Los Escullos: empty landscape, crowded campsite

Spain's Mediterranean coastline is about 750 miles long. Most of it is highly developed, a semi-urbanised sprawl interspersed with spectacular headlands or salt flats with a mountainous backdrop. Human culture prevails, only here and  there has the natural environment been afforded a measure of protection from economic development. Most protected areas are quite small, such as  Monte de las Cenizas y Peña del Águila Regional Park east of Cartegena or Acantilados de Maro-Cerro Gordo near Nerja. Both are beautiful but are patches of wildness rather than an extensive protected area like a National Park or AONB in the UK.

Undeveloped coastlines are rare among Spain's 'costas' but there are a few places where it is still possible to get a sense of being 'lost in nature'. The Catalan coast from Port Bou at the French border and around the Bay of Roses is not completely over-developed.  Also the coastal path running from Lloret de Mar to Tossa de Mar feels 'far from the madding crowd'. South of Peniscola Parc Natural de la Serra d'Irta is an extensive tract of hilly garrigue stretching 10kms along the pristine coastline. There's one campsite in the middle  of the park down a rough track. Sadly it's not quite far enough south to be comfortable in February.

However by far the biggest protected area on Spain's Mediterranean coast is the Cabo de Gata west of Almeria. The area's unique geology has led to it being designated as a UNESCO Geopark. The rugged volcanic hills made agriculture challenging so it remained sparsely populated for centuries. Even today there is only one settlement that could be considered  big enough to be a town - San José. 

Development within the park is strictly controlled. Up until recently in the winter months there was only one campsite open at Los Escullos. A couple of years ago the Wecamp chain opened another at Las Negras. Both are well situated to explore the Cabo de Gata's unique landscape.

Los Escullos campsite was crowded, yet within a couple of minutes we could wander up a track and feel immersed in nature amid a stony garrigue  carpeted with yellow flowers. 

Gill recognised the buttercup sized one - Cape Sorrel. The smaller one we weren't sure about. In late winter this landscape always blooms with herbs and flowers, but we've never seen such a spectacular display as today. I suspect Iberia's stormy January has soaked the usually arid Cabo de Gata creating the sea of yellow.

It's a magnificent, uplifting landscape - a soulful place. We need them these days as the world grows ever more uncertain and evil men prevail.

Next day we unloaded the bikes and pedalled down to the shore. It's less than ten minutes away. Coastal erosion had uncovered the layers of the Capo de Gata's complicated geological history. The bedrock is volcanic, laid down in a shallow sea between 9 - 15 million years ago. There followed a further period of intense eruptions that formed the chain of caldera and volcanic plugs we can see now. The last eruptions are thought to be 5 million years ago.

Down by the shore the strata of the low cliffs reveal the remnants of other geological ages. A layer of oolitic limestone...

Fossilized dunes, wind sculpted into surreal forms over millennia, lie behind the shingle beach. 

Whereas  most European landscapes tell the story of humanity the narrative here is dominated by the inexorable progress of geological time. The dark volcanic hills of Los Escullos assert that life on our home planet prevailed long before we arrived and will continue to do so long after we have gone.

What makes humans unique is, as far as we know, we are the only thinking beings that exist right now. Killing each other and deliberately making Earth less habitable for our species does bring into question just how intelligent we actually are! Professor Brian Cox makes the point better than I ever could.

The scrub land behind the beach was covered with the same mix of yellow flowers that we found on the lower slopes of the hills yesterday. We've been here before in mid-February. Spring flowers are not unusual, but previously they've been more mixed. I came across a patch of asphodels on a rocky outcrop amongst the sea of yellow.

This pleased me. Asphodels are one of my favourite flowers, not only are they beautiful but their name is pleasing and they have mythical connotations.

On our final day we decided to pedal to the small fishing village of La Isleta del Moro. As the crow flies it's only about two kilometres across the bay. By road it's about three times the distance. Hardly challenging, but there are a couple of steep climbs, and though it was windless in the campsite on the exposed coast road we were buffeted by a chilly wind blowing in from the northeast. 

While we mooched around the quayside the wind strengthened from an annoying breeze to a near gale. Struggling against it on our return, I ended up having to pedal downhill!

Checking back it seems we first stayed in Los Escullos twelve years ago. I remarked back then that it was a quiet place that attracted hikers. There's still a few of them striding off, walking poles in hand, to explore one of the many trails that snake between the gaunt calderas. However these days the site is pitched to attract long stayers, more caravanners than motorhomers. It means there aren't so many pitches left for people touring. Moreover the access roads between the pitches are narrow so manoeuvring into them can be challenging even in a medium sized motorhome.

If you do book in for the duration - I overheard an English caravanner a few pitches down from us explaining that he was here for 60 days 'as usual' - then there's lots of organised activities - Fish and Chips every Thursday night, a weekly quiz night, 'gentle aerobics'... and so on. Sixty days! It sounds like a sentence! If we do return again to the Cabo de Gata then the site at Las Negras is more to our taste. Los Escullos has become charmless as Saga cruise. Such a beautiful place, but the campsite is crowded, over- organised, and its ambience somewhat geriatric.

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Martes Carnaval, Groundhog Day and other predictable complications.

Over the years we've seen Spain's 'Costas' become ever more crowded in the winter months with a marked increase in long stay retirees - a trend towards staying put rather than touring. It is still possible to wander about so long as you follow a few guidelines - phone or email ahead to check on availability; avoid moving on a Friday or Saturday in popular areas as places fill up with local weekenders; don't head for places on local holidays, saints days or popular carnivals. So what have we done over the last few days? That's right, we ignored all this sensible advice, and consequently life became needlessly tricky.

Last month sitting on a bar stool at our kitchen island, Google Maps on my tablet, Acsi book open, Search for Sites on my phone, it was easy to come up with a perfect plan. If we head for Valencia first, I conjectured, then we could be in the Cartegena area around Carnival week. I imagined spending a few days at one of the Acsi sites on the beautiful mountainous coast south of the city. Then we could move to the Camperstop on the outskirts of the city and lift our winter-grey spirits by watching the exuberant parade. All possible, but to have any kind of guarantee of making this a reality we would have needed  to pre-book.

Howeve,r We were never going to do that weeks ahead, because we might find ourselves standing in the pouring rain watching hyperthermic samba dancers twerking in the drizzle, sadly shaking their bedraggled tail feathers. Carnivals require sunshine. With sunny days forecast to return we decided to head towards Cartegena anyway and see if we could book a site last minute. 

We planned an overnight stop at a recently built area auto caravans just off the A33 motorway in the small town of Caudet. The place is in the Albacete region, so in Castilla la Mancha, but close to the borders of Valenciana and Murcia. It was a classic traditional Spanish country town, now developing because of the recently completed A33 inland motorway that now connects Valencia and Murcia more directly than the busy autovia Mediterraneo running along the coast.

The town's traditional roots were obvious as the area autocaravanas is situated about 100m from the enormous Toros Arenas de Caudete..

More recent developments include the stylish Mercadona supermarket on the edge of town..

 the area autocaravanas itself... 

and the jolly giant mural on the crumbling wall opposite our parking spot.

It's a better designed overnight stopping place than the somewhat scruffy and windswept area in nearby Yecla, though it is a little cramped. Our van is 7m long and we had to remove the bikes and fold up the rack to squeeze onto our pitch. Luckily not all of the bays opposite us were occupied, otherwise manoeuvring in and out would have been a tight squeeze too. But the place was free and the service point was fully functioning. We'd use it again.

We needed to find somewhere to stay for next few days. Gill phoned a couple of campsites on the coast south of Cartegena. The numbers just rang out. I attempted to book the same sites using their online reservation form. Los Madriles seemed to be booked solid, El Portus' website allowed reservations for their Bungalows and Safari tents but the 'parcelos' section was disfunctional. We abandoned the idea of staying around Cartegena around Carnival time and decided to head for the area autocaravanas at Puntas del Calnegre for a night, then push on south and spend a few days in the Los Escullos site in the Cabo de Gata national park.

It was Groundhog Day last week apparently. We seem to be going through something similar. Here we are parked in the area autocaravanas near the pleasingly ramshackle village of Puntas del Calnegre. When we first stopped here in 2014 it felt like a disregarded scrap of nowhere in particular.

 It still is a scrap of nowhere in particular, but not so disregarded. Year by year plasticulture cover the littoral. In recent years an additional area autocaravanas has been established next to the older ramshackle one we've used for years. It has ehu and a shower block and has become a Mecca for the owners of monster Cathargos, Morellos and Concorde'. Scores of them, mainly German owned are drawn up along the coast. Mass tourism is never a pretty sight.

Last year and the year before we arrived here and asserted, "This is it, never again!" Yet, once more, here we are - see Groundhog day!

We needed diesel. Gill recalled there was a petrol station we'd used before in Aguilas, about 20kms south of here. We headed for there. The place runs a small area autocaravanas. Maybe if there's space we could stay there and watch the carnival at Aguilas rather than Cartegena's, we wondered. Both events are world famous. Even at noon traffic was heavy on the Aguilas ring road. As we drove along the coast road we noticed dozens of motorhomes wild camping among the dunes. There's no way there's going to be space at area autocaravanas, we speculated. That turned out to be the case, but at least now we had a full tank of diesel.

We decided to head south towards the Cabo de Gata. Continuing the theme of the moment - forget everything you've learned about motorhoming over the last fourteen years - we were arriving at Los Escullos campsite on a Saturday afternoon, the least likely time for the place to have any vacant pitches. In the event they had two going spare, both too small to accommodate a 7m van. We booked in for four nights starting from the following day. 

Fortunately we had driven past Cabo de Gata Camper Park on the way here. It's located outside the national park amongst the plasticulture, but at least we had somewhere to stay overnight. It's a week since we landed in Santander. It hasn't been straightforward. We've made a big detour to avoid the devastating storms affecting western Iberia, we've both gone down with a fluey cold virus and at times struggled to find places to stay on crowded sites around the Golfo de Mazarron. We need to stop and recuperate. As Gill observed, "it's not a race".

Small plate therapy

We arrived at Logroño's area autocaravanas around oneish. It's a fifteen minute walk from there to the narrow streets that cluster around Calle Laurel in the old town. The area boasts a bunch of pinchos bars that serve the best small plates we have ever come across anywhere. Most were to be open until mid-afternoon - time to sample a few!

We've been here half a dozen times at least, so we have our favourites. However, we've never experienced Logroño's pinchos bars on a Saturday afternoon, we've generally been there in the evening.  Even then they never get rowdy like the Bigg Market in Newcastle or Manchester's Canal Street, nevertheless people in Logrono in the evening are definitely out on the town; it's not sedate, but because it's an intergenerational occasion the place never gets raucous, nobody is out to get blind drunk, a pinchos bar trawl is a more civilised proposition than a pub crawl.

The  Saturday afternoon vibe on Calle Laurel is even more convivial, a lunchtime food fest for everyone - couples of every inclination, groups of friends,  parents with small kids, the middle aged and elderly, dogs big and small, and a smattering of tourists. Whereas being out and about in the evening feels celebratory, on Saturday afternoon its like being embraced by a big, warm communal hug.

We headed to Bar Jubera for starters. All the bars have a range of pinchos on offer, most feature a 'signature dish. In Bar Jubera's case patatas bravas is their USP.

It's very popular, at first sight  getting served  looks impossible. You are faced with a wall of humanity between you and the bar. In practice it works more like a sieve than a wall, people simply accommodate each other, without all the passive aggressive 'Ps & Q's you'd get in a British gaggle. By some mysterious process of osmosis you find yourself at the bar, in less than a minute you've been served and a couple of minutes later two bowls of patatas bravas appear. Then a small gap appeared in the wall of humanity and the pair of us snuggled into a small space near the window with a narrow shelf for our wine glasses and dishes.

A couple of minutes later the people on our left vacated a slightly bigger spot; we shuffled up and found ourselves facing a small family group standing outside on the other side of the window. There followed a short skit on Espagna's genius for affiliation. There were four of them. Their baby - perhaps eighteen months old - was perched on the wide window sill. He was supported by his father, who, with his one free hand, stabbed morsels of patatas with a wooden fork and fed them to the child. His partner stood next to him, busily consuming an adult sized plate of patatas bravas. She ate a forkful herself  then popped a forkful into her partner's mouth, all the while carrying on an animated conversation with the aqua friend standing next to them.  It seemed the epitome of Spanish easy going inclusivity. Part way through another forkful heading husband-wards she caught my eye, realised the humour of it all and flashed me a big cheeky grin. Spain has beautiful cities, magnificent landscapes and coasts, but so have many other places. Above all it's the kindness of the people, their easygoing and welcoming spirit that makes the country such a pleasurable place to wander around.

Next up - grilled mushrooms. Bar Soriana is hardcore, it specialises in just one small plate - grilled mushrooms stacked up on slice of baguette. People come here from all over the place - a TripAdvisor gastronomy award hangs above the bar. The owners are not shy about flaunting their fame...

The other remarkable thing about the place are the prices. Grilled mushrooms - €1.70, a glass of white or red Rioja - €1.20 - €1.50. Some chefs build their reputation by serving  expensive dishes to the few and get a Michelin star for their efforts. Here the business model is the opposite, make a small amount on each dish but sell them at a price that ensures you are packed out most days. I know which I prefer!

Spanish immersion therapy would not be complete without a tortilla. Bar Jubera supplies those - getting the squishiness spot-on takes real skill.

Gill went for the spicy sauce, I settled for the creamy one with a hint of garlic. Actually I think I made the wrong call here. Note to self - always choose chilli!

We were back at the van just after 4pm. Making the effort to get out at lunch time was the right thing to do. Two nights of restless sleep on the ferry and a 6am start earlier today caught up with us. We wouldn't have made it for a night on the town. Instead we turned in early. We have a long drive ahead of us tomorrow.

Heading southeast from Santander rather than following our usual route towards Salamanca and Seville proved to be the right decision. Atlantic storms are creating havoc across western Iberia. Yesterday a motorway bridge collapsed after a landslide in Andalusia: places in Portugal we know well - Figueira da Foz, Comporta, Alcacer do Sal - all inundated. Even hereabouts, heading down the A23 south of Zaragoza storm clouds shifted across the high plains, the higher peaks of the Sierras were dusted with snow and from time to time the horizon became smudged with thundery showers.

We're heading for Valencia eventually, but it is just too long a stretch to make it in one day. Like last year we opted to break the journey using the area autocaravanas on the outskirts of Teruel.  Our guidebook and online reviews  agree that the town's historic centre is worth a look.  One day, but with temperatures in the morning hovering around 6° sightseeing wasn't an alluring prospect. 

Spain's high plains get brutal winters. Just south of Teruel the autostrada reaches 1200m;  the altitude of the town's area autocaravanas is 974m. That's more or less the same as Scafell Pike, England's highest spot. Winter sun seekers tend to hug the Mediterranean coast, that's why much of it is over-developed and awash with northern European retirees' motorhomes at this time of year.

Valencia Camperstop has a good on-line booking system these days, we reserved for two nights then extended for a third when we arrived. I need a rest from driving. I felt a bit 'off' on the ferry but put it down to the effects of motion sickness. However since then I've gone down with a fluey cold and Gill seems to be to following suit. I do seem to have caught many more viruses over the past few years than I used to. Maybe four bouts of COVID has screwed my immune system, perhaps it's just an age thing or maybe I've just been unlucky. What seems to be the case is that every time we go to London we to catch something. At home we live a fairly solitary existence, we don't really have a social life and the only busy spaces we inhabit are supermarkets. Then we go to London and hop on the tube. The packed carriages must hum with viruses just lying in waiting for our under exercised immune systems, so we succumb like callow adolescents in Freshers week!

By day three I was feeling somewhat perkier, so we walked down to the metro stop and hopped onto a train into the city centre. It was crowded - maybe single handed we have infected the entire population of Valencia with a unique virus hatched in Hackney Wick. The symptoms are unmistakable, chills, coughs and sneezes, upset tummy and a peculiar urge to drink copious amounts of Kermit green matcha.

Recognising that neither of us were feeling 100% we had scaled back our plans - walk 450m from Valencia Camperstop to Horta Vella metro stop, hop on train, disembark at Angel Guimera station, walk to 1km to Mercal Central, have a great lunch at Central Bar by Ricard Camarena, return to moho by exactly the same route.

Lunch decended into a nostalgia fest. "Do you realise it was fourteen years ago when we first came here?" I mused, flipping back through the blog app on my phone, adding after more scrolling, "And this is our eighth visit. "Maybe we've revisited here more than anywhere else," I pondered. The server noticed me comparing the bar now with a photo from back then. "We were here 14 years ago," I explained, it looks the same! "Yes," she agreed , "Even the same chef."

I wasn't sure if she was referring to the owner, the renowned Valencian chef ' Ricard Camarena, or if it was the case that the person running the small kitchen at the far end of the bar had remained here all those years.

The core menu has remained remarkably similar, so maybe it is the creation of the same individual. We stuck to the classics, sharing a bowl of patatas bravas for starters ..

then pork cheeks as a main...

finishing with a gooey chocolate cake.

It's a special tapas bar in a very special place - a temple to fresh ingredients..

in a masterpiece of Modernista public architecture. It's difficult to capture the scale of the place, usually you struggle to find a good shot amongst the crowd of customers. Today though, as I walked up the central aisle towards the enormous cast iron cupola  the throng mysteriously dissolved to reveal a pleasingly symmetrical shot.

I imagine we will keep returning here so long as we can. I realise that in another fourteen years time it's unlikely to be in a motorhome  - we'll be in our mid-eighties by then!  However there's a direct flight from Manchester to Valencia and a bus from Buxton to Manchester Airport. Looking at the flight times it would be technically possible to catch the early morning bus from Buxton and get to Valencia central Market bar in time for a late lunch. It's a thought to hang onto for drizzly Pennine days - how much are we prepared to pay for Spanish style small plate therapy? It's not something you can put a price on.

South shifted

This January it rained in Buxton almost every day, apart from the final weekend when it snowed. Most years we would have been quite sanguine about this, consoling ourselves that in a few days time we would be on the ferry to Santander and heading for sunnier climes. Sadly, due to a snowmageddon in North America and  blocking high pressure in Siberia, Spain and Portugal are experiencing a British style winter - one deep low pressure system after another barreling across the Atlantic energised by a very perky jet stream which currently is 'south shifted' - looping across Northern Morocco. Recently some places in Portugal exceeded their average annual precipitation in just two days.

Just to complicate things further when we fetched the van from storage a couple of days prior to our departure we discovered a leak behind the sink unit. There followed a day and a half of increasing stress levels as every nearby motorhome repairer was too busy to accommodate us at short notice. One mentioned a 'local lad' called Billy who did mobile repairs. I was a bit dubious - it all seemed a bit of an informal, backstreet  operation. However when Billy turned up he proved to be both competent and personable.

He fixed the leak in less than 15 minutes and afterwards we had a good chat about his recent long term van-life experience when Billy, with his partner and their dog, had wandered around Europe for a couple of years. They'd blown their savings for a house deposit on the trip so Billy was now in the process of converting a seven ton truck into a home on wheels. Maybe it's because I spent most of my working life in Further Education, but I find people in their twenties and thirties far easier and more interesting to talk to than many of the fellow retirees we come upon on our travels.

So we headed off a day later than planned. Fortuitously, unlike most of our previous winter trips, we weren't planning to head straight to Portsmouth.  If we had discovered the leak while packing the van on the day before our ferry's departure date arranging the repair would have resulted in us  missing the boat. However this year we have arranged to spend three nights in London prior to our crossing to catch up on how our kid's now not so recent arrivals are doing. I've been in denial for years about being part of the 'older generation'. Becoming a grandparent I guess puts the kibosh on that particular self delusion.

Living 1000' up a Pennine gives January departures extra jeopardy, two days before we set off last year we were snowed-in, luckily a sudden thaw came to our rescue.

This year's challenge - thick fog in the Peak District followed by hours of torrential rain all the way from Leicestershire to Abbey Wood in south London. We hit the city's southeastern suburbs at twilight; rain, heavy traffic and lack of street lighting made the last couple of miles really hazardous, but we arrived at the campsite without incident - I really don't like driving the moho in city traffic.

Sorting the leak reduced had our stay by one day. Still, we managed to see everyone. Sarah reckoned that January in London had been almost as miserable as in the Peak District. However, we were fortunate, it was sunny and quite mild.

We even managed to eat a late lunch outside at a kiosk in Victoria Park.

Matthew, Kristina and Jesse joined us at a pizza place in the early evening. I managed to get a photo of the two babies, but not of Matthew and Kristina.

Next time we see them they should have moved.  At the moment they are camped out with minimal stuff in Matthew's flat in Bow, waiting for completion on the apartment they've bought in Dulwich. New baby, new home, exciting (and stressful) times!
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Next day we attempted to negotiate a later leaving time with the campsite reception. We were required to be off our pitch by mid-day but our ferry from Portsmouth, a mere couple of hours drive, did not depart until 11.30 pm. It was a long shot. Motorhome and Caravan club sites are sticklers for the rules. The site had spare space, but no, 'rules was rules'. The receptionist seemed a tad discomforted that we had even asked. It was a mildly amusing moment of 'Englishness'. I felt I should have shuffled my feet slightly in Michael Palin mode as I  made the request. We exited at 11.59.

I spotted a country park in the South Downs a few miles north of Portsmouth where we might 'hole up' for a few hours before heading for the ferry terminal.  On a sunny day Queen Elizabeth Park would have been a pleasant place to take a walk, today however it was tipping down. Luckily the cafe was open, we had an unmemorable lunch of boring pie and limp chips. Last UK shop in a Morrisons wiled away a bit more time then it took much longer then it should have to to circumnavigate Portsmouth's urban motorways as we managed to arrive in the the middle of the rush hour. Oddly named when you think about it, as no-one was rushing anywhere.

So with five hours to go before departure we were first in the queue. It didn't mean we were first to board however. Cars and caravans were being loaded first. We were parked directly in front of H M Custom's shake-down shed. There were two drive through bays each with a team of three officers dressed in head to foot banana yellow hi-iz all weather suits. They peered inside each vehicle, opened the boot, opened the bonnet. What quite they were hoping to find being smuggled out of dear old blighty by a bunch of grey-haired caravanners headed for Benidorm I cannot imagine.

When it came to our turn we were waived through, as were most other motorhomes. I guess there are just too many nooks and crannies in a motorhome to make a quick look worthwhile. It's coming back into the country when we tend to get searched, looking for additional added passengers hitching a ride in the rear garage or under the bike covers. It can happen, as we know all too well.

Once aboard we headed straight to our cabin, well almost, we paused to  have a glass of wine in the bar before we turned in.  

Warning notices glowered from the big TV screens - red alert for strong winds and stormy waves. 

Not something you want to see if you are heading across the Bay of Biscay. The sense of impending doom was heightened by regular announcements by the captain instructing passengers to minimise their movements around the ship and use handrails on the stairs and corridors.

I am not the best of sailors. However the actual crossing, though choppy, was far from the worst I've experienced. It probably helps that the Brittany Ferries built for the Spanish route are considerably bigger than ones you find plying the Channel. They're newer too and have big stabilisers that reduce the roll in heavy weather. It helps that the 30 hour crossing includes two nights. If you take the opportunity to have a lie-in on the first night and turn in early on the second you can spend two thirds of the tedious and somewhat bumpy crossing asleep.

In fact we arrived in Santander three hours early at 3am. Up until a few years ago the crossing time from Portsmouth to Santander was some hours shorter than it is now. Then the worldwide merchant shipping fleet took a collective decision to slow their average speed by a few knots which instantly reduced the industry's global carbon footprint. I don't know why tonight we raced across the Bay of Biscay, perhaps the stabilisers work best at a quicker speed, or maybe the weather conditions were forecast to worsen. Our early arrival did not result in a quicker disembarkation, I guess the port officials don't come on duty until the morning. As usual it was around eight when we passed through immigration.

Dawn was sunny and clear. We decided to head east towards Bilbao, diametrically opposite to our habitual dash southwest towards Salamanca. Given the storm conditions affecting the western half of the Iberian Peninsula it made more sense to head for Valencia whose forecast looked much better than Andalusia's or in Portugal. Our plan was to head for Logroño - with luck we might even reach it in time for lunch.

At Bilbao we turned south on A68 towards Rioja. We'd only had a snack in the cabin before we disembarked so needed breakfast. I pulled into a parking place and hopped out to turn the gas on so we could have a coffee.

The sky was blue, it was sunny, I was wearing a tee shirt and it didn't feel chilly. It's why we do this, we agreed.