When Gill phoned ahead to book us into Kiko Park campsite the receptionist asked if she was speaking to Sarah Turpie as she had found our surname on the booking system listed as a previous guest. "That's my daughter," Gill explained. As we also had stayed at Kiko Park previously, but on another occasion, 'Gillian' also appeared.
Turpie is an unusual name, there are only 500 of us in the entire UK, split more or less evenly between England and Scotland with merely a handful in Northern Ireland and Wales. The name originates in Fife, around Cupar, and is thought to be a regional variant of the more common 'Turpin'. So finding two Turpies in the database of a campsite in a remote spot in Valencia province is definitely a rare coincidence.
So It still remains the case that we have never met another Turpie who was not a close relative - parent, sibling, uncle, aunt or cousin. Only once have we come across a stranger with the same name, but not in person. A couple of years ago we ditched our landline, ending four decades of being listed in a telephone directory. Most of the time we were the only Turpies mentioned, aside from a period in the nineties when another P. Turpie was listed, living in a village about 15 miles away. A couple of times people asked me if I was related to Paul Turpie from Chinley. Maybe he was a distant relative, but we never got to know one way or the other.
However, if any other Turpies decide to become Euro van-lifers they may be surprised just how many campsites around Europe list a Turpie who got there before them. We've booked into hundreds over the past 12 years, scattered randomly from Finland in the North, to the far Southwest of Portugal, with Galatas, a small port in the Peloponnese just across the water from Poros being the furthest east we've travelled to date. Another slightly odd thing, unlike some other European languages including Spanish, there is no word in English common usage to describe two people who share the same name but are unrelated. 'Namesake' implies that one person was named after another. Homonymous apparently is the correct term, but it's not in part of everyday speech. In fact I don't remember ever having come across it until now.
Ok. That was all a bit of a rabbit hole I fell into, but seven weeks into the trip I've got to the stage when everyday life's anchoring routine is now a distant memory and I feel quite disconnected. In this state I alternate between a kind of zen-like peacefulness and more Dada-esque moments when the world seems deeply strange and absurd. Our three days at Kiko Park Rural was a mixture of both.
As one of the handful of foreigners in a campsite packed with Spanish people making the most of a long weekend where Friday was Valencia Day and the following Monday the country's main National Day, then it was inevitable that things were going to become somewhat strange. Each day's celebrations began around noon with a liquid brunch which morphed into an extended lunch. Essential equipment included a kitchen area with multiple high end gas BBQs, big tables shaded by fairylight draped gazebos, seating for at least a dozen and a boombox designed for Glastonbury. Extended families booked adjacent pitches, their gear spilling over the access roads. Once pitched-up you were trapped until the festivities ended.
Between the end of lunch at twoish and the start of dinner around seven it's party time! The preferred soundtrack - hispanic flavoured Europop with the odd rock orientated banger thrown in for good measure. In-between there are party games, such as how many people can converse simultaneously at 120db and still make sense, or who can screech the loudest. When Gill phoned ahead to book us in the receptionist advised they had only two pitches left. The one behind, screened from us by a high hedge, appeared to be occupied by the most raucous Spanish clan on the site.
We couldn't see them but heard everything. Their highpoint and our low came late on Monday afternoon, towards the end of the third consecutive day of celebrations. This particular game consisted of a competition to see who could sing Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious the fastest in Spanish. It seems to us that nobody on the planet can party with such good natured gusto as the Spanish. It must be great to be part of it. If you are an outsider its entertaining for an hour or two. However, when the party lasts for days it does start to feel somewhat Dada-esque - deeply strange and absurd. Thankfully everyone conked out before midnight so at least it's possible to get a good night's sleep.
Kiko Park is located in a remote spot down a single track road a few kilometres from the wine village of Vilargordio de Cabriel. It's really a resort rather than a simple campsite. I think it must have been a big hacienda originally. The facilities and restaurant are located in the former farm buildings and workers cottages. It's beautifully situated on a bluff above the turquoise waters of the Embalse de Contreras.
Just a few hundred metres from the national day shenanigans it was utterly peaceful, while everyone else was partying, we had the dirt tracks through the forest down to the waters edge to ourselves.
We might have got out and about more than we did had it been a little cooler, but the heat wave followed us and we were back to mid thirties during the day and hot sticky nights. Storms were forecast for the Valencian coast, but here inland on the edge of the pressure system it resulted in nothing more than strange cloud formations high up in the upper atmosphere. Gill identified them as a fairly rare phenomenon called stacked mamautus.
It still felt like summer - the colours of the landscape intense, almost hyperreal -
The garrigue by the track was covered in flowers and herbs and the scrubby bushes dotted with small butterflies.
It felt like the the epitome of what Rebecca Solnit wrote about in 'The Faraway Nearby', that the wild exists everywhere, just around the corner. It was definitely a 'zen' moment, a 'spot in time' as Wordsworth put it, when you, the earth and a particular moment coalesce into an unassuming apotheosis.
Every twenty minutes or so the sense of profound peacefulness was disturbed by a big whoosh, it lasted for about thirty seconds, then faded suddenly. The AVE high speed train line from Valencia to Madrid runs nearby. You only see the trains momentarily as they emerge from a deep cutting then disappear into a long tunnel that takes them under the Embalse. The whoosh is very short-lived as they flash by at 300kph. So, we had a thought provoking three days, an intriguing mix of a big party, in profoundly beautiful nature next to a high speed train line.
Gill found an area autocaravanas at a bodega about 14kms from Kiko Park on the outskirts of a small village called Casas del Rey. It looked like an ideal place to unwind from our party weekend. Although we were not part of the celebration simply being surrounded by it was exhausting.
The area autocaravanas at the Neleman winery consists of half a dozen or so bays in the car park by the main building. It has services but only the ECU was connected, the WC emptying point and water tap are now closed off. Really I think the place is all about selling wine and not really serious when it comes to providing a stop off for motorhomers.
It's in quite a remote spot down a 700m single track road leading to the village. The countryside here on the border between Castille La Mancha and Valencia province is very beautiful. Greener than much of inland Spain, a pleasing mix of vineyards, almond orchards and olive plantations. However, like much of rural Spain the village is dying. The bodega was established as a cooperative by local winemakers in 1961. At that time the village had 360 inhabitants, now there are just 30.
By the end of the noughties the bodega had fallen into disrepair. It was brought back to life by an enterprising Dutchman, Derrick Neleman, with the support of local winemakers he repaired and reopened the bodega and brought it back to life as a producer of organic wines. You can't really argue with the strap line on the side of the main building..
Bodega Neleman has clearly been revived with love and is committed to ethical business practices and environmentalism. It is a beautiful place, with a sculpture garden and way-marked walks through the vines.
If you buy a box of wine then you get to stay in the area autocaravanas for free. The wines are not especially expensive, but they are certainly not at the budget end of the market. I imagine producing organic wines and following environmentally sound husbandry reduces the yield. One of the wines in the mixed box we bought was a rosé featuring the borbal grape variety. Occasionally a similar Requina/Utiel rosé appears on the shelves of our local Aldi. It costs about 30% less than the bottle from Bodega Neleman.
The challenge is to persuade people that one way they can become environmental activists is to pay a little more for a bottle at the checkout. In our local Waitrose 'posh' vintage wines have their own section. Why not do the same thing for organic wines and showcase the opportunity of making an environmentally positive choice? - Drink a little less, pay a little more, help the planet!
We walked into the village expecting a place that had lost 90% of it's population in the last half century would be in a ruinous state.
It wasn't. There were a few houses boarded up but most looked habitable. The public spaces with seats and a play park for children were well looked after. I can only presume that some of the houses are still owned by the children and grandchildren of former inhabitants and kept on as a 'place in the country'. I guess some must be holiday rentals too.
If rural depopulation was just about a lack of work opportunities then the general acceptance of working remotely should have resulted result in a move back into the countryside by young families. It's not happening at scale, because urban culture is cool and the countryside remains a place where you book an Airbnb for a short break.
Our three kids grew up in a country town, the elder two live in London, the youngest in Tokyo. I am happiest parked up in our motorhome by a Mediterranean beach, so far as home life is concerned, I can't imagine living anywhere that isn't a ten minute walk from some ancient woodland or a field full of grazing cattle.
I've been dreaming about a green revolution all my adult life. I don't think it's going to happen. Fields that once were farmed get earmarked for data centres. I am not a luddite nor anti-AI, but there is a basic principle at stake about technology serving humanity, not the opposite way around. The issue is not new. Some years ago I read James C Scott's 'Against the Grain' that outlies an alternative history of early civilisations exploring their precarity rather than their progress. More of the earliest cities failed than prospered due to collapse from environmental challenges - drought, famine, disease; or they were held to ransome, then finally overrun by 'barbarians' from 'over the hill'. It's not AI's power that worries me, but its vulnerablity. Andy Burnham popped up on my phone yesterday advising that we should stock up on bottled water and tinned food, acknowledging that we are one data breach away from societal breakdown.
Life seems simple in our metal box on wheels, but it's a high tech object, we are not immune to external political forces - as the price of diesel right now demonstrates. It's not uncommon to find the strap line 'Living the dream' stencilled on the rear end of our fellow grey haired motorhomers' pride and joy. It's perfectly true, but not quite in the way they mean - dreams can be aspirational, but equally, illusory.
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