Camping Lingerie

Luck was on our side when we chose Tambo Motorhomes, they did a good job, and the people were friendly and professional. On the the way to the place we passed the factory where Benimar motorhomes are manufactured. I wondered if there was a connection between the two, maybe the repair place had been set up by a former engineer. When I asked the mechanic he said no, in fact he was somewhat dismissive of the local company, at least indirectly, implying it was no accident that he owned a German built one.

In one area however Tambo was less than ideal, there was no waiting area for customers. Gill spotted a chair, purloined it, and switched on her Kindle. I leaned on a nearby post and tapped away on my phone and updated the blog, then every so often did a circuit of the small industrial estate. Boredom set in and I began reading the online reviews of nearby campsites. In Benicario itself - Camping Alegría del Mar, a beach-side site and a bit of a resort it seemed. Then a few kilometres inland, 'Camping Paradis L 'Orangeraie' as the name implies, French owned, situated in a more rural location near Calig, which looked like an attractive village. "Camping l' Orangeraie" seems more our thing," I commented.

Gill glanced up from her Kindle looking slightly bemused, "Camping Lingerie?" she queried. It only goes to show, my French pronunciation may be dreadful, but I can speak Franglais like a native.

We paid up, then headed for Camping Lingerie via Bencario's newly opened Family Cash hypermarket. It had a petrol station with diesel at €1.41 per litre. Perhaps 15 cents less than the rate at Repsol, so on a typical 60 litre top up a saving of €9. Given we had shelled-out €400 in the past two days to get the fridge fixed, the saving on the fuel was a modest gain. Nevertheless we were inexplicably pleased by our small windfall.

The campsite proved to be as lovely as the blurb in the ACSI book promised. The northern part of Valenciana resembles the Mediterranean landscapes of the Costa Brava, Cote d'Azur, Tuscany or the Amalfi Coast. Dark green maritime pines, crags and cliffs of reddish or pale grey rocks, an outrageously blue sky and sea, olive groves and vineyards, cream stone villages and colour washed ports, it's a fatally alluring stereotype for northern Europeans. Happily in many places it also happens to be true.

For us it is without doubt 'our happy place', fuelled partly by a string of books published in the nineties and noughties written by people who had upped-sticks and moved to some inexpensive ruin in the South - 'A Year in Provence', 'Under the Tuscan Sun', 'Extra Virgin', we read them all and truly believed that one day we might emulate them. In the meantime working in education meant for 15 years or so most Easter and Summer holidays we managed to head south on camping trips with the kids. So Valenciana's more verdant Mediterranean landscape, in early Spring with fruit trees in blossom and evenings seemingly longer after the clocks  changed, all felt reassuringly familiar.

The nearby village of Calig also looks  'un-Spanish', flipping through our photos it quite easily could have been somewhere in the South of France, Liguria or Tuscany.

The campsite was managed by French people and many of the customers were from 'la Republique' too. There was a quirkiness about the layout and the facilities tended to value style over function, it all added to its Gallic ambience.

I suppose we should see this as our 'French fix'; for the first time we won't be making a mad dash north through France, opting to catch the ferry from Bilbao instead. This may be fortuitous as France is in revolt right now with millions of people taking to the streets to protest against raising the pension age to 64. The protests have sparked strikes affecting oil refineries and fuel deliveries leading to forecourt shortages. I have been dreading the long sea crossing but now it seems to be the better option. 

We depart two weeks today, the good news is a plume of summery weather is forecast for the next few days predicting temperatures nudging into the upper twenties. Overall we have had mainly dry days but not especially warm.  Gadding about weather rather than relaxing in the sun. It would be good to get in a bit of lounging about before we head back to Buxton's more bracing climate.