Featured Pub Stopover - The House on the Green

Well, we're still waiting around for our overdue grandchild but tomorrow is going to be the day!
In the meantime we took the opportunity to stay at our latest Pub Stopover - The House on the Green at North Wootton on the outskirts of Kings Lynn in Norfolk. Its a lovely old country/village pub and I've made it a featured stopover on Club Motorhome.

The landlord is very keen to encourage motorhomes to stay over and we are happy to recommend the pub if you are passing that way.

Back to base and a catchup.

After Cares Gorge we returned to Cangas for a another night before planning our trip back to home via a dozen stopover locations to research for Club Motorhome.

5 days later and we arrived back at our base, unloaded and parked the motorhome back in its secure storage all ready for our next trip in about 6 weeks - MOT and service time in the UK, Oh well.... one has to pay for the pleasure eventually! :)

PHOTO Map showing general route and the majority of the stops we made during the trip.

Conclusions? Galicia is STUNNING! Asturias less so but still lovely - the northern coastline is not a patch of the western Galician coast. The Asturias does however have the Picos de Europa which are magnificent - especially on clear days when you can see them! All in our humble opinion anyway :)

Right, where's the maps? Which way shall we head to the UK? Planning has started!

Another lazy day....

Day 19 - 3rd of June

What a place to wake up! Another gorgeous location, again with no one on the beach. I took Digger out first thing for a run on the sand which he really enjoyed - he does that puppy mad few moments when he will run madly in all directions with the apparent intent of colliding with something/someone any minute! Absolute madness but lovely to watch him having such a great time, he's certainly seen some changes in the last few months.

PHOTO Digger Madness

Back at the motorhome we had breakfast and decided that we would definitely stay another night, meaning that today would be a lazy one - perhaps with a little housekeeping thrown in.

The cove is busy with daytime visitors and its obvious why, the place is beautiful (did I already say that?). When the tide is out its possible to access another part of the beach by the large rock formation known as the drinking horse. A young family in a Czech motorhome took advantage of the seclusion to bare all and just have a nice time on the beach.

PHOTO The Drinking Horse

At the time of writing this its mid/late afternoon and there's not much housework been done! Who cares? - this is a holiday after all :) The Guardia Civil have been and gone and are obviously not bothered with sensible motorhome parking. No one is abusing the site, it was great to see some youngsters who arrived in their surfer's vans yesterday, to enjoy last evening here tidy up after themselves - every one of them took their rubbish to the bins as they left.

Some more photos to sum up the day and the location:

PHOTOS of Playa de Cuevas Del Mar

Still no wifi so the blog will not get uploaded yet.......

Another day in paradise

Day 9 Tuesday 24th May

We decided to stay in this lovely location for another day as we had water and waste capacity, we could make the most of lazing about and enjoying the place. After a very late wakeup I walked Digger and was surprised that apart from a late arrival the other motorhomes had gone - did they know something we didn't after all? No problems were apparent so we just assumed that had been up at a decent time and just went...

The van needed some housekeeping so this was an ideal opportunity to tidy up a bit, mats shook, swept and mopped through and dusted and polished... all before lunch too.

In the afternoon we walked around 'our' bay for a couple of hours. Digger enjoyed a paddle and substituted seagulls for his usual rabbits to chase - daft dog!

The island is really small and we reached one end, which was where the campsites were that we visited yesterday, maybe on a cooler day it would be good to walk right around it? There were plenty of photo opportunities so the ones following show the results of our walk.

Still no wifi so although the blog is being written day by day there's a backlog building that needs uploading - maybe tomorrow...

South of Valencia to North of Madrid

Day 1 Monday 16th May

As usual when moving from house to motorhome our packing always takes a bit longer than we estimate and we got under way, with a fill up of diesel and a new Cepsa gas cylinder, at about 1pm. With beautiful weather we were straight onto main roads and settled into the journey. Digger took a little while to feel comfortable but eventually found a spot between our seats to snuggle in, its by far the longest journey he has undertaken with us.

Our first day of this trip was a very long stretch at over 600kms but using free 'Autovia' toll free roads the journey was enjoyable with some lovely scenery along the way.

From the Province of Valencia we moved through gently undulating vineyards in Castilla-la-Mancha, huge fields of poppies in full bloom via Cuenca and through the more rugged but lush green (at this time of year) Province of Madrid.

We had a couple of comfort stops and a 15 minute power nap when tiredness set in followed by a stimulating cup of Americano to sharpen me up for the rest of the day.

Photo - Turegano town

TomTom did a great job and we pulled in at our first nightstop at an Aire in Tuegano which is not far from Segovia at around 9pm. We'd seen some pretty grotty photos of this Aire in advance and were pleasantly surprised to see it in the flesh. Its an old cereal mill and a bit run down but the town seems lovely with an enormous and imposing castle and an impressive town square surrounded by ancient houses.

Photo - Mill

As it was so late we just snacked on cheese, pickles and nuts then made the bed (always a chore on the first night) showered and to bed. A good nights sleep for all three of us.

With a great nights sleep we planned our next route and luckily we didn't need to use the services as they were blocked and overflowing! Our Spanish neighbour at the Aire tried to unblock it without success.

Note: All the Aires and stopover locations that we visit will be listed in detail with descriptions and photographs, GPS locations, Google Maps etc. on Club Motorhome as soon as possible.

And now we are 3!

We just had 3 weeks wild camping by the beach here in Spain, I chose not to blog while we were away as I fancied a proper break from website stuff and having to find wifi to upload updates etc.

Anyway we're back at our home base so how did it go?

We found a great spot along with a lot of other motorhomes from many other places in Europe but the reason for the title of this blog entry we also found ourselves a dog!

He had been living rough around the area for at least the last couple of months and through the kindness of the motorhomers already on site had been fed and watered and loved. He had apparently been a very poor old thing when first seen looking very old and weak.

His playful character had endeared him to the folks from the UK, Denmark, Germany, Belgium, Holland and Ireland and he made many new doggie friends too. This is when we first saw him.

He was mainly being looked after by Paddy who gave him a little of what he ate at each meal so, he was getting bacon sandwiches for breakfast, pork ribs etc for dinner - bliss he may have thought but he was still sleeping rough and had an uncertain future once the motorhomes had inevitably moved on.

We took the time while Paddy was still there to get to know him and observe his behaviour with people and other dogs. He seemed to sense our interest and often came to us for a fuss. We put water out for him and fed him more tit-bits and by the time Paddy was ready to head off for his home in Ireland we had decided to take him in permanently.

The word soon spread around our neighbours and everyone seemed so relieved that the dog was going to be saved. When Paddy set off it was heartbreaking to see the dog chase off after him obviously believing that he had, once again, been abandoned  :(  I went off up the road to find him but there was no sign so I returned sadly to the site without him, one lady was in tears at the scene.

A few minutes later the 'little sod' came strutting back and seemed to wonder what all the fuss was about!

We parked in Paddy's spot to give the dog (now known as Digger) some continuity and encouraged him into the van. he seemed so comfortable that we made a place for him under the dinette table and he stayed the whole night, albeit I did get up a couple of times to make sure he had a chance to do anything outside   ;) . But he behaved perfectly and continued for the next week or so while we were still there.

He had a trip into town with us to experience the ride, which although a bit fretful to start was no problem at all. We bought him some worming tablets and flea treatment, a lead and a squeaky toy, he already had a collar which was supplied by a couple of Germans to make sure he wasn't impounded by the authorities.

We've brought him home to our Spanish house now and he's getting used to his new surroundings. He's been to the vets with us and had a microchip fitted as well as vaccinations for rabies and distemper etc, and he is now the proud holder of a Pet Passport - he won't be able to travel to the UK for another 7 months though as he'll need a clean blood test result.

So there we have it, our lives have pretty well turned upside down and we absolutely love it and of course we absolutely love Digger. I am sure that we are likely to become complete dog bores!

Digger

Our next planned motorhome trip with him will be to Denia in Spain in April to meet up with a group of UK motorhomers. He'll be making many new friends there!  :D

Just a few of the very kind folks who kept him going


This blog can also be read on the Club Motorhome website

Time to move our blog across to our main website

We have installed some software on Club Motorhome for members to write their own blogs so we thought we'd better be loyal to ourselves (and test the software) and continue 'Motorhoming with NEILMAC' there.

Its just a few days now until we start our new 3 month adventure (always seems like an adventure anyway!). Our approximate route is planned and we're going to be heading up through eastern Spain, into southern France and will be spending time in the Rhone-Alps and Burgundy before northern France and a visit to the UK.

For those who have been following our travels please click this link to take you to our new location.

Epiblog - Mission Accomplished!

Well, home again and mission accomplished! More of that in a moment...

If you have been following this blog you will already know that we have had a great little journey, been to some fab places and enjoyed some great company with new friends. Our trip to Portugal did however have other aims and in addition to the ubiquitous researching along the way for new sites or aires for 'Club Motorhome' we were looking to complete the journey within the following guidelines:

- the first to spend no more per day than our 'home' budget
- the second to limit our diesel to our 'home' energy costs which includes electric, wood, gas, and water etc.
- to have fun and experience what the southern areas of Spain and, fingers crossed Portugal, have to offer us.

This is of course without spending over 'budget' and unless you are a math genius my bumbling with numbers of what I had and hadn't in the purse will be meaningless in terms of figures. I hope you will have gleaned however that with my 'mastery' (ahem) of budgeting and economical cooking we have managed to live within the 'home' budget. Contrary to finding Portugal expensive I found it to be similar to Spain.

Typically we ate well and healthily, obviously the slip-ups we had in the way of cheese and biscuit 'dinners' resulted out of meeting some good company on our journey. We say shame on them for leading us astray! Using aires and free / wild camping meant that our 'stopping fees' were kept to a minimum although that is quite normal for us when travelling.

The end result is that we have come in under budget by a princely 22 euros which is actually not bad at all. Our biggest extravagances along the way were a tank full of premium diesel by mistake (him) and keeping the water fired up with gas when we had electric hook up at the campsite (me).


We have also added some 13 new places to stay in a motorhome to our steadily growing website database which can be viewed here

Finally I mentioned that I wanted to stay on the weight loss trail. It was a close thing but I returned home a couple of pounds lighter than when I left. RESULT!

Saturday 24th April - This journey's end...

She says...

A good clean and pack up before we leave Ibi and we get on the way arriving back home at lunchtime. A bit of shopping and a wash of MH at the local 'lavado' leaves us with 25 euro's and time to count up, see if we have succeeded in our aims of the trip!

He says...

To recap, we set out to holiday in our motorhome across Spain and into Portugal without spending more money than we would have by staying at home for the same period. The calculator is out and the results are due shortly.

She says...

We did for sure relax and enjoy but what about the other bits???

Thursday April 15th - Maybe not as tough as we thought......

As we sit and decide that we will go to the pool at Silves - me to swim and the technical department to use the free Wifi that is available, we are puzzled to see an official pick up truck turn up and then horrified to realise that it is in fact the municipal dog catchers. It is like something out of 101 dalmations. We watched as Robert tucked his tail down and offered himself up to be caught in the big net. In honesty the catchers were not cruel and actually seemed very gentle as they loaded him onto the truck and away.

'Robert' an hour or so before his capture

It became obvious that we would need to get out but that the rain was apparently not going to cease, hence our decision to use the pool. It is a really good pool or three pools in fact and you get an hour and a half swim for three euro fifty. I thnk I have done about 50 or 60 lengths but feel pretty sure that it is not a full length pool.

Despite the lack of room and equipment I turn into a culinary genius in the kitchen tonight, creating three meals out of the beef mince I bought on Monday - a spaghetti bolognese and two shepherd's pie's with a twist (recipes will appear on our website if they work out OK). I sincerely hope they do as we have decided to invite Margot, who has agreed that she will be the subject of an article for Club Motorhome for us, about lone women travellers, for dinner tomorrow.

Dinner over for tonight, I don't settle down until after one, as I must finish my book. It occurs to me that Robert's earlier, easy submission must have been because he had seen the weather forecast! We are treated to a wild night of torrrential rain and wind and one of those nights when I lay and wonder why I choose to stay for weeks on end in this little white box??