Weekend breaks

Gnarly northern retirees are not the only winter sun seekers in Iberia, increasingly there's also a lot of locals taking a short break, particularly around half term and Mardi Gras. However, beyond the obvious hot spots on the Costa Blanca, the Costa del Sol/Tropica and Algarve, during the week you can still turn up to sites on spec and usually to find a place. Not so on sunny winter weekends when sites and areas autocaravanas fill up; phoning ahead becomes a necessity.

Away from the coast many campsites close between October and Easter, which is unsurprising as inland sub zero temperatures are common in the winter months. The few that are open are like ghost towns mid-week but get busier on Friday and Saturday nights as families escape the city to spend the weekend in their static caravans. This is commonplace across Southern Europe. In Spain, Portugal and Italy owning a shared family static caravan is commonplace, which is understandable considering that many families live in apartment blocks without an outdoor space other than a balcony. Whereas northerners tend to regard the great outdoors as somewhere peaceful and beneficial in itself, the people of the Mediterranean take a more transactional view and treat it as a place to have a good time - an opportunity for their kids to play outside, for extended families to have a meal together and the grown-ups to party afterwards.

You get lots of the outraged reviews about noisy locals on campsites on Google and the Search for Sites for app. In truth in our experience it's never that intrusive - the kids may be noisy but they  rarely misbehave. So far as the partying goes then things almost always quieten down by 11pm  I think some people being outraged and social media has given them free range to fulminate.

Another favourite rant from our fellow winter escapees concerns the look of campsites in southern Europe. Regarding statics, forget British bungaloid  Willerbys with a big deck outside the lounge patio doors, replete with chintzy figurines and geranium festooned hanging baskets. The equivalent in Spain, Portugal and Italy is a clapped out immoveable tourer with DIY additions - a dull green canvas gazebo propped up on rusting metal poles, an outside kitchen haphazardly knocked together with patched up plywood, inside an ancient fridge freezer inherited from nonna next to a surprisingly sophisticated looking range cooker and stone BBQ.

This is something else that infuriates fellow campers from northern climes. They mutter darkly online about making places looking like refugee camps or shanty towns seemingly oblivious to the fact that their gleaming 10 metre A class pride and joy hardly enhances the view either. When we first started touring long term I was a member of a number of motorhome groups online - they were useful for newbies needing practical advice. Sadly they also were inhabited by obnoxious right wing nut jobs and blithering idiots. It became tiresome, so I gave up on social media. However, it's impossible to avoid idiots altogether as they do love to post outraged reviews on Google maps and Search for Sites.

Ignoring all the downsides of attempting to find a place to stay on the coast at the weekend we headed off to Foz do Arelho on a Saturday. North of Lisbon the weather is cooler and more variable, this is not somewhere which is going to be busy on the 1st of March, we agreed. Wrong!  When we arrived at the big municipal aire overlooking the calm expanse of Lagos de Obidos we were lucky to bag one of the few pitches left. The place's popularity partly rests on it's proximity to the walled town of Obidos, a place often listed as one of Portugal's 'must see' sites. This accounted for the mix of van's from northern Europe, but there were a lot of local here too, thirty somethings with tweenies in tow in the main.

Over the last couple of years we've noticed a lot more motorhomes with local plates. A decade ago there were hardly any, and the few we came across tended to be ancient Hymers held together with duck tape. Not so these days, most of the Portuguese families owned modern looking German vans, a reflection of the success in recent years of the Iberian economies. Both Spain and Portugal have growth rates well above the larger economies of their northern neighbours, a far cry from the days of bailout following the 2008 financial crash. Quite clearly there is an emergent well to do class of young professionals, doing well enough to own a high end motorhome. It's  Mardi Gras next Tuesday, and this year it coincides with the local school's mid-term break. No wonder it was unexpectedly busy at the seaside.

Foz do Arelho is an especially nice spot, a broad mere-like estuary with low cliffs to the north and taller ones to the south stretching away towards Peniche. At sunset paragliders circle above them like giant florescent gulls.

The calm, shallow waters of the bay are great for paddleboarding too. I ventured out twice but annoyingly still seem to be having a crisis of confidence about standing up. I did fall in a couple times, which counter intuitively signals progess as the first stage of being able to stand up is to conquer your fear of falling in and regain the knack of being able to scramble back onto the board afterwards.

Foz do Arehello is a popular spot for a Sunday stroll and has developed a clutch of seaside cafés to provide for them. They looked unexceptional so we catered for ourselves. 

We have visited the area before in 2021, staying in Peniche and Obidos. Though we got out and about in Peniche circumstances dictated we didn't see much of Obidos at all. Gill felt quite unwell on our second day in Peniche. The reason became clear the next day when she tested positive for COVID. I succumbed soon after. For the next 10 days we hopped from one area autocaravanas to another, doing our best to self isolate. I felt so poorly I couldn't drive the van for more than an hour or so. It was a horrible experience and puts into perspective the minor grumbles we have at the moment about the unsettled, uncharacteristically chilly weather.

We wondered about heading to Aveiro, the photos of it's multicoloured canalside houses looked lovely but the reviews of places to park a motorhome were negative. We headed to the municipal site Praia de Mira. The town looks as if it expanded in the 1970s as a purpose built resort built between the shore and a big freshwater lagoon behind the dunes.

More recently the place has been given a bit of an eco makeover with wooden walkways around the lagoon and over the big dunes that stretch  southwards. 

A network of cycleways snake through the forest connecting the beach town to Mira inland and the Lagoa de Aveiro to the north. 

It's a pleasant place to be and the campsite was busy, occupied mainly by Portuguese families here for Mardi Gras and the half term holidays.

The municipal campsite seemed to have missed out on Praia de Mira's recent upgrade. From the look of the quasi-brutalist sanitary blocks nothing seems to have changed much since it was built half a century ago.

The interior of the shower block was spectacularly unlovely, kitted out entirely in dull grey metal - it exuded a profound utilitarianism you might associate with a Soviet era Black Sea resort.

In the end the miserable facilities, mixed weather and cool temperatures began to get us down. Back to doom scrolling through the weather app!. Our conclusion - the most settled conditions looked to be on the Cantabrian and Basque Country coast. We decided to head back towards Santander sooner than planned. We even considered trying to bring our ferry crossing forward by a few days, however they earlier crossing was fully booked. Maybe we weren't the only Brits fed-up with UK style weather in Iberia.