Towards adjacent autumn

All the while we sweltered in a sub-tropical climate on the coast it was autumn inland. Temperatures in the mid twenties, dropping towards single figures overnight were typical in Castille La Mancha and northern Valencia. We would have headed there straightaway, but the lower temperatures were accompanied by violent thunderstorms. However the forecast now looks to be improving in central Spain. We decided to seek cooler conditions inland. I found a campsite near an embalse in the mountains near Baza. Maybe I could use my paddleboard there, I wondered.

We needed to shop on the way, which probably meant having a stop-over between Los Escullos and our intended destination. Back to Mercadona at Campohermoso then onwards to the southern end of the Cabo de Gata national park to the free parking area at La Fabriquila that we've used before.

 It's got a great view of the crescent shape bay that sweeps southwards from the Cabo de Gata lighthouse to the mountainous promontory beyond Almeria. In other words it's quite an exposed spot, and the disadvantage of staying overnight here soon became apparent.

By early afternoon the temperature inside the van reached the high thirties despite every skylight and window being wide open.  We were heading for a very uncomfortable night. So we packed up and headed inland to the free area autocaravanas at Guadix. Though the town is in the middle of the desert at the back of the Sierra Nevada, it lies at over 900m and at that altitude nights are cool no matter how hot the day.

The town itself is famous for the troglodyte houses on its outskirts and an impressive collection of Baroque buildings around the cathedral, but we've visited them before so we just stayed put in the big dusty carpark behind the main shopping street. It's unprepossessing, but practical and free!

Camping Rural La Cabañuela, our planned destination, lies in the the Sierras north of Baza. The villages nearby are famous for troglodyte dwellings, in Frailes the majority of the older houses are fashioned from caves. However the area by the Embalse de Negretin where the campsite is located feels semi-abandoned  The stoney garrigue is dotted with villas that judging by their 'neo- mudejar' styling look to have been constructed in the  nineties. Half finished and abandoned ones out-numbered those that were occupied.

It was only when we walked down towards the embalse the following day that we were able to make sense of this. According to the information board in the car park the reservoir was completed in 1986. Clearly part of the plan was to develop the area for leisure and tourism, hence the children's play park down by the shingly shore and the 'beach bar' next to it.

 Both looked to have seen better days. On the side of the hill above them there used to be a restaurant, its lovely terrace taking in a spectacular view of the reservoir and the wrinki cliffs on the opposite shore. The place was in ruins.

The campsite looked to  date from the same era. It was still functioning though the facilities were now somewhat worn. 

When we booked-in the receptionist mentioned that the forthcoming weekend would be very busy as the following Monday was Spain's national day. We have experienced how Spanish people celebrate - loudly and very enthusiastically. We booked-in for two nights planning to find somewhere quieter to stay over the holiday weekend.

 Our plan to find somewhere cooler was at least partly successful, it was very hot in the middle of the day but the temperature dropped considerably overnight. It meant we slept more soundly and mornings were pleasant.

My plan to paddleboard on the embalse didn't happen. It turned out to be a 500m trek down to the water and the road was steep and gravelly. Furthermore the big embalse had a rocky shoreline, it was a little too daunting. Sadly I've got past the stage of being adventurous, seeking Zen like calm rather than excitement.

And simply trotting about the area was quite calming with fabulous views westwards towards the distinctive bulk of Cerro Jabalcón...

and the fascinatingly scrunched-up cliffs on the opposite side of the reservoir...

The campsite was almost empty until a dozen or so all-terrain motorhomes turned up. Maybe there are unmetalled tracks over the nearby badlands where you are allowed to enjoy the vehicles' off-road capability. 

Otherwise owning an 'expedition truck'must be simply annoying, too big for most campsites, impossible to park in a supermarket carpark and guzzling diesel at a rate that would empty most people's bank accounts after a few months use. Like supercars and superbikes they are undoubtedly 'boys toys'. How many females own a Harley or Ferrari? Very few, I suspect, but more likely than finding a woman driving a Man monster expedition truck. Intrigued I researched them. To buy one secondhand, around five years old with less than 100,000 miles on the clock, will set you back about £275,000 according to Chatgpt. In truth I can't remember seeing a UK plated one, the ones here at the moment are a mix of German, Swiss and Dutch plates. Anyway, they are ridiculous objects even if they do have a Miele washing machine and dishwasher built in.

We took the receptionist's advice and left before the weekend influx, but with no real plan as regards where to go next, which is unlike us; we're not given to just wandering about.

Thirty days of thirty plus

A few posts ago I wrote about 'where the south begins, pinpointing Millau as our point of entry. To my list of defining qualities like olive trees, shady squares with shuttered houses, shadow striped straight roads lined with plane trees, our digital thermometer added a final touch to  my of inventory of southern clichés by notching up from a hot but manageable 27° to a stifling 36°. 

This prompted a heartfelt peaen from the cab concerning the joys of aircon and a lengthy discussion concerning how five of us plus, bikes, frame tent, camping beds, travel cot, two ring stove and sundry clutter managed to travel in a Nissan estate car to 'le Midi' in July and August back in the nineties. I'm certain the first car we owned with aircon was the Ford Galaxy we bought in 1999, recognising that a teenager, a precocious tweeny and a feisty four year old were not going to be able to share the back seat without bloodshed. We needed a third row and a camping trailer. It was a good move. The set-up enabled us to venture further afield, to Corsica, Sardinia and Croatia. 

The heat could be challenging, but we seemed to manage. I don't think it was unbearably hot all the time, there were cooler days, and with crystal clear skies the night-time temperature dropped quickly. We don't travel south in midsummer these days, but even in September we have had times when we have sweltered in thirty plus temperatures,. Not everyday though, the weather in Greece and other parts of the Mediterranean has always been mixed in September. 

Not so this year. Yesterday was the thirtieth day in a row with daytime temperatures in the mid thirties. What makes things worse is it's very humid and overnight temperatures aren't dipping much below the mid-twenties. At least when you are too cold you can always put an extra layer on both the bed and yourself. The same is not the case when it gets too hot. There comes an absolute point when you simply can't take anything else off or open any more windows. I also wonder if age is a factor. In July after a series of hot days at home when I had been working outside in the garden I developed heat exhaustion. I guess it's inevitable that the seventy plus me is less resilient than I used to be, but I resent the change, ageing offends me, I take it personally.

While we were staying in the Valencia Camper Park the weather forecast changed. No end to the heatwave but thundery downpours were predicted. Scorching temperatures and rain is not something we can cope with as having all the skylights wide-open overnight helps the van cool a little. It looked somewhat dryer further south, so we decided to head towards Mazarron, a resort town just south of Cartegena. The town itself is a little dismal, but the coast to the east oftowards Isla Plana is beautiful, and Camping Las Madrilles is comfortable, if somewhat bungaloid.

Booking-in, however, is not straightforward. The place doesn't take reservations for short stays, expecting you turn up on spec in the morning and take pot luck. Furthermore, the site insists on a three day minimum stay. What we tend to do is park-up the night before at a nearby area autocaravanas so we can maximise our chances in the booking-in lottery by arriving early. Usually we stay at the Puntas de Calnegre, this time we found a place in Mazarron itself. Area El Moreral is closer to Las Madrilles and within sight of the Mercadona carpark on the town's outskirts. We know this supermarket carpark well; it functions for northern European motorhomers as a winter gathering place - like Avebury, Carnac and Stonehenge did for our Neolithic forebears.

In winter I suspect that the Area El Moreral is very busy. Today in late September there were less than a dozen vans in an area that accommodates around forty. A couple of them were 'expedition' style mega trucks - they tend to be German or Swiss owned by Bear Griilis wannabees. Three of the French motorhomes had box trailers in tow, one contained a gleaming Honda Goldwing, the other two housed bulbous quad bikes. It seems for some recently retired northern European males owing a moho is not enough, it has to be accompanied by glitzy boys toys too. Off they all went in a cloud of dust, their 'understanding' other halves riding pillion.

We were sitting under the awning in the shade when unexpectedly a slim, older chap wearing nothing but a pair of skimpy swimming trunks appeared from behind our van. He advised us that he was 'a Brit' and had 'come for a chat'. It was good that he made his intentions clear at the outset, otherwise his startling demeanour may have seemed a tad alarming rather than simply idiosyncratic.

Over the next twenty minutes we learned where he was from (Devon), the names and occupations of his two sons, the fact that one of his grandchildren was at university and the other had just opened a beauty salon and was doing well, then got a comprehensive update his various health conditions and were  given the opportunity to concur with his view that Brittany Ferries' website and automated customer service chat bot was a waste of space. Eventually his wife turned-up, she was more fully clad. Oddly he then announced, "Well I'll be off then", and disappeared. She stayed to chat for a few more minutes to ensure we were fully informed about both their health conditions.

It got me thinking about the random conversations we've had over the years with other motorhomers. What struck me is they were not random, there is an element of social stratification about the exchanges. There are some absolute boundaries, in twelve years of long term travel we've never had a friendly chat with a caravanner. The two tribes live side by side barely tolerating one another, like City and United fans in Manchester. Millennial and GenZ van-lifers tend to socialise together, in parallel but rarely interacting with adjacent grey haired motorhomers. There are other odd patterns of socialability. Venerable drivers of C-class vans often wave to each other as they pass, but not people in A-Class or panel vans, nor drivers aged under forty. Humans are deeply tribal beings.

When Gill was training to be primary teacher in the mid- seventies students on teaching practice were encouraged to produce sociograms. This involved asking all the members of a class to write down the names of who they regarded as their friends. Analysis of this revealed patterns of social groupings and hierarchies. As I hinted at earlier, unspoken affiliations exist within the moho community too. When we began our extended travels in 2014 if we did fall into a conversation it tended to be fellow early retirees. 

Once the inevitable opening exchange of 'where are you from' had been settled, more often than not the conversation would turn to 'what did you do'. We soon learned that in our case a straightforward answer had a chilling effect on nascent moments of sociability. So when at the outset we gave the straightforward answer 'we both were teachers' people tended to make excuses and beat a hasty retreat. Sadly teachers are usually placed in the same category as other authority figures such as the police or tax inspectors, socially necessary but not particularly people you want to befriend. Indeed, whereas as it is the case that only a minority of people have been collared by the 'rozzers' or run foul of the inland revenue most of us can recount a less than positive run-in with a teacher, and for those of us now aged over sixty the consequences were occasionally painful. So without ever having talked about it we both adjusted our answer to the 'what did you do' question - Gill went for 'manager of an Adult Education centre' and I was even more evasive explaining that my last job was as a 'manager at a local college'. This did the trick, our answers were avoided the T word and were vague enough not to alarm fellow travellers wishing to engage in a friendly chat.

In fact these days it's quite rare for people to pause for a chat. At some point as you head inexorably towards septgenarian status mysteriously you disappear. Enveloped by something akin to a Romulan cloaking device, you become unseen, apart from on public transport in Italy and Spain where kindly GenZs now offer up their seats as a matter of course. 

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However since I turned seventy there is a group of people who've become much more interested in me - the medical profession. Suddenly I am eligible for a whole range of extra jabs. For the past decade I was supposed to have annual an review of the meds I'm on for hypertension. Years went by without it ever happening. Now it does.. A few months ago I found myself being interrogated by the practice nurse. I noted some additional questions - could I walk a mile, what was today's date? In other words - how's your mobility and do you suffer memory loss? Well intentioned I know, but I felt affronted. 

I guess if everyone our age is being collectively medicalised then it should not be surprising that when we fall into casual conversation health conditions are the one of the few things we have in common but  I'm having none of it, I won't play along. I guess I have a stereotypical introverted personality. Given the choice of passing the time of day with a friendly stranger or sitting in a shady spot with a book, the latter is always going to win out. Which is a good thing right now, as seeking out a shady spot is the best option when daytime temperatures hit the mid thirties by mid morning.

Next morning we double-checked the weather forecasts before setting off for Camping Madrilles. They had changed from yesterday, now it seems the stormy weather in Valencia is predicted to head here, and thundery downpours are expected to arrive by mid-afternoon. Almeria province to the south of us looked calmer, so we changed tack and set off towards the Cabo de Gata national park, 150kms south of us. 

It's a couple of hours down the AP7 to the Capa de Gata. The landscape becomes increasingly arid and tortured as you reach the Almeria border. The Tabanas desert to the north is the only place in Europe that qualifies as a true desert. 

The area between there and the coast looks like one even if it doesn't quite hit the all the criteria. Much of the landscape is shrink wrapped - plasticulture supplying the rest of Europe with fruit and veg. The exception is Cabo de Gata national park. Its stark volcanic peaks is the biggest area of protected landscape on Spain's densely developed Mediterranean coast. The Donana, at the opposite end of Andalusia is larger, but lies beyond the Straights of Gibraltar so abutts the Atlantic. 

We first came here twenty years ago before we retired. I think we'd rented a villa in Mojacar and took a day trip out to the Cabo de Gata lighthouse because our AA guidebook to Spain mentioned the nearby lagoons were home to a large flock of flamingos. Back then village of La Fabriquila was abandoned, the salt works disused, the workers single storey cottages boarded up and the striking silhouette of the Iglesia de Las Salinas turned out to be a ruin when you got up close.

I remember being shocked by the shanty towns nearby that surrounding the big plastic greenhouses. The African migrant workers were living in ramshackle, insanitary conditions. Since then things have improved remarkably, the salt workers cottages have been repaired and used as holiday accommodation, the church is restored and the intensive agriculture seems to be better managed. The migrant workforce seems better housed in the nearby town of Campohermoso. However the improvement has been accompanied by expansion - over the years the sea of plasticulture has spread inexorably towards the edge of the national park. 

The contrast between the quasi-industrial sprawl of the plasticulture and the 'preserved' volcanic hills of the national park is unsettling - it's an unnaturally natural landscape. Is this what the future will look like? Most of the earth entirely humanised, the only wild places left preserved as museums.

We headed for Los Escullos campsite. The section of the national park from there northwards towards Las Negras is furthest from the plasticulture creep. It retains its wildness, we love it. I searched our blog posts that contained 'Los Escullos' - apparently this is the eleventh time we've been here. It has to count as our favourite place I guess.

What's great about the area is it's easy to get out and about. Local beaches with astonishing wind sculpted fossilised dunes are an easy bike ride away. Stony tracks lead off onto the garrigue and if you are feeling adventurous there's a longer walk up to a hidden old caldera that has a unique micro-climate which sustains sub-tropical flora and rare butterflies.

However, in a heatwave all of this is challenging. In the four days we were there we did manage to get out a few times....

a short walk up the track at the back of the campsite

...a pedal down to the nearby beach with strange rock formations

... then on next day a trip to the next cove along. You get a great view of the ancient calderas.

I wondered when the area was last active. Seven million years ago Chatgpt advised me - interesting about the submarine nature of the eruptions...

In somewhere like San José or Los Escullos, you're looking at the eroded remains of a volcanic landscape that existed millions of years before humans appeared in Europe. Some of the rocks beneath your feet were originally produced by eruptions beneath the sea, and the present coastline is the product of millions of years of subsequent uplift and erosion.

That's why Cabo de Gata looks so different from much of the surrounding Almería countryside: the mountains are essentially the eroded skeleton of an ancient volcanic province.

So we made a few short trips out - it's actually more comfortable in a heatwave riding an ebike rather than sitting still - you get a cooling breeze as you pedal along. 

Mostly though, we hunkered down under the shade of the awning. When we booked-in the receptionist warned us that there was a poolside jazz festival happening over the weekend. We could hear it clearly but it was not intrusive - a mixed bag of performers ranging from a funk style gospel group, a bebop inspired quintet and finally, a bigger ensemble that channelled the big band style of Duke Ellington and Count Basie. 

Finally the weather inland looks somewhat more expensive, sunny but 10° cooler than on the coast. We found a campsite by an embalse near Baza that's in a nice spot and has paddleboarding possibilities. Let's go there we decided. After thirty days of thirty plus you'd think I would have finished the Margerat Atwood I'm reading given all the sitting still in a shady spot we've been doing. No, what I have done is excelled myself in writing the most rambling blog post ever, like a shaggy dog story gone feral. 

 

 

Out to lunch

Our plans were simple and revolved around food. Day one in Valencia -  we headed to Platja de Cabanyal, a beach area to the north of Valencia port.

We weren't interested in the beach which is somewhat bleak, we wanted to revisit 'La Cabinyata', a small tapas restaurant tucked away amongst the grid of half abandoned modernista warehouses behind the promenade. 

It's a modest looking place and the menu is nothing special. What it does is serve up Spanish tapas classics exactly how they should be, and that is not always the case.

Returning to a restaurant that you remember fondly is to court disappointment. Are things ever quite so good as you remember them? Well sometimes they are, and what we had at La Cabinyata this time proved to be just as delicious as before. We chose two tapas dishes to share and finished with a pud.

 The tuna ceviche salad was good, but not so delicious that we might still be talking about it days later.

However the croquettes were definitely memorable..

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Gill worked in professional kitchens in her youth so knows about the complex processes involved to make a commonplace dish outstanding. To get the perfect balance of squish and crunch in a croquettes involves heating and cooling the bechamel a number of times and split second accuracy in the fryer.

These had been cooked to perfection, had real depth of flavour and the velvety filling enlivened by tiny shards of red pepper and leeks. They were delicious. Would they achieve 'food memory' status - the private roll call we have of stunning dishes we have eaten over the years that we can still recall?

Our pud was pretty good too - a cheesecake drenched with an oozy chocolate ganache covered in chopped pistachio nuts - yum! Gill greeted it's arrival with enthusiasm....

The last time we were here the place had been quiet mid-week. It was almost full today, I guess this is to be expected, the place has a 4.7 score on Google Maps and in TripAdvisor squeezes into the top 10% of places to eat in Valencia - which is a very foodie city with over 4000 restaurants listed.

Other small delights included discovering that the locally brewed Turia 'tostada' beer was delicious and having a group of very affable Italians sitting next to us added further sparkle to the experience.

On the whole you don't come across many Italians touring around Spain. Valencia seems to be an exception. As well as in the restaurant, there were at least half a dozen Italian mohos staying at Valencia Camper Park. It could be Valencia's beautiful architecture that attracts them, but equally it might well be the food scene. Is Valencia Spain's Bologna, we speculated.

Getting to from Valencia Camper Park to 'La Cabinyata' took a little planning. The motorhome aires is well connected to the city but the station nearest to it is the second to last one on the line so it takes 30 minutes or so to reach the city centre.

The restaurant was at the end of a tram line running south from the centre so you have to change from train to tram. Overall the journey takes about an hour and a half once you factor-in connection times.

Going was ok, but our return coincided with the end of Spain's long lunch break around 3.30pm. The metro platforms and the trains themselves were rammed reaching Tokyo levels of human sardineness.

Our plan for the following day was more straightforward - jump back on the metro and have lunch at Valencia Market's Central Bar - definitely a place of many 'food memories' for us. It shouldn't be possible to become hopelessly nostalgic about a de-constructed carrot cake, but we still reminisce about the one we had here in November 2016.

Richard Camarena, a Valencian Michelin starred chef, opened his market bar in 2012. It was groundbreaking at the time, elevating the workaday market bar with a more ambitious take on tapas that utilised the cornucopia of fresh ingredients available at Valencia's enormous central market.

I guess the development should be seen in relation to the zero kms. food movement that asserted the local over the global. Sadly over recent years the trend has reversed. Amazon can deliver more or less any ingredient on the planet to your door within a day. I don't see that as progress.

We first came across Central Market Bar in 2014 and have revisited it regularly since then. It hasn't changed aside from becoming ever more popular. However it looks as if there are new developments afoot.

One half of the bar has been closed and an area adjacent to the place was fenced-off pending new developments. After fourteen years I guess refurbishment is necessary, the basic set-up and decor has not changed at all since it opened.

The downside was that extra bar stools had been squeezed into the half of the bar that was still functioning. We were squashed into a corner that had been repurposed as a seating area by hooking a precarious stainless steel extension into the end of the bar. The food was as good as ever, but it wasn't a relaxing experience

Like yesterday we stuck to Spanish lunchtime classics....

 like patatas bravas..

... and meatballs, simple but delicious,

...and yet another take on a chocolate cake, a less oozy affair than yesterday's, but formidable in its depth of flavour.

It's likely we will be back in Valencia in February, will Central Bar's refurbishment be complete by then? I am sure we will be back to check.

The weather has changed after weeks of wall to wall blue and temperatures in the mid-thirties. It's still as hot as ever but somewhat more unsettled with chunky fronts bringing stormy weather to the north of Spain and the Mediterranean coast becoming showery.

Last night we we were woken by thunder and lightning at about three in the morning. This was followed by a downpour. By the time I'd hopped out of bed to close the skylights there were puddles inside the van. If the combination of showers and extreme heat persists it's going to make life tricky as we won't be able ventilate the interior by fully opening the skylight. As it stands the inside of the van is not dropping below the mid twenties overnight  making it uncomfortable to sleep.

It seems dryer to the south of us, we've decided to head towards Mazarron. If the weather is more settled there we'll stay for a while at Camping Madrilles at Isla Plana. If the forecast remains rainy we'll push on further to the Capo de Gata. Hopefully in the next ten days the weather will settle down in the north because we do need to start heading towards Santander by mid October; our ferry is on the 25th.

What we did in the shadows

We've been in Spain now for ten days. Aside from the day we drove from Loupian to I'Escala when it was a tad overcast for a time, the heatwave we experienced in France continued unabated in Catalonia. Wall to wall blue, mid thirties by 11am, the real feel a couple of degrees more, day time temperature in the van.....

Even with all the windows and skylights open it still hovered around the low twenties in the van overnight. The only covering we needed was a cotton sheet, but still we only slept fitfully.

Initially we headed to the Illa Mateua site in the pinewoods behind Cala Montgro. It's a beautiful spot, next to one of the Costa Brava's most alluring coves.

The place is on the outskirts of l'Escala, a pleasant low key resort at the southern end of the Bay of Roses. We know the area well and keep returning to it because there's lots of opportunities to mooch about doing this and that - a cliff top ramble with a view across the bay towards the Pyrenees, a cycle track into town with the promise of a coffee or a gelato at the end of it, swimming or paddleboarding in the clear waters of the nearby cove. All lovely things, but curtailed this time because it was simply too hot most of the time to do anything.

The day we arrived was a little cooler and cloudy, so we did climb the hill at the back of the site and admire the distant view of the mountains.

Most days we took a stroll through the trees that edge the cove, but weren't tempted to spend time at the beach.

It was busier than we are used to, probably because when we've been here previously it either later in the autumn or in the spring. September is no longer 'low season', retirees and couples without kids head en-masse for the Med while the weather is still comfortable for a beach holiday but resorts are more adult rather than family orientated.

The result is that  the 'shoulder season' can be almost as frantic as the high season Illa Mateua campsite has now acquired the suffix 'resort'. It has changed character since we first used it nine years  ago. The site has always been split between a flat area dedicated to tourers to the right of the main road and a series of terraces to the left in pine woods straggling up a steep hill.

We prefer this area, partly because its shadier and feels more relaxed.  Also it used to house a lots of Spanish statics. Weekends were slightly raucous, an impromptu fiesta as extended Spanish families cooked a big lunch that morphed seamlessly into a party that lasted until midnight. It felt relaxed and joyful.

Today there seems to be only a handful of seasonal pitches remaining. Now the majority of people using the upper pitches are tourists from elsewhere - recently retired French and German couples predominate. It's all a bit bourgeois and not to our taste. It remains a beautiful spot, but the beach is much busier than it used to be and the campsite feels more corporate. I wonder if we will return again.

As ever I had a plan sketched out for our trip. We rarely stick to it and often it's the weather that puts the kibosh out plan. Usually we are trying to dodge the rain, I never anticipated we might have  to adjust our plans because it was too sunny.

 We left Cala Montgro still intending to stay at a parking area by the Lidl at Palafuguel. The spot was well reviewed on 'Searchforsites' and the nearby cycleway to Pals looked interesting.

When we arrived at the place it was just a piece of waste ground near a roundabout. A couple of other half abandoned looking mohos were parked-up and the environs felt a tad sketchy. Furthermore, it had no shade whatsoever, the afternoon temperature was forecast to reach the mid-thirties, dropping back to around 24° overnight.We abandoned our planned cycle trip.

Instead we decided to drive south during the heat of the day heading to a shady campsite we knew at L'Ametlla de Mar. The town is a few miles north of the Ebro delta at the opposite end of Catalonia, a 180 mile drive down the AP7 skirting the sprawl of Barcelona and Tarragona. 

At times there were hold-ups, but we managed to arrive at Camping Nautic just after 5pm.

Whatever happens our stay is going to be less  eventful than our previous one in early October 2017. It coincided with a constitutional crisis prompted by Catalonia's regional government plan to hold an independence referendum. As the Spanish King began an evening address on TV calling for national unity the population of I'Ametila took to their balconies and began banging on pots and pans to drown out the broadcast. All seems very peaceful now, but I suspect the issue has simply been shelved rather than resolved, similar to the situation in the Basque Country, Corsica, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Camping Nautic has been upgraded significantly since then, but it still remains a relaxed kind of place next to  its own pine clad cove -  Cala de Pixavaques, but it's also on the edge of town. So it's easy to walk to the shops.

A perfect place to be holed-up in a heatwave. We stayed for a week and did very little. By 11am the temperature reached the mid thirties and stayed that way until sunset.

Days drifted by, rushing about was not an option...

Our pitch was close to the beach. Sunrise happened around 8am. We could watch it rise without stirring out of bed...

After breakfast, before the temperature became intolerable, I paddled about for a bit, some days I had the cove to myself.

The moho awning was insufficient to provide shade in the middle of the day. We carry two big cotton throws and peg them onto the awning's fascia to create a shady space when there's a heatwave. It's the first time we have had to use both of them.

More days drift by. We spend hours doing very little, I wonder if brain activity slows as the outside temperature creeps up towards body temperature.

Around fiveish a cooling breeze blows in from the sea, I've taken to having an early evening swim. Our pitch is about fifty metres from the beach, accessed through a gate with a code. It exercises  both body and brain because forgetting the four digit number would result in a half kilometre detour to the site's main entrance.

Cala de Pixavaques is about 200m long. By day three I plucked up the courage to swim its length, Most of the cove is quite shallow - around 1.5m, so I could just about reach the bottom, but a section in the middle was deeper. It isn't really a challenging swim, but since I took up paddleboarding I haven't been swimming much, apart from the occasional moment when I've taken a brief unplanned dip! So swimming across the cove proved I hadn't lost my confidence entirely and it built-up my stamina a bit. Gill took a photograph of me halfway across...

We also walked into town a couple of times. L'Ametila is an unpretentious small port that developed from a fishing village into a medium sized town during the latter half of last century.

The older part consists of a tangle of steep, narrow streets behind the harbour.

The more recent developments form a grid of rectilinear lo-rise blocks built around a series of public squares. The town is utilitarian rather than beautiful, but it feels lived in and lively, it has character.

A surefire sign of this is the small municipal market that's open six days a week, it sells fabulous fresh ingredients and useful stuff like underwear and work clothes. No tourist tat to be seen! 

We like the town, sadly it was too hot to simply mooch around. We spent most days squirreled under the awning seeking shadow.

Over the past week, at twilight, we've watched the moon wax from bean-shaped to a squished balloon. Last night it became a magnificent plump harvest moon glinting silver on the calm sea.

Where next has been the main topic of conversation over the past couple of days. Rain is forecast. We have decided to head to Valencia Camper Park for the three days. A city visit makes more sense in showery weather than a beach. Also, Valencia is a crossroads, afterwards we can head north towards Teruel and Rioja, or southwest towards Cartegena or Almeria. When the weather pattern for early October becomes clearer, we'll decide.

Under the circumstances I can't think of anywhere better to have hunkered down for a week than here at Camping Nautic - the pitches are shaded, the facilities good,  the site well managed and friendly and it is situated by a lovely beach next to an amiable seaside town. All is good.