Wildcamping and Aires in Spain

We've just spend a superb month in company with some friends travelling around the Valencia/Alicante areas of Spain using a mixture of Aires and Wild Parking for stopovers.
We met up with our friends, Steve and Lorna, at one of our favourite spots just by the beach at a small Spanish resort, it was their first trip to this area and they were very pleasantly surprised by what a great spot it is! Very busy though with maybe a 100 vans and sad to say that some motorhomers were becoming very territorial about their spaces - even using water bottles to mark out their 'pitches'



That aside we had a great few days R&R before we went for an inland tour to show Steve and Lorna around a bit. Just a few miles inland there is a great, and little used, Aire. Free to stay with a proper service area we enjoyed a couple of nights and made use of one of the town's great little bar/restaurants - menu-del-dia at just 7.50€ and a wonderful part restored Monastery which was free to wander around plus free wifi at the Tourist Office.





On the second morning a Belgian couple joined us at the parking and proudly told us that they had been to the Aire before and were a bit dismayed to see others using it as they had been determined to keep the location a secret! They didn't approve of websites and books that publish locations, I kid you not.....
From there we drove over the nearby mountains to the next valley and on to an Aire that we had recently discovered. On arrival it was deserted and the electric gates were firmly shut. I phoned the number on the gate to see if they would open it up for us and in my best Spanish understood that someone would be along shortly.....

Sure enough a someone appeared and opened the gates, showed us where to park and gave us a tour of the facilities. He plugged in all the appliances in case we would want to use the washing up sinks , the washing machine and the showers etc. A few minutes later a man drove into the Aire and showed us around again - he was the village's Mayor, and very proud of 'his' Aire he was too. He took our payment for a couple of nights giving us a small discount and threw in a one hour wifi access for good measure (which for some reason lasted the duration of our stay - bonus!).

We had the Aire to ourselves and enjoyed exploring the village and spent a few hours having a superb tapas lunch at the adjacent municipal recreation area's bar/restaurant. We decided to stay an extra day and also had a great barbecue and watched some fab sunsets - it doesn't get much better .





Leaving there we checked out a couple of wildcamping areas that had been recommended to Steve and Lorna whilst at our original location. Although the towns were worthy of a walk around we didn't actually stay at either so continued to our next planned stop at a small established Aire on the side of a large town that we had used many times in the past.

A sign of the times I suppose but, although still open, the Aire was sadly neglected, drains blocked and overflowing with recent discharges of cassettes (why, when its already blocked?) and the fresh water tap had been vandalised some time ago as we seem to remember it was the same at our last visit. Probably a good example of what happens to an Aire when it's considered to be uneconomical to maintain....

Next stop was a pre-booked stay at a Super Aire on the coast. En route we had a great drive through all the groves with almond and cherry blossom starting to burst through.

Meeting up with some other friends in their massive RV we all enjoyed a proper dinner party at their place - so much space!

A bit of mountain climbing was on the cards so Steve and I scrambled to the top - what a view!



We wanted to stay a few more days but the Aire has a 3 day limit for where we were parked so, we had to move off for one night before we could return for another 3 day stint. We tried Wild Parking in a nearby street which worked well.

Leaving the Super Aire at the end of our second stay we headed to a little wildcamp that we discovered recently. On arrival there wasn't much wildcamping to be seen.... So we just parked and had some lunch and a wander around. Returning to the vans we had both acquired an offical(?) police notice that were illegally camped and should move on!




We did, and headed to a lighthouse on a nearby promontory and a likely looking layby parking area with the most fantastic views.







We had a great evening socialising and just marveling at what a great spot we'd found A Belgian van pulled in and stayed overnight too bolstered with confidence by being in a small group instead of on their own. A wonderful planetarium like sky with no light pollution other than the sequence of flashes from the lighthouse - a very peaceful night and views were just as good in the morning when our blinds were opened!



Just one of the many fantastic scenic wild camps we've experienced in Spain.

Mini tour over we headed north along the coast road back to our original wild camping location for a few more days before heading off in different directions.

Now, all the mentioned places we visited and stayed at are in the Stopover sections of Club Motorhome and unlike our Belgian acquaintance mentioned earlier we ARE happy to share our 'secrets' with our subscribing members - if the places are of interest to you please just PM or email me and I'll give the links to their descriptions etc

St Feliu, Peniscola, beachside wildcamp and no bandits :)

St Feliu de Guixols is a lovely Spanish resort, the fact that there is a free Aire makes it even better!



Since our first visit here new services have been installed - also free. Its an Aire that's not listed in all the guides but we have the details on Club Motorhome of course!

After St Feliu we set off for Peniscola using non-toll roads which meant a 6 hour journey (half it if using tolls) but the roads were mostly good. I (semi) jokingly reminded Caroline to have her camera at the ready to snap any of the infamous Barcelona Bandits if they tried to stop us as we passed the city, but as usual no sign.....

At the end of the long day's drive we pulled in at the Peniscola Aire, no need for hookup so just €8. The Aire was pretty busy but not with Brits. Aires rules normally say no chairs, awnings, etc and this one has a whopping great sign up but still you see lots of awnings, chairs etc in use. Must just be to keep the authorities happy to have a sign up?



Our last day of this trip was to some beachside wild camping near Gandia where we met up, by chance, with friends Dick and Jackie in their Autotrail. We had a very pleasant evening catching up on our respective travels during the past year.

Next outing is to the Spain 2012 meet at Denia and Calpe, looking forward to it already!

Feet up at Leucate Plage - then back into Spain

From Vers we travelled a couple of hundered more miles south to an Aire that was new to us at Fanjeaux, a charming and very old village high up with great surrounding views including the snow capped Pyrenees.



Several more vans squeezed onto the Aire for the night and the  next morning we had a wander around the ancient village.

Next stop on our list was one of our favourite beachside Aires, Leucate Plage. We've stayed several times in the past, for as much as a week at a time. Situated right on the beach its a perfect spot!

We met Andy and Caroline from the UK who were returning from their over-wintering trip to Spain and Portugal, they'd had a great 3 months but were looking forward to getting back home. Their 2 Jack Russells became good buddies with Digger and enjoyed running amok on the beach.

Leucate is a payment Aire but when we arrived the recently installed new payment system was not working which was a nice bonus, although we discovered that the water was turned off too. The next morning however, engineers arrived to commission the system for the season and turned it back on - although the barriers stayed open. We had been very lucky on this trip with overnight charges so far being ZERO!

We had a good day's admin on the van at Leucate, tidying through and re-arranging some storage and this morning left after a lazy start for Spain.

We're at St Feliu de Gixols near Girona tonight along with about a dozen other vans and again we have free wifi!

February in France? That's going to be cold!

We're route planning for our next trip which is mostly on familiar ground between Valencia and Norfolk in England.

It's an exciting trip as we plan to arrive around the time our fifth grandchild is born.

We have a vets appointment booked for next week so that Digger gets his annual rabies shot and anything else he needs before entering the UK.

So all that's left is to finalise our route. Its not a great time of year to be travelling up through France and we expect that we will find water taps turned off where frost is a problem but we'll manage.

We're going to take a couple of weeks en-route using some coastal wildcamping for a few days to make the most of the sunshine before actually heading north.

Our first stop will be a campsite that we used last time on the way down at Huesca in northern Spain, we have to time it right as they only open at weekends at this time of year. From there we'll head around the Pyrenees (likely to be too icy and snowy to consider going over the top) and into the Aire at Hendaye Plage. Next is a short hop north to Mimizan Plage where we'll hang around a few days if the weather is kind.

There's a handy little village called Chaunay for our next stop where there is official paking in the centre, even has free electricity - or at least it did last time we were there a couple of years ago.

Next stop on our provisional list is Brezolles where we will have an appointment for Digger to receive the relevant meds to keep Customs happy.

Our last planned stop is Le Crotoy where we'll probably just stay one night before our prebooked crossing via Eurotunnel.

So that's it, all very changeable between now and then or even while we travel. Isn't that just the greatest thing about motorhoming?

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???