Day 98 - 05/08/19 - Arbeca, Spain

We had showers before we made our move today. We were going to stay for a couple of days, but the site was not what we had expected and the pitch was that small, we could only have our awning out a third of the way !

Anyway, walking to the showers, an older man was walking back to his van from the showers, in just his Y Fronts, they really aren’t shy over here are they 🙈

We headed for Alcossebra, where we had seen a lovely site, on the coast and by what looked like a lovely little town. There was quite a lot of traffic on the roads, but luckily the traffic jam was on the other side.

Unfortunately, there was no space on the site - so out with the map 🗺

We then went to Benicarlo, where there was parking near to the beach for 7 Motorhomes, and luckily there was space for us. We read some reviews, and it appears the locals aren’t happy about this place. Apparently there is a lady in the flats nearby, who calls the police if anyone gets their chairs out or if more than 7 vans park up !

We went for a walk along the beach to find somewhere to eat, and saw lots of other Motorhomes parked up on the beach. I spoke to a couple of them, and there is no problem “camping” there; opening awnings, getting out chairs etc. It looked lovely and so close to the sea. The sand was hot though, I had flip flops on and my feet were burning.

We walked further on and found a restaurant serving a 3 course meal and a drink for 10€, so we chose that one. The waitress couldn’t speak a word of English, so we translated the menu the best we could (not everything translates properly, so you have to use your imagination with some of the optionse). We had a salad and bread to begin with, then mixed paella for starter, chicken for main, and a dessert - we didn’t understand the 2 dessert choices, so opted to have one of each !

It was all very nice, and then we went to pay. When you are in Europe, and pay by card, the machines asks if you want to pay in euros or pounds. Chris said euros as the rate is better for us. When the receipt was printed, she had obviously pressed pounds, so the amount showed as £19. She then went on to say that we needed to pay another euro as we hadn’t paid enough. The waitress who served us also got involved and spoke quite a lot of English, funny as she couldn’t speak any English for the previous hour ! We did our best to explain that we had paid the correct amount and the receipt was just showing pounds and not euros, they still weren’t happy and told us to pay by cash next time - I politely told her that there will not be a next time. Shame really, as the food was lovely, we had amazing views of the sea, and it was them who had pressed the wrong button, not us !

We decided to move on again, as there was no shade where we were and no electric to have the fan on. We found 2 olive farms in El Perello, so headed there - if one had no space, at least we had a second option.

Well, we arrived at the first one, turning off a main road onto a dirt track, with the trees scratching the edge of the Motorhome. We eventually arrived at the farm, and a lady greeted us. It was an open area and she said we could park anywhere. I asked in my best Spanish sign language where the electric points were. She took us to a door which led into her home, and took a plug out of a full extension lead, and said we could use that. With the lack of health and safety rules over here, Chris wasn’t keen to plug into that, so we thanked her and went it find the other olive farm. It was within a mile, on the same set of dirt track lanes. We came across a building, but it looked nothing like an olive farm, so we gave that a miss too., and took out the map again 🙄

With travelling so far already, we decided to make our way to a vineyard I had seen with lots of great reviews, in a place called Arbeca.

On the way, we went over many bridges with signs of rivers beneath them, but they were all dry except the river Ebro which was beautiful.

We also saw the remains of a large area of alongside the road which had been burnt from a fire. New shoots were coming through, but so sad to see a now derelict building which looked like it had been in the middle of the fire.

The vineyard we were heading for was supposed to have spaces for 10 Motorhome, so we crossed our fingers that there would be space for us. There were also reports of amazing sunsets, I was just hoping we would manage to get there in time to see it tonight.

We found it, and found we were the only ones there. The owner met us, and explained where everything was, and then left for the night. We had such lovely views and I am pleased to say, that we managed to see the beautiful sunset.

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