Misfit Central and beyond

If Tavira Motorhome Park is the natural tribal gathering place for Northern Europe's comfortably retired middle class motorhomers, then at the opposite end of the Algarve, here at Vila de Bispo's Lidl car park there's a safe haven for more alternative types - wandering van lifers. 

No matter if you have dropped out or are totally spaced out, whether your van is held together with string and gaffer tape, or you are living in a clapped out 4x4, there's a welcome here for you and your scrawny pooch on a string. Sociologically I guess we belong in Tavira, but personally, for me I have a soft for the Lidl car park's bewildered wanderers. Psychologically I'm with the misfits.

Actually, these days they're a bit of an endangered species. Back in 2017 when we first stayed hereabouts most  beach parkings were van-lifer enclaves, a mixed group made up of athletic looking surfers, pallid looking crusties and earnest bejewelled earth mothers.. There were lots of users, and quite a few families with kids that looked unkempt and somewhat feral.

I don't think the influx  delighted the locals. COVID gave the authorities the opportunity to clamp down on the informal encampments. Living off-grid was banned throughout the Algarve and the Alentejo coast's national park. It's stayed that way ever since and the regulations are strictly enforced by the local police.

This Lidl car park near the Algarve's pointy end is one of the few places where you can still stay overnight for free, the last outpost for a dying breed - the lesser spotted crusty.

The van we parked beside looked abandoned, it certainly wasn't roadworthy, but someone seemed to be living in it because a large hairy dog was flopped beneath it - a curious looking creature, part St Bernard, a bit of Old English Sheepdog crossed some generations back with a brown bear.

A venerable 4x4 was parked behind us sheltered beneath the sunshades. The rear hatch was raised and a big beach umbrella was strapped to the bumper to create a make-do awning. The owner was clearly feeling very relaxed, the only part of him visible, a pair of stockinged feet sticking out of the back.

Having bought this and that and a baguette for lunch we headed for the Orbitur campsite near Sagres. It's one of our favourites, attracting a mix of people all drawn to the simple wooded campsite in a somewhat remote spot - starry at night, full of spring flowers, quiet except for the slow pulse of the Atlantic surf  pounding the tall cliffs of Cabo San Vicente a kilometre or two west of us. Magic!

Aside from the allure of nature we are here to eat fish. A Sereia is a seafood restaurant on the first floor above the auction rooms located in the fish dock in Sagres. The first time we ate here it called itself a 'snack bar'. These days its better known, and has expanded, much of what was a big terrace is now  covered. It's definitely a restaurant now, much busier, but thankfully unchanged in terms of what it offers, fish grilled on an open BBQ accompanied by fries or salad. 

Our dorada was plump and delicious and perfectly cooked as ever.

The weather was stunning too, shockingly blue. I don't think we have ever been here when the light has been so clear or the colours almost luminescent.

On the way back to campsite Gill pulled into a rough patch of ground  near the clifftop. She wanted a photo of me on my bike to put a positive Google review for Guadiana Bikes to say thank you for fixing it.

Sadly the ten days we spent faffing about before we managed to find someone to repair it has impacted on the remainder of the trip, we are not going to be able to do all the things we had planned. Furthermore the long range forecast is predicting a return of unsettled weather for most of Portugal in a couple of weeks time.

However the next few days look sunny, though there's a chilly edge to the northerly breeze. We decided to head for Vila Nova de Milfontes making a lunch stop at the beach parking at Carrapateira.

It's a lovely spot. We used to stay overnight here before wild camping was banned. Today there were half a dozen other vehicles but no other motorhomes. I do think January's stormy weather impacted on the usual northern European invasion.

Gill went wildflower spotting, the Spring flowers on the Alentejo coast are magnificent.

Wooden walkways protect the esturial wetlands. A strange cacophony emanated from the reed beds. We decided that it was the mating call of thousands of love lorn frogs!

It is only 80kms from here to Milfontes, but the road is narrow and winding, slow at the best of times; today even more so,  whole sections were controlled by traffic lights with contraflows in place where  winter storms had triggered landslips and rockfalls.

Vila Nova de Milfontes is a lovely coastal town on the estuary of the river Mira.

It has a network of beautiful old streets..

Amazing flora on the clifftops by the river mouth...

...and having travelled the world keeping an eye open for great cafés, Milfontes has one of the best we've come across...

The coffee is great, the brunch menu delicious and the owners friendly and professional.

The place has a cool, left field vibe, the music relaxing indie rock - most of the customers were more than half our age. Somehow it rubs off on you, it has a magic effect, you leave the place feeling younger than when you went in.

I have an informal roll of honour in my head regarding the great puddings and cakes I've eaten over the years - such as the Key lime pie I had in Key West some time in the mid-noughties, Richard Camarena's deconstructed carrot cake devoured in Valencia Market Bar in November 2016, the lemon polenta cake served up by the Boathouse cafe next to Bawdsey ferry in September 2021 - all memorable. Maybe the lime cheesecake with raspberries at the Laréu Café today will join them, it's too early to tell, but it was exceptionally yummy.

Next day was cooler and greyer than forecast. Cabin fever drove us out of the van by mistake afternoon. We cycled a couple of kilometres up to Vila Nova de Milfontes fish dock.

 It's a wild looking coast, especially so in the blustery north wind. We took a couple of photos then scurried back to the van.

The longer range outlook seems to have worsened too. By the middle of next week we're back to the procession of Atlantic lows which seem to have characterised so much of Iberia's winter this year. We are thinking that we'll head straight to Costa Caparica tomorrow and visit Lisbon on Monday.

After then the interior of Spain looks much sunnier than Portugal so we may well head there and stay for a few days in Aranjuez. If you add up all the time we've  spent in Spain since we retired it totals a little over eighteen months. To get even more nerdy about it that's 37% of our time in motorhoming in Europe. We've explored every region of the Spanish mainland apart from one - Madrid. There's a regular train service from Aranjuez to Madrid, so maybe this is the moment to visit the capital.

I have a particular reason to go. There are two paintings that I have a real desire to see for real. Velasquez's 'Las Meninas' in the Prado and Picasso's 'Guernica' in Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. Maybe it's impractical to see both in one day, both museums are close to the station, but I can't be doing with rushing about. It's a plan.

Hanging about while the world goes crazy

The last ten days have been very peculiar. We have spent all of it round and about the estuary of the Rio Guadiana, the river that forms the southern border between Spain and Portugal. No, we haven't developed a profound interest in the wading birds of Andalusia and the Algarve, we've spent most of the time trying to sort out getting my bike repaired.

The wheel is badly out of true, maybe it will need to be replaced, which will be costly as the electric motor is integrated into the rear hub. Fortuitously we knew a place in Isla Cristina that specialised in repairing electric bikes and scooters.

 Moto Castro fixed my bike stand a couple of years ago. The place ieas little more than a 5 minute bike ride away,  pushing it there took twenty minutes. It was a Friday, tomorrow is Andalusia Day, a regional public holiday, so the message from Moto Castro was to bring the bike back at 10am. on Monday and we'll see what we can do.

As Friday progressed the campsite filled up with young Spanish families taking the opportunity for a weekend at the beach to celebrate all things Andalusian. It perked up the usual moribund vibe of the place where the mores of Northern Europe's pernikity retirees predominate. We're fans of perky.

If we are going to end up without my we bike and  forced to walk everywhere then Camping Giralda is not a bad place to be. Just across the road there are beautiful paths through the umbrella pine woods and over the dunes to the beach. Late February is a good month for the spring flowers and swathes of white broom.

The damage from winter storms was much worse here than in the Sherry Triangle. Walking towards  town on the wooden walkway diversions were in place where the structure had been undermined. One of the wooden pavilions was severely damaged, most of the roof ripped off by the severe gales.

Wooden lifeguard towers line the long beach every few hundred metres. I've photographed the one nearest the campsite many times because its blue and white paintwork looks really jolly against the deep blue sea and sky in sunny weather. So I was very sad to see the structure toppled. I hope it gets restored.

A few years ago, for no particular reason whatsoever, I decided to take a black and white photo every Monday for a year, then write an accompanying haiku. The wooden tower featured in the photo taken on Monday 6th February 2023. The haiku was meant to celebrate the structure not memorialise it. Sadly 'nothing lasts for long,' as Joni sings.

As instructed I delivered the bike to Moto Castro at 10am on Monday and returned to pick it up at 7pm in the evening. It was not good news. According to the mechanic the spokes were not adjustable and therefore the bike was unrepairable. It would need a new rear wheel and that would have to wait until we returned home.

I was unconvinced by this. Next day I upended the bike and attempted to tighten the spokes using a  small wrench. Quite clearly the spokes were adjustable, but I lacked the right tool and the know-how to do a decent job. Luckily Gill had been on the case too. She had phoned a different bike repair place in the nearby town of Ayemonte. The place had positive reviews on Google, so after hanging about in Isla Cristina for a week to no avail we headed a dozen kilometres or so to the area autocaravanas run by Ayemonte marina.

We've visited the outskirts of the town before, regularly to fill-up with LPG and one time to get an oil change at Euromaster. Judging by industrial estates on the town's outskirts I had presumed the place was quite workaday.

 In fact the town centre and newish marina are stylish, it feels more prosperous than nearby Isla Cristina or the Portuguese town of Vila Real de St Antonio directly across the water.

Once more we trundled the damaged bike to the repairers. The mechanic was cautiously optimistic that he could repair it, but it would not be ready until Monday - three days hence. The problem occurred  ten days ago, now we are at least three days away from getting it fixed, that's almost a fortnight of faffing about, quite a chunk out of our seven week trip. We will need to scale back our plans, certainly the idea I had of staying at Aranjuez for a few days and getting the train into Madrid to visit the Prado seems out of the question now. Las Meninas will have to wait until  next year.

Rather than sit tight in the Ayemonte marina for the next few days we decided to hop over the Guadiana and spend a couple of nights in Portugal. We remember our visit to Tavira fondly and have attempted to return a couple of times. Since we were last there the place has developed a big area autocaravanas near the Continente shopping centre. The problems is it has been full whenever we've tried  use it. Judging by the reviews the place seems much loved by long stayers from the Bundersrepublik and La Republique making places for people touring about in short supply. Recently the place has put an 'available spaces' counter on the front page of its website. We checked first thing it and it showed seven available places. Tavira is about a twenty minute drive from where we are staying, we decided that we had a fair chance of finding a place.

However exiting the Ayemonte marina aire proved more challenging than we anticipated. The place has a curious double barrier system. It acts like lock gates ensuring vans can only enter or exit singly. Everything is controlled by a registration number recognition system and you  pay using a touch screen; though it is multi-lingual, it all remains a tad gnomic. 

We noticed yesterday that from time to time a gaggle of motorhomers gathered by the payment machine, joined occasionally by men in hi-viz. We presumed they were municipal workers summoned by the helpline number inscribed in big print above the touchscreen.

It was no different when we came to leave. While I sat in the cab waiting in the service point queue Gill hopped out to join the pay machine party. It consisted of two confused French people, a very jolly municipal worker in hi-viz and Gill. Hi-viz man was on his mobile attempting to explain the problem the French couple were having to a colleague on the other end of the phone in the tourist office. I watched as impressively Gill took charge, like any trained ex-primary school teacher would. The hi-viz man handed the phone to Gill who communicated with the woman in the office who spoke English. Gill translated what she said to the French couple. The issue was soon resolved, the machine was completely buggered and Hi-viz man was instructed to raise the barriers manually and let all of us out without paying. We headed across the Guadiana to Portugal.

An hour later we were settled into Tavira Motorhome Park. Once you are here why the place has so few spare pitches becomes obvious. Most guests are here for weeks rather than a couple of days. I can see why, the place has spacious plots, four well designed service points and is designed with wide enough roadways to make manoeuvring easy even in a large motorhome. The sanitary blocks are small - serviceable but basic. I think the assumption is that most people will use their on-board facilities.

If you were to spend a few weeks here I am not sure what you would do. The main activities include sitting in the sun reading a book - hardback tomes preferred to Kindles. Lunch at the neighbours seemed popular too and afternoon boules afterwards if you happened to be a man and French. Amongst Teutonic males van polishing took the place of boules as a popular pastime. I noted some pretty snazzy looking gear, battery powered rotary brushes, telescopic poles that looked as if they might prove useful if you decided to take-up pole vaulting.

First prize has to go to the owner of a German plated Cathargo the size of removal truck. It was so spotlessly white that looking at it required Polaroids. However in the owner's eyes there was still work to be done. He opened the door of the copious rear garage, removed a telescopic ladder, extended it to its full 3m length, ascended it, rotary polisher in hand, then proceeded micro-clean the moho's roof. I looked at ours, it's a tad dusty and mud splattered around the wheel arches, in other words, to be British about it, 'not too bad'. Maybe I'm a slob, I can see the pleasure in settling down on a sunny afternoon with a good book, moho roof polishing - I don't think so!

Gill suggested we walk into town and find somewhere for a coffee and a cake. Better for the soul than sitting observing the neighbours as if the area autocaravanas was some kind of safari park for humans. It's little more than a kilometre from Tavira Motorhome Park into the town centre, but the route is not straightforward, through an industrial area, past the humongous Continente shopping centre and across a couple of busy roads. However the old river front with it's Roman bridge is beautiful.

We found a cafe, had a coffee and two different sorts of cake - one was a bean cake, a local speciality. 

Then we moved on to the nearby gelateria. Ok, but it's not like in Italy we concluded. I guess we could have carried on up towards the oldest part of town near the church, but we headed back to the van instead.

The following day we were even less intrepid, a trip to the Continente hypermarket was all we managed. That being said it's over five weeks since we shopped anywhere bigger than a local supermarket so we wandered the brimming aisles like kids in a sweetshop.

At the moment I feel lacking in motivation, the problem with my bike has been getting me down. Moreover, both of us have been suffering with a virus for what feels like weeks. It's difficult to know whether we've succumbed to two viruses one after another or one horrible one that keeps recurring with different symptoms. While we were on the ferry I went down with a classic fluey cold virus and duly passed it on to Gill.  A couple of weeks ago I felt fluey again then developed a rash on my torso legs and arms. Gill went down with it too, but thankfully became slightly less spotty than me. Anyway, whatever is going on is bloody annoying because it's no fun travelling when you are feeling unwell.

What is happening in the world at the moment too is depressing. Just when you think Donald Trump cannot become any more unhinged he provokes even more mayhem and chaos. Who knows where  US and Israeli attempts to achieve regime change in Iran by airpower alone will end up. So far they've managed to destabilise the entire Middle East and provoke a worldwide energy crisis, and they've only been at it for a week. 

We've lived through many moments of uncertainty but this one does feel different. In my lifetime I've witnessed many power-crazed autocrats attempts to stir up strife  - Amin, Gaddafi, Pol Pot, Osama Bin Laden - However none of them possessed the launch codes for the world's  biggest nuclear arsenal nor was 'Commander in Chief' of a military whose annual budget of $997 billion is greater than the sum total of the budgets of the next nine country's defence spending combined.

It doesn't help that we have lots of time on our hands to think about these things. When we were juggling family life with our demanding jobs then our priorities were different, life was busy and stressful, but there was an  upside, we simply didn't have the time to become morose about the state of humanity.

We had to vacate our place in the Tavira Motorhome Park by 10.15am. These days we regard that as an early start. We were not due to go back to the bike repair place until 6pm. It's amazing how much time you can fritter away just doing this and that. We parked up yet again at Ayemonte marina. By the time we'd wandered around the town centre, then returned to the Superco to buy a bottle of Fino and a Manzanilla sherry then returned to the van to doom scroll the news apps to check if WW3 had started, it was time to check on the bike repair.

My bike was raised on a stand, the shop owner stood  somewhat seriously beside it. Speaking Spanish into his phone then showing me the Google English translation on  screen he explained that it was not a perfect repair because the  rim had been damaged, but the wheel was straight enough to ride safely. He only charged us €30 euros. He seemed quite touched by how pleased we were. I will need to have the wheel replaced when we get home, but for now we can continue to use our bikes which is all we wanted.

Shunt Thursday, laundry Friday, then unanticipated consequences afterwards...

There are signs of Spain's tumultuous winter all over the place: a contraflow on the road south from Olvera caused by a landslip; the Embalse de Bornas lapping at the roadside like an overfilled bath; a sad forest of fallen trees covering the slope in the foothills of the Sierra Margarita.

Here at the Camper Park Sanlucar the repercussions of the recent downpours are less spectacular - the sandy track beyond the service point rutted to the point of being of impassible. Not a big deal, it just meant you had to reverse off the concrete platform onto the grass to exit the service point.

Simple, unless you failed to notice the recently planted sapling nearby. In truth I nudged it rather than collided with it, The little crunch resulted in a 3cm. hairline crack in the plastic rear bumper and one of the straps on the rear bike rack snapped. Everything else, including the sapling, seemed undamaged. In order to extricate the van we had to unload bikes and fold-up the rack, an English couple who had witnessed the mishap came across to assist, and kindly gave us a piece of velcro as a temporary fix for the broken strap. Small drama over we headed north towards Seville.

As the crow flies it's 96km from Camper Park Sanlucar to  Isla Cristina, our next stop. By road it's  229kms because there are no bridges across the Guadalquivir all the way from the river mouth here at Sanlucar to Seville. Partly this is because the western bank of the Guadalquivir forms the boundary of the Donana National Park, one of the largest protected wetlands in Europe. So the option of bridging the Guadalquivir to link Jerez and Huelva by a coastal route is a non-starter. So at the moment Seville is a bottleneck in the same way London was before the Dartford tunnel was built.

Spain is a country much admired for its capacity to manage big infrastructure projects on time and within budget. Its high speed rail network is the biggest in the world after China. However the attempts to solve Seville's traffic problems by building a southern bypass have rattled on for a quarter of a century with plans shelved and hundreds of millions of Euros blown on a flawed tunnel project. A sad tale worthy of the project managers of HS2 or Highways England . Most of the motorway infrastructure is in place but the crossing isn't.

Construction of a tall bridge set to supercede the failed tunnel project is supposedly due to begin this year with a completion date of 2029. In the meantime Seville remains one big traffic jam.

Endless Road works on the city's urban motorways have resulted in a diversion through the dock area. A series of roundabouts reduce traffic to a crawl as three lanes shuffle into two, it looks like an impossible proposition, but drivers here are not aggressive and mostly people manage to 'zip in turn' as they say in New Zealand. It is hazardous though, we passed  the aftermath of four minor shunts as we traversed the city, each one coned off causing further lane closures that added to the chaos. We declared today

It made our earlier sapling shunt seem insignificant. The most sensible thing to do is to avoid Seville unless you wish to visit the city, but that's difficult if you are heading towards Portugal as the alternative routes  wind through the Sierras, they are slow, narrow at times and potholed.

It took most of the day reach our destination. It's a decade since we first stayed at Camping Giraldo in Isla Cristina and we have been here so many times that last year the guy at reception greeted us with a smile, exclaimed, 'Welcome back!' and gave Gill a little hug.

It's a big site situated in a pine wood with the estuary on one side and a long sandy beach over the dunes on the other. It used to be somewhat ramshackle but there's been a lot of investment recently, the lumpy bumpy tracks improved, sanitary blocks upgraded, but most of all the site has been zoned. Long stay motorhomers in one area, short stayers in another, a large settlement of permanently sited Spanish caravans with DIY attachments, an ever    increasing number of mobile homes and chalets for hire and most recently a cute enclave of style over substance Kampoa Safari tents to attract Gen Zs. I appreciate things do change, but the site does feel less idiosyncratic, more corporate and not so easy going and soulful as before.

In the grand scheme of things these were minor issues, what we really required was a washing machine, not only were we running out of clean underwear but we had reached that moment in the trip where the only way to de-grit the bedclothes is to wash them.

By mid morning the next day our pitch was festooned with wafting washing. Time to unload the bikes and pedal off to Mercadona. This was the moment  we realised that snuggling up to a sapling as we exited Camper Park Sanlucar had done more damage than we thought. When I  clipped the tree with the bike rack its trunk must have impacted the rear wheel of my bike too. At first glance It looked fine, but as soon as I tried to ride it the tyre rubbed on the frame. The wheel was badly buckled but perhaps repairable, I conjectured.

Oddly, this is not the first time we have needed a cycle repair shop while we've been in Isla Cristina. A couple of years ago our bikes were blown over in a gale and my bike stand broke. I got it fixed at Motos Castro. So I wheeled down to their workshop again. It was Friday, tomorrow is Andalusia Day, a public holiday.  Bring it back on Monday and I will  try to fix it then,'  bike repair shop man advised via the Google translate app.

Right now we are in limbo. It's only when we lose use of the bikes that we realise how much we use them - for shopping particularly. Also, it's easier for Gill to cycle rather than walk given the state of her damaged knee, especially in Spain and Portugal where many of the pavements are cobbled.
If my bike can't be fixed we need to rethink the remainder of the trip, visiting places that are easily walkable or have good public transport.