everything we wanted. Following this we then went in search for a place to spend the night. Which was not that easy, we always like to find our sleep place in the light so we don’t wake up to no surprises, and we did find one tonight but Steve was not happy with it, so we moved on. We are parked up in a beach car park, at the end of a long bendy road, as we were driving down I had images of Zombies jumping out the bushes and now as I sit here there are cars driving down and turning around. I’m not sure what sort of place we are in but I have double checked that Stan is locked tonight and before I go to sleep I will pray to the campervan Gods to keep us safe.

Day 52 12^th October - Benidorm – El Saler (natural park)

The campervan God’s kept us safe during the night and we woke to a beautiful sunrise and amazing views. If we hadn’t arrived to our camping spot in the dark we would have seen a road that went right down to the water with a large car park but we had only seen the small car park up the top, which I personally think was a better one to park in due to the view overlooking the water. After admiring the view from our bed for a while we got up and tried to get back into the routine of our ritual run. Steve and I rarely run together these days due to me being so slow, or getting lost or him trying to push me and this ending in an argument, but today I agreed to take the costal past with him, which lead to me getting lost within 2 minutes (there was one bit in the path that went straight or left) and then an argument when we found each other. While I was lost I was scared for my life as up on the hill there were two men with riffles, I don’t know what they were doing but I didn’t want to stay around to find out. When I told Steve about them and me being scared I think he thought I was exaggerating as he did not seem concerned. After the drama of the run we got ourselves sorted and went to check Benidorm out. It’s a strange place the beach and sea front is very attractive but its full of tack, a lot of tacky bars and tacky people. Most of the bars are English, with one area that is Dutch. The English bars where full around 2pm with fat English men with their tops off, watching the football and getting drunk on cheap English beer. Our mission for the day was to find the Salanor Hotel – also known as the Hotel Sol Pelicanoswhich is the hotel used on the UK comedy TV show Benidorm. After much walking around we found it. Steve suggested we go in to check it out, I was a little nervous about doing this, but we just walked straight in, through reception and out into the pool area, which looked just like the pool area on the show. We were going to sit by the pool for a while, but there were no free seats, so we decided to leave and if we were still In the area the next day we would come back with our towels and bathers. After a little more walking around we decided that we had seen enough of Benidorm and it was time to move on and hopefully find another amazing sleeping spot like last night. So we hit the road travelling on the ‘coastal road’ which was not very coastal and the beaches had no parking, as they were all in towns, with high rise apartments. After a 2.5 hour drive which we thought would only be about an hour and we thought we would have to go to a services we hit luck and found this marvellous natural park, which was close to a lake and also the beach. Due to it now getting dark we did not have much time to explore but it was safe and we are looking forward to exploring it tomorrow.

Day 53 13^th October - El Saler (natural park)

Just as planned this morning we got up and explored the park, we were not the only people that wanted to explore the area by 9am there were lots of people on there own, with friends or with their children arriving to enjoy the park, they were either walking, running or cycling. It seems to be big for mountain biking – even though there are no mountains and all the track is paved. Our exploring was done by walking and a little running, on the path, down to the beach and then off track a little through the trees. After our enjoyable walk and brunch we went to spend the afternoon on the beach. This beach was dirty and disturbing. When I say dirty I mean there was rubbish all over it. What I mean by disturbing was that most the people where naked, men and women just laying around with their bits out. One lady had a swim suit on and took it off to go swimming. You think we went to a nudist beach don’t you? We didn’t! from my travels in the past to this area of Spain I remember the trauma of seeing fat naked men on the beach but this was much worse. There was even a family Mum, Dad and young kids all naked. One man cycled down to the beach fully kitted up in his lycra and got his kit off, laid on the beach for a while, put his kit on and got back on his bike and went on his way. It was so wrong but it’s one of them things when you know you shouldn’t look but you can’t help it you have to look. After the strange afternoon at the beach we decided we needed to do something normal this evening so we played Uno, currently Steve is the champ but I’m working on taking over the title, maybe by the end of our travels I will be the champ.

Day 54 14^th October - El Saler (natural park) – Valencia – Monocofa

We woke and went for a run, and hit the road to Valencia. As always when driving into a big city with Stan we had a little bit of trouble finding parking and ended up parking him in what we think was a school car park. I was a little worried about leaving him there as it looked dead rough with graffiti all over the place, on exploring the city we realised that there is graffiti everywhere. Due to parking what we thought was a little out of the main city we took our bikes which worked out great as Valencia is very bike friendly with a bike path around most of the city. We also rode through the Turia River Park (a dried up river that is now a beautiful park) and out to the port. At one stage we locked our bikes up and just wondered around the little coble streets and spent some time sitting in the main square people watching. It felt like a long time since we have explored a city with history and culture and we both really enjoyed it. After our great day exploring we hit the road in search of a place to sleep, we like to sleep in scenic places but tonight this did not happen, we are parked in a large empty car park about a kilometre from the beach. It looks like a carpark for a new housing estate, we thought it looked quiet but the road is very busy with cars, trucks, cyclists and runners and everyone that goes past looks at Stan, I don’t blame them though as we do look strange parked up in what seems to be the middle of nowhere. We have been lucky in the 8 weeks were we have been travelling we have parked in some amazing places with amazing views but tonight is not one of them.

Day 55 15^th October - Monocofa – Mimi Platja : Camping Playa and Fiesta

After a week of free camping today we have treated ourselves to a night in a campsite. Around the area there is a lot of flash campsite/resorts but we just want to have a shower, charge things and do some washing so we went for a basic one, it does have a pool, but its closed for winter which Steve was upset about till we parked and we are right on the beach with a beautiful view. So today has been a day of doing washing and relaxing. Steve was a good boy this afternoon and went out for a run, while he was out running he found a German bar and at that point he realised (as there is lots of German’s in our campsite) that this area is where all the Germans holiday. After dinner we took a walk down to the bar (we felt after a week for recovering from our 5 day binge session last week one drink wouldn’t hurt) and it was really nice. at first it felt a little awkward being the only none locals, as everyone in there was German and they could tell we were not. They spoke to us in German which was nice and also a little confusing at first for Steve to get his German thinking head on after many months of Spanish, but after a while it was not a problem and they were very friendly and chatty, and it was also a treat to have German beer, sadly though they had no apfel strudel on the menu. If you don’t count our crazy time in Marbs this is only the second time we have been out in the evening, how wild are we.

---

Comments

[D MJ Binkley]

Wow
Lovely sunset