Archive - June 2018

Faro-tastic!

June 29, 2018Lorraine Stokes4 min read

28/06/18 -29/06/18 – Faro – Algarve We stayed in a magical place tonight….a car park just over the road from the airport. A massive well laid out car park with a bit of greenery, which overlooks the Ria Formosa estuary. It was very exciting hearing the planes take off followed by the sheer intensity of the noise and size as they went over our heads, then disappeared into the sunset. Great entertainment for the evening so long as you’re a heavy sleeper…I’m not!! Luckily they didn’t fly all night though. Over the estuary bridge is Faro beach and a carpark where you can park your camper in the low season. They fortunately have a toilet block which was handy since our toilet in the van was full…eeeew. Yes this is one of the joys of motor homing, the fun of finding service area to dump it, and the actual process, well you can use your imagination. It’s quite a grim job but you get used to it. Dan and I take turns to make it more manageable, and fair. You very...

Happy Birthday to Me!

June 28, 2018Dan3 min read

27/07/18 – 28/06/18 – Tavira We were up early as we had the Moho booked in for some investigatory works on why the batteries didn’t seem to be charging, this gave us time to appreciate the area in the calmness of the early morning. Waking up with sea views never gets tiring, particularly when they are as beautiful as the ones here. By choice, I wouldn’t have booked the van in on my Birthday, but as it was the only slot they had for the next couple of weeks, we thought we had better take it. So off we trundled to Camperserv to get it checked out. We had a 10:00 slot, but due to being a member of staff down, we didn’t get seen until closer to 15:00. That didnt stop us going for a Birthday beer at a roadside cafe/restaurant. Lorraine and I were dubious at first, as at it looked a little run-down and untidy, we were the only people in there (it was only 11:00 though) but by lunchtime, the place started to fill up with locals. We both had our first taste of...

Bom Dia Portugal – original post title!!

June 27, 2018Lorraine Stokes2 min read

26/06/18 – 27/06/18 – Cacela Velha / Ria Formosa – Algarve  Our first Portuguese destination was the cute little town of Cacela Velha in Vila Real de Santo António, Algarve – just a short drive from the border.  The town overlooks the easternmost lagoon of the Ria Formosa, and it has two cafes, both of which were very busy while we were there. About a 1km along the coast further into Portugal is the more populated Fabrica beach. We stayed one night on a grassy field in front of a car park that had a great view of the lagoon. Although it stated no autocaravanas we decided to chance it and park up anyway! Getting cocky now, as we were the only ones there on arrival. Over the next few hours we were joined by several other Mohos and campers. Throughout the day as the water went out we enjoyed the changing shapes and beauty of the lagoon. I took a walk via from one beach to the other, and kept on walking into Fabrica town. I was trying to find a birthday present for...

Goodbye Spain :-( ……For Now

June 26, 2018Dan2 min read

25/06 – 26/06 Isla Cristina – Camping Playa Taray This was it, our last stop in Spain before venturing on to Portugal. We probably would have gone straight from Seville, but because I had messed around with the leisure batteries again, we needed to find somewhere we could plug-in and reset again. We found Camping Playa Taray on our app for 11 Euros/night, so off we headed. The site was fine, it felt slightly tired and a little uncared for, but it was cheap and good enough to spend the night. Cold showers though that you had to press the button every 3 seconds……annoying. This truly was a dog-friendly site though – no segregation this time and there was one of the biggest dogs either of us had seen! Over the road was our first taste of the Atlantic Ocean again – what a difference to the calm waters of the Mediterranean. Here the waves churned up a green layer of seaweed on the shoreline. There were loads of dogs on the beach, so Marley had a whale of...

‘Appy Pride! Seville Orgullo

June 25, 2018Lorraine Stokes5 min read2 comments

23/06/18 – 25/06/18 – Seville We’d heard that Seville was hot and had discussed staying in a hotel, but chose to test it out once there. Boy was it hot, reaching 43 degrees at its highest, so after taking turns to go and see the spectacular Plaza de España and surrounding gardens, we packed a bag, checked out of our Moho, and into a hostel. The pure reason for this was to benefit from the air con, so imagine how gutted we were when we were provided with a measley oscillating fan. Although it did work well enough to keep us cool, but more Importantly  Marley, who was struggling and at risk of getting heat stroke. The hostel was clean, quite quirky, and the lovely owner let us keep our bikes inside.  We’d planned to be in Seville for the Pride celebrations that evening, which are hosted each year for the whole of the Andalucia region. At the hostel we were a short walk away from the parade starting point, so after getting a bit of colour and glitter on, off we went to to...

My Watchtower is Bigger Than Yours – Cadiz

June 23, 2018Dan3 min read

22/06/18 – 23/06/18 Cadiz Do we, dont we was pretty much how the conversation went for a couple of days before we eventually said we do. (Visit Cadiz that is) and we are so glad we did. Having read about it, it was often compared as a smaller, more tame Seville or Granada, and having been to Granada recently and being en-route to Seville we very nearly gave it a miss. The drive into the old town was pretty uninspiring, and I remember saying to Lorraine, if this is anything to go by, then we wont be here for very long. We knew we could park in the port for a few euros, so we headed there half expecting to be back within the hour. The old town itself is relatively small and easy to navigate. Tall old buildings with narrow cobbled streets (just about wide enough to get a car down but certainly not big enough for a Moho) are arranged in grid patterns to the west end of the peninsula. It felt very different to other parts of Spain we had visited and you could certainly feel the...

2 Days of Not That Much – Conil de la Frontera

June 22, 2018Lorraine Stokes2 min read

20/06/18 – 22/06/18 – Conil de la Frontera After spending 8 days wild camping and a bit concerned about our Moho leisure battery not charging properly, we headed to the nearest campsite on route, Camping Rosalida. We didn’t get there til late, we were both tired and quite irritable so having to queue for ages to check was a real bummer. We chose a pitch in the “dog friendly” area which in other words meant segregated from everyone else who didn’t have a dog. The pitches were generous in width but not in length which we is what we need for our beast. It also took a lot of faffing about with the chocks to get level. In the process Dan accidentally scraped the van on the small wall (nothing serious fortunately) but when you’re already irritable!!! We then heard our English neighbour who was obviously drunk by her shouting rather than talking. Her partner ushered us over ‘so our dogs could meet’ keen to interact and give us loads of advice on what we need to do once we...

3 hours too long in Gibraltar

June 20, 2018Dan2 min read

20/06/18 – Gibraltar They always say, if you cant say something nice, then don’t say anything at all…..So, I’ll keep this one pretty brief. We spent the night in the marina on the Spanish side as it was much cheaper to do this and then walk over the border. It was pretty reasonably priced @ 10 euros for 24 hours. It was basic, but had the usual facilities (no Electric Hook Up though). The marina was tidy and well policed and we got to watch a nice sunset not long after we arrived. Heading over the border the next day was pretty straightforward with Marley – no questions asked. We were a little disappointed the they didn’t ask for his passport! Crossing the runway was fun but from that point on we didn’t really rate it. We knew we weren’t going to do the rock before we arrived, given Marley wouldn’t be allowed in the cable car, and we had read about the monkeys being particularly vicious towards dogs at the top. I was happy to wait...

Marbella – Hidden Wild Camping in the Woods

June 19, 2018Lorraine Stokes3 min read

16/06/18 – 20/06/18 – Playa Las Mimosas, Mabella We took a chance on a wild camping site listed on searchforsites.co.uk , that had no reviews or photos but only mentioned it’s popular with the locals. It was so worth it. 6kms along the coast from central Marbella beach, Playa Las Mimosas was truly a lovely find. A small woods not impacted by tourism, predominantly frequented by Spanish for camping. By camping I mean big groups of friends and family spreading out, enjoying drinking, eating, laughing, listening to music. Not surprisingly, there was that aroma of cannabis in the air…again. We were so happy that we could do the same [spread out I mean) and that it was free. Being the weekend, It was absolutely packed. Fortunately we arrived just in time to bag ourselves a pretty huge space amongst the trees, which we then made home for the next 3 nights…for free!. Just a short stroll away we found the long stretch of white sandy beach which had a couple of...

Malaga – So Much More than an Airport!

June 16, 2018Dan2 min read

16/06/18 – Malaga I’m not sure what it is about Spanish cities, but parking spaces are a real rarity – especially when you dont know where you are going, so our first impression of Malaga was nearly our last as we were about to jack it in after searching for what seemed like about an hour. Then miraculously, we found somewhere big enough for the bohemouth….. and it was free too…Happy days 😉 We didn’t know what to expect for Malaga. Like most people I suppose, we had already judged it before we arrived. We knew it was the gateway to the Costa Del Sol, filled with British lager lout tourists however, although the city seemed to have its fair share of Brit, it didn’t really come across that way. Granted, we only visited the old part of the town for a couple of hours, but we were left feeling somewhat surprised by what it had to offer. The old quarter is dominated by both the Alcazar and the Cathedral, but there are also many other interesting...

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