The rain in Spain

...wherever it falls is a pain. Particularly when a wet period of several days is forecast. Sunshine and showers are ok when you live in a van, five wet days on the trot isn't.

Yesterday, the last dry day forecast for a while, dawned chilly but bright. After Seville we had planned to travel towards Málaga then head gradually eastwards along the coast towards the Cabo da Gata. Now we have changed our mind altogether.

Unusually the long range forecast is for the area north of the Sierra Nevada mountain range to be warmer than the coast. So instead of crawling through the sprawl of tomatoland we are going to spend a few days in Granada then head towards Almeria across the Taberna desert. We like deserts.

In the meantime all we can do is to wile away a few days until the weather cheers-up. From Seville we headed east planning to stop overnight at Osuna in the area autocaravanas we know in the corner of an Eroski car park. The store had changed hands but the motorhome parking place and service point was still there. 

We did a bit of shopping, topped-up the van's white water tank then considered revisiting the town. It is old and full of handsome late baroque mansions. In the end we pushed on, a dislike of drizzle proving more persuasive than any enthusiasm I might have for architectural gems of the Spanish Enlightenment.

There are few places to stay along the A92 motorway that connects Seville and Granada, especially in winter. It's an empty tract of countryside mainly given over to industrial scale olive production. We decided we could do with a proper shower so we headed for the only all-season campsite in the vicinity situated in the small town of Humiladero, a few kilometres from Antiquero.

We have stayed here before, again as a hideaway from bad weather. The site itself is ok, but the town's outskirts are drab and slightly odd. More than decade or so ago, before the financial crash, there must have been a concerted plan to developing the place, a whole tract of land was cleared, a grid of roads constructed and lamp-posts installed. Only a handful of houses were actually built, they sit somewhat forlornly in a chequerboard of empty streets. Big billboards advertise 'parcelos' for sale; the signs are faded and torn. We did get the proper shower we wanted, but had to wait until mid-morning for the torrential rain and violent thunderstorms to abate before venturing out.

As we turned south towards Malaga the downpour resumed. Driving conditions as we crossed the Montes de Málaga were a tad tricky.

In truth we have little reason to complain, our phones' news feed keep updating us about conditions elsewhere in the country which are little short of catastrophic. The terrible weather a couple of hundred kilometres to the northeast of us has now been graced with a name  - storm Gloria. A  disaster is unfolding from the Costa Brava to Cartegena and the Balearics - the rice fields of the Ebro are inundated with sea water, waves of 40' reported off Ibiza, a storm surge wreaks havoc on the seafront of Murcia's major resorts, Avila, north of Madrid, is snowbound. Fatalities have been reported and the toll keeps  rising.

It is one thing to be inconvenienced by a few days of bad weather in a motorhome, but being caught in a full-blown storm - a weather-bomb' as the tabloids might say - that would be very alarming. How would you fare in the site at La Mamola or the beach parking at La Fabriquilla, both a mere couple of metres above sea level at high tide? Even if you were in a safer location, motorhomes and strong winds are an uncomfortable combination, not just while driving. In anything stronger than a fresh breeze, unless you have installed costly hydraulic stabilisers then your pride and joy will gently rock from side to side. It's nauseating but tolerable for an hour or two. If it persists any longer then occupants become increasingly deranged.

In an attempt to empathise with our unfortunate fellow travellers caught by the full force of storm Gloria I imagined the havoc in long stay sites near Benidorm, like the place in Altea we once stayed in briefly. Just think of the chaos wrought among all those neat, chintzy Dutch bungaloid pitches: the portable cactus gardens wrecked, fairy lights un-strung from awnings and keeled-over beside each upturned picnic table - a thunderstruck prone gnome. Hmm, tragic the way every cloud has a silver lining.