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.
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